As a key House panel yesterday began its overhaul of newly high-profile pipeline safety standards, stakeholders homed in on potential tweaks to three portions of a GOP draft bill: the burden of proof for civil penalties, leak detection systems and emergency notification.

The Energy and Commerce Committee is taking the lead on a safety overhaul this year, a change from the historical pattern that has seen the Transportation and Infrastructure panel sitting in the first chair. But with three major pipeline ruptures in the past year making the once-obscure transport of oil and gas into national news, Energy and Commerce's prominence could prove a harbinger of stricter new safety rules before current authorizing legislation expires this year.

Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), speaking at the first half of a hearing on his panel's draft bill that concluded yesterday with testimony from industry and safety advocates, vowed to move a pipeline plan quickly through a Capitol often snarled by partisanship.

"The public demands it," Upton said of pipeline safety reform, "and so do our responsibilities as their elected leaders."

Association of Oil Pipe Lines President Andrew Black described the House draft as superior to its Senate counterpart "in a number of areas." Still, he urged lawmakers to reconsider provisions that require the Transportation Department to issue new leak-detection regulations and set a one-hour maximum timeframe for operators to report incidents along their pipelines.

"A one-size-fits-all leak detection standard," Black said, might not be necessary given the investment that companies already are making to upgrade their pipeline networks.

Exxon Mobil Corp. pipelines chief Gary Pruessing -- whose Silvertip pipeline is shut following a Montana spill this month -- sounded a similar note of caution on the pace of leak-detection advancements. There is "not something off the shelf people can use" to meet all of the detection requirements contemplated, he told lawmakers.

For natural gas lines, automatic shutoff valves that can be activated in the event of a leak are among the more prominent improvements. Industry representatives yesterday lamented high cost projections for a potential required retrofit of their existing lines to include those valves, but under questioning from Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), all stated that the valves are considered standard add-ons in new pipes.

Industry also aired concerns with the one-hour window set in the House bill for notifying responders of ruptures, warning that such a standard could spark a flurry of false-alarm calls. Advocacy groups such as the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust (PST), however, see that provision as imperative for containment of future oil or gas leaks.

In his testimony, PST Vice President Richard Kessler singled out the House draft measure's setting of a new standard for civil violations of pipeline safety rules -- signaled by the term "knowingly and willfully" -- that aligns with current criminal penalty rules. While regulators have imposed civil fines against several pipeline companies, Kessler said, the higher criminal standard has been successfully imposed only once, in a 1999 rupture that killed three in Washington state.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of Energy and Commerce's energy and power subpanel, indicated in response that members of both parties were raising questions about the bill's changes to the civil-penalty standard.