I worked in the industry for a while.. Not quite the case. They have to do the bare level of preventative maintenance that you would expect for such a potentially hazardous infrastructure.
The federal regulations require that all equipment get inspected every couple of years I dont rightly recall how frequent it is for LNG equipment but for propane (which is not as strictly regulated) it was every 5 years, so it was at least every 5 years maybe as often as every 3 years but its been a while since I worked in that field so I dont remember Now for the inspections, most all gas companies do not have enough employees to do the inspections, if they have any inhouse employees for inspections it is very few, the majority of their 'field employees' are tasked with performing the maintenance needed. But as far as inspections they outsource to various contracting companies. I worked for one of these contracting companies. The quality of employees hired by these contracting companies is fucking really toilet scum tier low. The training that they provide is laughable. And basically when they send a guy out to do inspections they give them the equipment to do it but most do not know how to use it properly. The pipe locating equipment, for example, with most of these employees amounts entirely to guess work. And, the nature of the pipelines and the provided equipment maps means that said guesswork tends to be accurate enough that there is no way that you could ensure the work is actually being performed on paper. When they submit their paperwork complete guesses will look "about right" enough that unless someone was writing entirely irrelevant shit you wouldnt be able to tell that they werent actually doing their job at all, or correctly.
Now for the inspection process. You walk up to the regulator and visually look for corrosion. Most of these employees assume that no corrosion = no leaks and they skip subsequent tests and just make up the results. Next you would spray it with some leak detecting solution i.e. specially formulated soap water it is specially formulated to produce more bubbles and not corrode the equipment Most people would just use a dollar store thing of hand soap mixed with water because they never provide enough of the leak detecting liquid to you This works but it is a corrosion risk. Next you are supposed to get cathodic readings of the equipment, never met a single person that could get the shit to give proper readings on a reliable basis.
But, lets say you find corrosion, what has to be done to correct this? Replace parts? Nope. This is when you whip out a can of meter grey rustoleum. And then, lets say you actually find a leak. What happens? You report it to the gas utility company and then hopefully they send someone down to fix it. I had times where I called in a leak that was bad enough that I couldnt leave it unattended, for both legal and moral reasons. One in particular I called in in the early morning and come sundown no one had showed up. The leak was bad enough that I had to make the decision to shut down the fucking road by myself and create detour signs. And it wasnt until I called the company and threatened them that I was going to call the police if they didnt send someone immediately that the shit got fixed.
Most of the people who work for these companies dont have the intelligence or integrity to do such a thing. The company I worked for started in ass of two shits so Im gonna have a laff if they are involved in this.