Public interests and pipelines

Public interests are one of the main reasons used to legitimise government intervention in a market. According to both economists and public administration experts, the public interests in the case of pipelines are external safety and environmental effects. In practice, the interest of the external safety of pipelines is safeguarded through the supervision of the safety management systems that the pipeline owners have in place and through zoning. Another tool the government employs is setting aside space for possible future transport pipelines and associated zoning purposes. The most obvious reason for the government to promote transport pipelines is the difference in external safety compared to other modes of transport. From the perspective of prosperity, imposing a tax on the other modes of transport would be the ideal solution, but a cost-benefit analysis generally assumes the current institutional setting. In this memorandum by the KiM Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis (KiM), we examine the extent to which public interests feature in the vision of economists and public administration experts as regards pipeline transport and how these interests can be protected. In addition, we investigate how the public costs and benefits of pipeline transport can be calculated.