SACRAMENTO, April 22 (UPI) -- Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it will have to close some pipelines if California regulators can't accept alleged gaps in its records.
A September gas explosion killed eight people and destroyed 38 homes in San Bruno, Calif., after a weld seam broke on a pipeline operated by PG&E.
PG&E's records from the 1950s indicate the San Bruno line didn't have weld seams and the company never looked at the integrity of the welds on the pipeline walls. Federal regulators, however, suggested welds on the inside of the pipeline were botched when the pipeline was installed in the 1950s.
The California Public Utilities Commission called on PG&E to hand over the records of all 1,800 miles of pipelines in California after the discrepancy was uncovered.
PG&E missed a March deadline to hand over the documents, however, saying it would be "very difficult, if not infeasible" to meet the regulators request, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The utility company said that if California regulators can't accept some "assumptions" about state pipelines, it would have to start closing hundreds of miles of pipeline to inspect them.
Conducting tests or replacing the pipelines without records means closing them over a period of "approximately five years," the utility said.
