The Environmental Integrity Project has identified nearly 200 pipeline projects proposed or under construction across the United States, collectively spanning 17,000 miles. The primary demand drivers are twofold: at least 98 gas-fired power plants proposed to serve datacenters, and expanded natural gas exports fueled by the wars in Ukraine and Iran. If completed, the new lines would increase daily US natural gas transport capacity by roughly 40%. This is the largest pipeline construction boom in two decades, and it is running headlong into a simultaneous demolition of the regulatory architecture that governs pipeline safety. The Trump administration issued a January memo pledging to "refrain from taking any enforcement action" against companies violating Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration regulations. By 2025, average annual enforcement actions had already been cut in half, to just 117. The administration is also allowing operators to increase pipeline pressure in densely populated areas and conduct fewer pressure tests. The environmental review process is being compressed to match the pace of construction. Over 25% of the projects have requested expedited environmental review, and the administration is granting them through legally contested mechanisms including the declaration of an "energy emergency." The Defense Production Act — designed for wartime mobilization — is being invoked to override state objections. California's Santa Ynez pipeline, shut down after a 2015 spill that damaged 150 miles of coastline, has been restarted. The 125-mile Constitution pipeline from Pennsylvania to New York is being pushed through despite the latter state's opposition. The safety record that these relaxed rules are supposed to govern is already grim. The US currently records about 1.7 pipeline accidents, spills, fires, or explosions per day. In March 2023, a crack in a gas pipeline in West Reading, Pennsylvania caused an explosion in a chocolate factory that killed seven workers and injured ten. Last month, two workers died in a New Mexico pipeline explosion. Adding 17,000 miles of pipeline while reducing oversight is a straightforward bet that the accident rate won't scale with the infrastructure. Wetlands are another casualty. At least 81 projects are expected to damage more than 19,000 acres of federally protected wetlands, even as the administration moves to strip 94% of federal wetland protections. Most of the pipelines concentrate in fossil fuel-producing regions — 42 in or crossing Texas, 27 in Louisiana, nine each in Pennsylvania and Illinois. Louisiana's Gulf coast communities, already threaded with pipeline infrastructure serving Mississippi River export terminals, bear disproportionate risk. The extraction geometry is clean: datacenter operators and LNG exporters capture the upside of cheap gas supply; pipeline companies capture construction and transport revenue; communities along the routes absorb the explosion risk, wetland destruction, and enforcement vacuum. As James Hiatt of For a Better Bayou put it: "The people who live here carry the risks and bear the burden while the profits go elsewhere." The deeper structural problem is the mismatch in time horizons. These pipelines will operate for 30-50 years. The deregulatory window that enabled their rushed approval may last only one administration. But once the steel is in the ground, the pressure turned up, and the enforcement culture gutted, the risk profile is locked in for decades — long after the political actors who enabled it have moved on.
