You Have Critical Pipelines: How Do You Protect/Perverse Rights to Them over Time, and Plan for Uncertain Futures?

You have critical pipelines that were constructed when and where? How do you know where they are located and that you have legal rights to the properties? How do you protect them from development pressure(s), whether in rural, urban, or anything in between? This document will review general principles/practices related to asset management (AM) from a legal right, ownership, access, etc., perspective to ensure that utilities have clear access to their most critical pipelines regardless of when they were constructed. The paper and presentation will review different types of ownership, deeds, easements, permits, license agreements, prior rights, etc., and their limitations based on my professional experience. We will also review the concepts of rights/easements related to general surface, subsurface, aerial, etc. The information presented is based on several case studies based on my experience working for regional utilities: one in the southeastern US and the other in the western US. If you do not have recent records/mapping of your pipelines versus the property lines, easement lines, etc., how do you know you have clear rights? The simple answer is that you do not. Most utilities have established methods to identify, survey, plat, acquire, and record the rights needed for new capital construction projects, but what about your assets that were constructed before these protocols were established?