Pacific Gas & Electric - PG&E

On January 21, 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its latest report, the Metallurgical Group Factual Report, on last September’s tragic accident on PG&E’s natural gas pipeline in San Bruno, California.

Additional work still lies ahead before the NTSB will reach a final conclusion, and it’s premature for PG&E or anyone to speculate on what caused this accident. Nonetheless, today’s report is an important step in the effort to answer that crucial question.

We once again express our appreciation to the NTSB for the meticulous and painstaking work by its experts. We are continuing to fully cooperate with the NTSB and other investigations.

Public safety is PG&E’s highest responsibility and our highest priority. Period.

Even while the investigation is ongoing we are taking actions on multiple fronts to ensure the safety and integrity of our system.

We want to remind our customers and the communities that we serve that all pipelines in PG&E’s system that are of a similar size and vintage to the line in San Bruno and have not been pressure tested, are continuing to operate at pressures that have been reduced by 20 percent.

This measure builds a significant additional margin of safety into our current operating conditions.

Finally, all of us at PG&E continue to keep the people of San Bruno in our thoughts and prayers. They — and everyone in the communities we serve — have our pledge that PG&E will do whatever is necessary to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.