You are correct, JTMcC - 96" is a water line.
Is the gas company requirement you refer to, regarding two welders, an in-house spec?
Our company welders have no regulations on the number of welders for a certain diameter, however, an outside union that we contract has a requirement for two welders on 12" pipe and greater. That gets interpreted incorrectly that it's a code or quality issue. In fact we did have a situation when two welders were welding a fitting to a 12" pipe and had overheated it, causing embrittlement and a 27% loss of yield strength as determined by our lab services. Obviously inter-pass temperatures were not monitored after the initial preheat, and fatigue issues were present. The failure was a 7 inch long thru-wall crack at the toe.