California’s Hydrogen Pipeline Bill Puts Safety Oversight in the Wrong Hands and Doesn’t Meaningfully Address Safety

California’s climate goals anticipate a hydrogen buildout, so legislators are right to want to get a safety regulator in place before the pipelines arrive. But hydrogen is not just another fuel: it ignites more easily than natural gas, escapes through joints and welds that hold methane, and over time can crack the very steel meant to contain it. A bill moving through the Legislature answers the right question the wrong way by handing oversight of hydrogen pipelines to a state agency with no experience regulating gas pipelines, while doing nothing to address what makes hydrogen dangerous in the first place.

SB 804 (Archuleta) would direct the Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM), California’s hazardous liquid pipeline safety regulator, to seek certification from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) for the oversight of hydrogen pipelines in California. The problem is, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) already has the authority and expertise to regulate utility-owned gaseous pipelines in the state. Hydrogen moves through pipelines and is regulated as a gas, with little to no distinction from natural gas. The CPUC already holds the federal certification to enforce those exact rules for utility-owned gas pipelines, and there is no reason why, if directed by the legislature, they could not oversee hydrogen pipelines. OSFM’s authority, expertise, and PHMSA certification by contrast, sit under the federal code covering hazardous liquid pipelines. Under SB 804, OSFM would need to build gas-pipeline expertise essentially from scratch, while the agency that already has it would be sidelined.

While the bill has been amended recently to include a requirement that the CPUC develop a report with recommendations for the appropriate safety regulatory framework and division of jurisdictional applicability for pipelines carrying blended hydrogen, this still does not address key concerns around OSFM’s experience and expertise with gaseous hydrogen pipelines. In addition, this report is not required to be submitted to the legislature until March of 2028, leaving plenty of time for regulatory uncertainty as hydrogen projects push forward. 

Hydrogen gas presents risks that OSFM has never had to manage, and no regulations are in place to address them. Its ignition behavior, leak profile, and tendency to embrittle common pipeline materials are precisely the risks that call for deep gas-pipeline expertise, not a jurisdictional handoff to an agency starting from zero.

SB 804 does nothing to close the gaps in existing federal rules. It contains no requirement that operators prevent hydrogen leakage or install continuous monitoring capable of detecting it. It sets no setback distances for hydrogen pipelines near homes, schools, or businesses, despite the fact that hydrogen pipeline ruptures carry a different blast radius and ignition profile than comparable natural gas failures. This bill has been touted as a safety measure but leaves the actual safety standards untouched.

Pipeline Safety Trust, the only national nonprofit dedicated solely to pipeline safety, does not take a position on whether hydrogen has a future in California’s energy mix. However, if these pipelines are going to be built, the state should not scramble the regulatory chain of command, skip the technical expertise that already exists, and potentially create a confusing web of regulatory oversight for future hydrogen pipelines.

SB 804 also raises an important question: How will California divide pipeline safety oversight as new fuels move through its infrastructure? If the legislature establishes, through SB 804, that jurisdiction over a new fuel can be assigned to whichever agency is administratively convenient rather than to the one with matching technical authority, that becomes the template for the next fuel, and the one after that. California currently has a clean division of labor: CPUC for gas utility pipelines, OSFM for hazardous liquids. SB 804 blurs that line without articulating a broader framework for how future fuels should be assigned. Legislators considering this bill are not just deciding who regulates hydrogen; they are deciding, by precedent, how the state will make these calls going forward.

SB 804 is not a bill that can be fixed with a few amendments. Fundamentally, it is built around the wrong regulator, leaves the actual safety gaps unaddressed, and raises larger questions about what pipeline safety oversight looks like in the future. California legislators should reject it and start over with a bill that sets real safety standards for hydrogen pipelines and prevents future confusion over pipeline safety oversight and authority in California.