Two appointees to President Donald Trump’s administration’s pipeline regulator are facing ethics questions from ranking members of the Senate committee that oversees their agency following a ProPublica report about their ties to the pipeline industry.
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington and ranking member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, sent a letter Friday to Ben Kotchman, deputy commissioner of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, and Keith Coyle, the agency’s chief counsel. The letter asked for records and information about Mr. Kochman and Mr. Coyle’s interactions with the American Interstate Natural Gas Association, an influential pipeline industry group. Prior to their appointment to PHMSA, Mr. Kochman served on the board of directors of INGAA, and Mr. Coyle provided legal services to the group (as well as more than 20 other pipeline, oil and gas companies), his financial disclosures show. Mr. Cantwell sent similar requests for records and information to INGAA.
Cantwell’s letter cites a recent ProPublica investigation that found that Kochman and Coyle oversaw an unprecedented effort to roll back the agency’s regulatory authority, targeting a number of safety and reporting requirements that are important to pipeline safety advocates. The agency’s pipeline safety enforcement efforts also plummeted. This change overwhelmingly aligns with the interests of INGAA and the pipeline industry.
“This not only raises serious questions about compliance with federal ethics rules, but also shows that the agency is quietly pursuing a reckless safety rollback program that benefits INGAA and undermines pipeline safety regulations that protect the American people,” Cantwell wrote in a letter to Kochman. “No matter how you look at it, you are forcing the industry to rewrite the rulebook while simultaneously choosing not to enforce the rules that remain.”
Mr. Kochman and Mr. Coyle did not respond to requests for comment. A PHMSA spokesperson said the two officials are “in full compliance with federal ethics requirements.” An INGAA spokeswoman said the group would respond to Cantwell, but had no other comment.
The move at the pipeline regulator is part of broader deregulation across PHMSA’s parent agency, the Department of Transportation, targeting numerous safety rules opposed by transportation and infrastructure companies. Other parts of the DOT have also seen a decline in safety enforcement. Overseeing these changes are dozens of political appointees who previously worked in the industries the department regulates. Some of them revealed significant investments in transportation companies and adjacent industries. In comments to ProPublica’s original article, Department of Transportation spokesman Nate Sizemore said that “safety is the top priority” at the agency and that the agency is focused on “removing duplicative and outdated regulations” and “enforcing critical rules that actually keep Americans safe.”
The collaboration between industry and regulators is most evident in PHMSA. Mr. Kochman and Mr. Coyle are two of the four appointed there and previously worked in the pipeline industry or a closely related field. (All four also previously worked at PHMSA or elsewhere at DOT; the other two did not respond to requests for comment.) Since returning this year, the agency has taken aim at numerous pipeline and hazardous materials safety standards amid a flurry of deregulation. Some recent proposals include limiting the conditions that PHMSA can impose on pipeline safety exemptions. Triple the amount of property damage caused by a hazardous liquid pipeline failure before an operator must report an incident. and increasing shipping limits for batteries known to spontaneously explode.
PHMSA has published a total of 23 notices of proposed rulemaking so far this year, more than President Joe Biden’s administration has published in four years. All of these proposals were signed by Kochman.
Some of the agency’s recent regulatory actions cite INGAA, an industry group for which Mr. Cockman once worked. It includes a notice signed by Mr. Cockman that references INGAA’s previous criticisms of the Biden administration’s proposed pipeline rules, which Mr. Cockman himself filed while at INGAA.
The agency’s actions under the new administration have alarmed the advocacy group Pipeline Safety Trust, whose executive director likened the actions of industry appointees to “foxes designing a chicken coop.” The trust was established after a pipeline rupture in 1999 killed three people, two of them children.
PHMSA also quietly killed two major rulemaking efforts: one to tighten regulations on carbon dioxide pipelines and one to crack down on pipeline leaks. The latter was mandated by the PIPES Act of 2020, which President Trump signed into law during his first term.
In his letter, Mr. Cantwell asked Mr. Kochman and Mr. Coyle to provide records documenting their communications and meetings with INGAA since joining PHMSA, any issues they have tried to avoid, and any enforcement cases in which PHMSA has reduced or removed potential fines. Mr. Cantwell requested similar records and information from INGAA.
“It is important that pipeline safety officials act independently, in compliance with federal ethics rules, and free from undue influence from the companies they oversee,” he wrote in a letter to industry groups.
