Democrats who rule the House were planning to pass the bill before midnight Monday, their deadline to get it to the governor’s desk before the Legislature concludes work for the year.
But the chamber’s 28 Republicans successfully extended debate, saying the mapping requirement isn’t needed and wouldn’t improve public safety.
The bill was in response to a deadly home explosion in April that was traced to gas seeping from an old severed underground pipeline, called a flow line.
Democrats called for a searchable statewide map of gas lines. Some states have searchable statewide well maps, though none has come up with the maps by requiring oil and gas producers to disclose well sites.
“The reason this is coming up is that two people are dead in our community,” Democratic Rep. Matt Gray said.
But Republicans pointed out that oil and gas regulators have already ordered safety reviews of the state’s 54,000 or so wells.
They also argued that homeowners can find out about wells now using technology called the geographic information system, or GIS. Though no state keeps a central database of those lines, they’re not hidden, either.
