A jury finds California’s largest utility guilty of violating safety rules before a fatal pipeline blast.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal jury found California’s largest utility guilty on Tuesday of violating pipeline safety regulations before a deadly natural gas pipeline explosion in the San Francisco Bay Area and then misleading investigators about how it was identifying high-risk pipelines.

After deliberating for seven days, jurors convicted Pacific Gas & Electric Co. of obstruction and five of 11 counts of pipeline safety violations, including failing to gather information to evaluate potential gas line threats and deliberately neglecting to classify a natural gas line as high risk.

The 2010 blast of a PG&E natural gas pipeline sent a giant plume of fire into the air, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes in the city of San Bruno.

U.S. Attorney Brian Stretch said in a statement his office’s investigation of whether PG&E violated regulations was needed in the wake of the blast to “honor the memory of those who perished.”

“The jury has determined that PG&E management chose willfully not to follow certain of those regulations,” he said.

No PG&E employees were charged, so no one is facing prison time. A judge could fine PG&E as much as $3 million for the convictions when the company is sentenced.

“While we are very much focused on the future, we will never forget the lessons of the past,” PG&E said in a statement.

During the investigation, prosecutors say, the San Francisco-based utility misled federal officials about the standard it was using to identify high-risk pipelines.

PG&E pleaded not guilty and said its employees did the best they could with ambiguous regulations they struggled to understand.