Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 7/7/2016
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Fibrant to Shutter U.S. Caprolactam Unit
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Fibrant, a producer of the nylon feedstock caprolactam, plans to shut down its Augusta, Ga., plant over the next 16 months, eliminating about 600 jobs. The firm attributes the decision to a protracted global oversupply of—and scant profits for—the commodity chemical. -
US EPA Releases Chemical Data Reporting Case Studies
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has released a set of case studies to assist responsible parties with submitting reports to the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule. -
US Health Professionals Call for Action on Children's Chemical Exposure
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
US scientists and health professionals have called for urgent action to reduce exposure to chemicals that may affect a child's brain development. These can lead to disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). -
EPA Urges States to Publish Individual Lead Water Samples
Jul 7, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Ryan J. Foley
States have taken steps to address the risk of lead in drinking water after the crisis in Flint, Michigan, but more needs to be done to share key information with the public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. -
GOP Probes EPA Response to NY State Water Contamination
Jul 7, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House Republicans are investigating the Obama administration's and New York state government’s responses to a water contamination crisis in upstate New York. -
Jury Cites DuPont for Malice in Teflon Chemical Trial, Awards $5M to Cancer Victim
Jul 7, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
On Wednesday, a federal jury ordered DuPont to pay more than $5 million to an Ohio man who alleged he contracted testicular cancer from drinking water contaminated with a toxic chemical formerly used to make Teflon. -
DuPont May be Forced To Settle Chemical Lawsuits For 'Hundreds Of Millions,' Insiders Say
Jul 7, 2016 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
It’s a legal case in which DuPont truly believes it is right. Yet, a jury yesterday awarded a man $5.1 million, believing that the cheIt’s a legal case in which DuPont truly believes it is right. Yet, a jury yesterday awarded a man $5.1 million, believing that... -
Johnson & Johnson Meets Ingredient Commitments
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Personal care products conglomerate Johnson & Johnson says it has met its commitments to reduce or eliminate certain substances from its baby and adult care products. -
IRIS Managers Seek to Strengthen Novel Dermal BaP Cancer Risk Estimate
Jul 7, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Managers of EPA's influential risk analysis program are seeking additional expertise on how to strengthen their draft risk analysis of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), particularly its novel skin cancer risk estimate, but one expert who has reviewed the draft... -
Skin Penetration Not Relevant for Sensitisation Potential
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
A chemical's ability to penetrate the skin may not be relevant to its skin sensitisation potential. A study by the US EPA casts doubt on a widely held assumption that chemicals with a high molecular weight (MW) – thought too big to penetrate the skin – are unlikely to be sensitisers. -
Health Canada Releases GHS Technical Guidance
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Sylvia Palmer
Health Canada has released the first of a two-part series of technical guidance intended to help industry comply with the new Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) 2015 requirements. -
Echa Round-Up
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
There will be a webinar on 20 July to help with registration for the REACH 2018 deadline. It is the fourth to focus on information needed to register a substance. -
Echa Urges 'Transparency' on Lead Registrant Role
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has announced plans to publish a list of substances for which there is an appointed lead registrant (LR). -
(ACC Mentioned) Gulfport Energy - A Star Utica Independent
Jul 7, 2016 | Seeking Alpha
...At the end of last year, chemical companies had announced 223 shale-related projects with a cumulative investment of $137 billion, according to the American Chemistry Council... -
Insults Fly as House Hearing on EPA Regs Veers Out of Control
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball and Niina Heikkinen
Tempers flared and accusations flew as Republican congressmen grilled a top U.S. EPA official yesterday about the agency's climate regulations at a fiery House subcommittee hearing. -
Private Appalachian Producers Highlight Different Approaches During Downturn
Jul 7, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Privately owned EdgeMarc Energy Holdings LLC is coping with the commodities downturn no differently than its larger, publicly traded peers operating in Appalachia, aiming to keep its leverage low and leaning on its dry natural gas assets in Ohio's Utica Shale to keep moving forward. -
This Could Be a Completely Different Strategy for Tackling the World’s Carbon Emissions
Jul 7, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chelsea Harvey
Electricity generation is the single biggest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in the world — which is why there’s such a global effort to cut down on power plant emissions and expand alternative energy sources. -
Carbon Capture Is Technically Feasible, and It Can Be Financially Feasible
Jul 7, 2016 | New York Times
By Howard J. Herzog
To adequately address climate change concerns, we will need to radically alter our energy systems to eliminate practically all carbon dioxide emissions. -
Utilities Give a First Peek at N.Y.'s Distributed Energy Future
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Saqib Rahim and Peter Behr
In 2014, Consolidated Edison Inc. asked an $800 million question. In parts of Brooklyn and Queens, power demand was growing. ConEd could meet that need with a $1 billion upgrade to the power grid -- paid for by ratepayers. -
The E.P.A.’s Civil Rights Problem
Jul 7, 2016 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
An oil refinery in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Beaumont, Tex. A hazardous waste disposal site in Chaves County, N.M., a largely low-income, largely Hispanic area. Two power plants in Pittsburg, Calif., where most of the residents are from minority communities. -
Are Oil Trains Just Too Heavy? No Regulations, No Weigh to Know
Jul 7, 2016 | DeSmog
By Justin Mikulka
The cause of the most recent bomb train derailment and fire in Mosier, OR has been determined to be lag bolts that had sheared off resulting in the derailment. This once again raises concerns that the unit trains of oil are putting too much stress on the tracks... -
Nine Ways Chemistry Contributes to High Performing Buildings
Jul 6, 2016 | HPB Magazine
By D’Lane Wisner
The choice of building materials is a key component in the construction of high-performing, or any, buildings. While designers are sometimes limited by the building type and size, they still must weigh a number of factors to pick which of potentially several options to use. -
Amendments Pile up for House Interior-EPA Bill
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
House lawmakers have filed dozens of proposed amendments to the fiscal 2017 spending plan for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA, several of which are likely to ignite partisan bickering. -
EPA Drafts Guidance for States on Haze Rule
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA, already well under way with proposed revisions to its regional haze rule, is now poised to formally release draft instructions to help states meet the program's goals during the second implementation phase, set to run until 2028. -
Greens Sue EPA to Force New NOx, SOx Standards
Jul 7, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
Environmentalists today sued to force EPA to update two major air quality standards covering nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides. -
House Chairman Threatens to Subpoena AGs in Exxon Case
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology threatened yesterday to subpoena the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general in connection with their investigations of Exxon Mobil Corp.
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Fibrant to Shutter U.S. Caprolactam Unit
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Marc S. Reisch
Fibrant, a producer of the nylon feedstock caprolactam, plans to shut down its Augusta, Ga., plant over the next 16 months, eliminating about 600 jobs. The firm attributes the decision to a protracted global oversupply of—and scant profits for—the commodity chemical.
Formed in late 2015 out of DSM’s caprolactam operations, Fibrant is owned 65% by the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and 35% by DSM.
The price of caprolactam “has dropped substantially below the product cost, and prospects for recovery are poor,” says Pol De Turck, Fibrant’s CEO. The decision to close down “was the only viable course of action,” he says. The firm also produces by-product ammonium sulfate, which is sold as a fertilizer.
Shutting down the Augusta operation, which dates back to 1966, will eliminate about 230,000 metric tons of annual caprolactam production capacity. DSM and others use the monomer to make nylon 6 engineering resins, fibers, and packaging materials. Fibrant continues to operate caprolactam units in the Netherlands and China with an annual capacity exceeding 670,000 metric tons.
The Fibrant shutdown should brighten prospects for the two remaining U.S. caprolactam producers: BASF and Honeywell. In May, Honeywell revealed plans to spin off its caprolactam and nylon operations into a new company to be called AdvanSix. Plans are to complete the $1.3 billion separation early next year.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i28/Fibrant-shutter-US-caprolactam-unit.html
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US EPA Releases Chemical Data Reporting Case Studies
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
The US EPA has released a set of case studies to assist responsible parties with submitting reports to the Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) rule.
The agency says the case studies are intended to illustrate certain reporting requirements, and to address general reporting issues experienced during the 2012 CDR.
The CDR rule – which comes under TSCA – requires manufacturers and importers to report information on the production and use of chemicals in commerce once every four years.
The 2016 submission period runs from 1 June to 30 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48476/us-epa-releases-chemical-data-reporting-case-studies
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US Health Professionals Call for Action on Children's Chemical Exposure
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
US scientists and health professionals have called for urgent action to reduce exposure to chemicals that may affect a child's brain development. These can lead to disorders such as autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
More than 40 experts from the Project Targeting Environmental Neuro-developmental Risks (Tendr) have penned a consensus statement calling for policies and actions to eliminate, or significantly reduce, exposures to certain chemicals.
The project is part-funded by the US National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). It began in 2015 out of concern over the "substantial scientific evidence linking toxic environmental chemicals to neuro-developmental disorders".
The consensus statement lists "prime examples" of chemicals that may affect brain development. These include:
· organophosphate pesticides;
· PBDE flame retardants;
· lead;
· mercury;
· particulate air pollution; and
· PCBs.
One in six US children is reported to have a 'developmental disability', up 17% from over a decade ago, according to the Tendr authors.
Most chemicals are not tested for neuro-developmental effects and toxicological studies and regulatory evaluation rarely address combined effects of chemical mixtures, they say.
Writing in Environmental Health Perspectives, the scientists point to research identifying critical windows of vulnerability during embryonic and foetal development, infancy, early childhood and adolescence. They also discuss the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as phthalates. These, they say, are an "emerging concern for interference with brain development and therefore demand attention".
"We need to overhaul our approach to developing and assessing evidence on chemicals of concern for brain development," write the authors.
They call on regulators to take into account the vulnerability of the developing foetus and children, and ask that businesses "eliminate neuro-developmental toxicants from their supply chains and products".
US measures to restrict production, use and environmental releases of the chemicals have tended to be too little too late, say the experts. They bemoan that manufacturers have at times substituted restricted chemicals with similar compounds, resulting in "regrettable substitutions".
NGOs have welcomed the consensus statement. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) "applauds this strong call for action" and points to an EWG biomonitoring study identifying more than 200 'toxic chemicals' in umbilical cord samples, including lead, mercury, PBDEs and PCBs.
The Tendr team includes:
· Linda Birnbaum, NIEHS director;
· Thomas Zoeller from the University of Massachusetts Amherst;
· Tracey Woodruff from the University of California, San Francisco; and
· Ted Schettler, science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network.
A number of organisations are listed as endorsing or supporting the consensus statement, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the National Medical Association.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48467/us-health-professionals-call-for-action-on-childrens-chemical-exposure
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EPA Urges States to Publish Individual Lead Water Samples
Jul 7, 2016 | AP (In The Washington Post)
By Ryan J. Foley
States have taken steps to address the risk of lead in drinking water after the crisis in Flint, Michigan, but more needs to be done to share key information with the public, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.
In letters to state drinking water regulators, the agency called on all states to make individual lead sampling results available online in searchable databases. That practice, already established in states like Illinois, allows residents to see which homes and buildings have been tested by utilities and what levels of the toxin, which is most harmful for young children and pregnant women, was identified.
The EPA said a “substantial number” of states were already posting such information. But others, such as Iowa, have resisted, citing a lack of information technology resources and privacy concerns about posting addresses of testing sites.
Those obstacles can be overcome and the EPA will help by sharing with states lessons learned from the launches of existing databases, Deputy Assistant Administrator Joel Beauvais said in an interview.
“It’s one of a number of transparency elements that we see as really important,” he said.
While no amount of lead exposure is considered safe, the rule calls for water systems to keep levels below 15 parts per billion during periodic testing. If more than 10 percent of sampled high-risk homes are above that level, water agencies must inform customers about the problem and take steps such as adding chemicals to control corrosion.
Water systems routinely publish data showing they are overall in compliance with the rule — but omit information that shows specific addresses were at or above the limit.
“There might be a significant number of samples that are showing lead levels of concern and it’s important for the public to know that,” Beauvais said. He added that privacy concerns can be addressed by redacting personal information.
The EPA also called on the nation’s water systems to complete their inventories of locations with lead service lines, a key indicator that homes are at risk for contamination. When water comes through the lines that connect many older homes to water mains, lead particles can leach and taint what comes out of the tap.
Those inventories, posted online in searchable databases by some utilities, allow homeowners to find out whether their homes have lead service lines so they can replace them or add filtration systems. Water systems were required in the 1990s to begin work on such inventories, but state regulators told the EPA that many were never finished or are outdated.
“There isn’t robust or comprehensive information on this for many systems,” Beauvais said.
Beauvais said those inventories are critical to ensure homes and buildings at the highest risk for lead are being tested as required. He said they also help utilities minimize service disruptions and know which areas should be the focus of replacement programs.
In February, EPA ordered states to take action to improve public confidence in the nation’s water supply after the crisis in Flint, where residents were exposed to high lead levels when the city switched to a more corrosive water source that wasn’t properly treated. All levels of government have been blamed for responding slowly; some children suffered lead poisoning.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/epa-urges-states-to-publish-individual-lead-water-samples/2016/07/07/5979e882-4454-11e6-a76d-3550dba926ac_story.html
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GOP Probes EPA Response to NY State Water Contamination
Jul 7, 2016 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
House Republicans are investigating the Obama administration's and New York state government’s responses to a water contamination crisis in upstate New York.
House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) wants to know why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) didn’t take quick action to protect Hoosick Falls residents from drinking water pollution.
The probe comes as drinking water contamination gains national attention, spurred mainly by the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Mich. The EPA was also criticized by Republicans and others in the Flint crisis for not taking action much sooner than it did.
As early as 2014, tests found elevated levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), an industrial chemical linked to cancer, in Hoosick Falls’s water.
Chaffetz asked EPA head Gina McCarthy in a Wednesday letter why Judith Enck, the EPA leader for the region including New York, did not take action regarding the chemicals until November 2015, the month she says she found out about it.
“Documents and public statements about the crisis in Hoosick Falls show EPA knew that the village water supply was contaminated in December 2014, but did not take any action until nearly one year later, in November 2015,” Chaffetz wrote in the letter, along with Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), chairwoman of the subcommittee with authority for the EPA.
“The fact that EPA staff at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., knew or should have known about the problem, and failed to communicate with their counterparts in region 2, raises serious questions, considering the health and safety of the residents of Hoosick Falls was at stake,” they wrote.
In the letter to Cuomo, Chaffetz and Lummis point out that New York state and Rensselaer County officials didn’t act on the crisis until December 2015, when it warned residents and advised them to drink bottled water. The state and county knew about the problem a year earlier, the lawmakers said.
“The committee is concerned that a sluggish response to the crisis in Hoosick Falls at the state and county levels caused residents to remain exposed to dangerous levels of PFOA for longer than was necessary,” Chaffetz and Lummis said.
The Albany Times Union first reported on the letters.
EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said the agency had received the letter directed to it and would respond.
Cuomo has consistently defended his administration's response to Hoosick Falls, characterizing it as “aggressive action” and criticizing the EPA for not acting sooner.
Chaffetz and Lummis are not yet calling for hearings on the water crisis, though many in New York’s delegation, like Rep. Chris Gibson (R) and Sens. Charles Schumer (D) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D), have sought congressional hearings. New York’s Democratic-led Assembly is also conducting hearings into the crisis and the Cuomo administration’s response, according to the Times Union.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/286833-gop-probes-epa-on-new-york-state-water-contamination
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Jury Cites DuPont for Malice in Teflon Chemical Trial, Awards $5M to Cancer Victim
Jul 7, 2016 | Environmental Working Group
By Bill Walker
On Wednesday, a federal jury ordered DuPont to pay more than $5 million to an Ohio man who alleged he contracted testicular cancer from drinking water contaminated with a toxic chemical formerly used to make Teflon. Jurors found that DuPont acted with malice in dumping an industrial chemical into the Ohio River, clearing the path for DuPont to be assessed additional punitive damages.
After a five-week trial, jurors in Columbus, Ohio deliberated for less than a day before awarding $5.1 million to David Freeman, a college professor who was among tens of thousands of people who drank water tainted with perfluorooctanic acid, or PFOA. The chemical was dumped from DuPont's Teflon factory in Parkersburg, W.Va. Freeman’s attorneys argued that DuPont knew for decades the chemical was hazardous but kept scientific studies secret from local, state and federal regulators.
The Freeman case is the second judgment so far against DuPont, which is the defendant in more than 3,400 lawsuits – many of which are still pending – brought by residents of the mid-Ohio River Valley. Last October, a jury awarded $1.6 million to a woman who alleged that she contracted kidney cancer from drinking PFOA-laced water.
Through their widespread use in Teflon and many other nonstick products, PFOA and related chemicals have polluted the blood of almost all Americans and have been passed from mothers to babies through the umbilical cord and breast milk. They contaminate the drinking water of about 7 million Americans in 27 states. Recent research shows that the chemicals are hazardous at very small doses, but 15 years after the Environmental Protection Agency was alerted to the problem, regulators have failed to set an enforceable legal limit for exposure.
“Today’s verdict puts a spotlight on DuPont’s negligence and conscious disregard for the people of the mid-Ohio Valley,” said Harold Bock of Keep Your Promises, a Parkersburg-based grassroots group campaigning to hold DuPont accountable for PFOA pollution. The group said the judgment is a signal of verdicts to come because Freeman's was a test case.
Although jurors found DuPont liable, if the award stands after appeal it will be paid by Chemours, a spinoff company that Keep Your Promises charges was formed to shelter DuPont from liability for PFOA pollution in the mid-Ohio Valley and nationwide. Chemours stock plunged by more than 20 percent following the verdict. EWG will continue to follow this story as it develops.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/07/jury-cites-dupont-malice-teflon-chemical-trial-awards-5m-cancer-victim
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DuPont May be Forced To Settle Chemical Lawsuits For 'Hundreds Of Millions,' Insiders Say
Jul 7, 2016 | Forbes
By Ken Silverstein
It’s a legal case in which DuPont truly believes it is right. Yet, a jury yesterday awarded a man $5.1 million, believing that the chemical it once produced called C-8 was linked to a handful of different cancers.
In conversations with attorneys involved on both sides of this issue, the likely outcome predicted is that DuPont pays “hundred of millions into a fund.” That money will then be dispersed to those individuals whose illnesses are linked to C-8 — a chemical used in Teflon and in Stain Master carpet fibers.
In the case of Wednesday’s verdict, a jury from the U.S. District Court in Southern SO -1.27% Ohio awarded David Freeman compensatory damages, or actual damages. He has testicular cancer. The jury will begin deciding today whether it will force DuPont to pay “punitive” damages that are intended to teach the company a lesson.
This is the second of six so-called bellwether cases – three from the plaintiffs and three from the defense — to try and resolve what will happen to the remaining 3,500 law suits. Last October, a jury awarded $1.6 million in compensatory damages to a woman who contracted kidney cancer but then said that it would award no punitive penalties; DuPont is appealing that case.
The jury also found that DuPont’s then-Water Works plant had intentionally dumped its C-8 chemical into the Ohio River, which affected the drinking water supplies of some from West Virginia and Ohio. DuPont subsequently spun off its chemical division into a company called Chemours that is supposed to be free from those liabilities that DuPont may suffer as a result of this case.
“Today’s verdict will be appealed,” says Cynthia Salitsky, a spokesman for Chemours, in an emailed statement. “DuPont is the named defendant in each of the cases and is directly liable for any judgement,” implying that Chemours would fight any attempt for DuPont to collect from it.
A lawyer who had once represented DuPont said that the company absolutely does not believe there is a connection between C-8 and the cancers. In fact, C-8 is in nearly every human, in negligible amounts. Where Dupont “screwed up,” the lawyer adds, is that it had agreed to let a panel of independent scientists draw conclusions based on “statistics” and not “science.”
DuPont was first sued over this issue in 2001. As part of a settlement that occurred in 2005, both sides agreed that the C-8 chemical would be studied by three scientists. Beginning in 2011 and throughout 2012, those experts concluded that C-8 was “more likely than not” to cause such conditions as ulcerative colitis, kidney cancer, thyroid disease and testicular cancer.
For example, the attorney says that the scientists concluded that there is a link between C-8 and high cholesterol. But yet, it found no connection between C-8 and heart disease.
So, if Chemours has no legal liability here, why is it sending out statements? Why not go about its business and continue producing related chemicals that go into such things as Teflon and Stair Master?
The lawyer once associated with the DuPont case says that Chemours has a strong interest in defending its current product line — that it does not want future plaintiffs to hit it with lawsuits to what is now used: C-6.
“If you let the plaintiffs’ industry destroy Chemours’ ability to to make products, it won’t have anything left to sell,” the lawyer says. “Its products make life better.” Every french fry container is lined with similar chemicals so that the grease won’t leak, for example.
An even more relevant question, the defense lawyer says, is just whose stock could ultimately suffer as a result of these verdicts. In the short run, DuPont’s stock fell roughly 2 percent to about $62 a share while Chemours dropped 22 percent to about $6 a share.
To be clear, DuPont made C-8. Now, Chemours makes C-6. One has eight carbons and the other six.
“We’re certainly relying on the EPA to make sure that they haven’t replaced one chemical with a health and safety threat with another one that is the same or worse,” says Mike Fitzgerald, an air quality specialist for New Hampshire’s state government, in a public radio story that aired there.
That same story goes to quote others who say that not much is known about C-6s and that they could lead to health-related issues: “The best advice I have is let’s treat them like they have toxic properties like C-8,” says Philippe Grandjean, a Harvard Universityresearcher.
The Environmental Protection Agency told the New Hampshire radio network that it is now reviewing C-6. That’s a right that it just received by law under the new Toxics Substances Control Act, although it has seven years to review those chemicals now under its purview.
Why wouldn’t DuPont just settle these bellwether cases? A lawyer representing the plaintiffs who also spoke to this reporter on background said that in hindsight, it may wish that it had — especially if this current jury hits it with severe punitive damages. DuPont earned $25.5 billion in 2015.
“A $1.6 million verdict and a $5.1 million verdict is chump change to it,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer said. And if DuPont’s merger with Dow Chemical Co. goes through as expected, the combined entity would have $130 billion in capitalization.
However, if punitive damages are potentially awarded and and the remaining 3,500 cases are figured in, then it starts to hurt, not necessarily financially but in the market place — the one where the company has built a brand. This won’t bankrupt DuPont, the lawyer predicts, but it may settle for hundreds of millions, and potentially billions.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/07/dupont-may-be-forced-to-settle-chemical-lawsuits-for-hundreds-of-millions-insiders-say/#3bf73b796d89
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Johnson & Johnson Meets Ingredient Commitments
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Personal care products conglomerate Johnson & Johnson says it has met its commitments to reduce or eliminate certain substances from its baby and adult care products.
According to its recently-released 2015 sustainability report, the company has completed its removal of formaldehyde releasers from baby products. It adds that new adult care products will only include them by exception, in line with its 2011 commitment.
And regarding its pledge to reduce traces of 1,4-dioxane, its presence has been reduced to 4 parts per million (ppm), or fewer, in baby products, and under 10ppm in adult products.
Other advances marked in the company’s sustainability report include:
· the removal of triclosan in all adult care products, with no use of the antibacterial in baby products;
· the removal of parabens from all baby products, and a phase-out of their use in adult products (with the exception of methyl, ethyl and propyl parabens);
· the phase-out of phthalates, nitro musk, polycyclic musks, animal-derived ingredients, tagetes, rose crystal and diacetyl as fragrances in all consumer products; and
· the reduction of PVC packaging to represent less than 1% of the company's total plastic packaging usage.
With regard to microbeads, Johnson & Johnson says it was one of the first companies to commit to halting the use of polyethylene microbeads in 2013, amid concern that the small plastic exfoliants accumulate in waterways.
The company has ceased making new products with polyethylene microbeads. It is in the process of shifting existing products to jojoba beads. These are derived from the oils produced by the jojoba shrub. Its goal is to fully remove them from all products, globally, by 2017.
Strategies for improvement
Carol Goodrich, a company spokesperson, says that the company's products meet or exceed government standards and cosmetic ingredient safety guidelines in the US and EU – "or whichever is stricter, when they differ."
But beyond that, the company's voluntary phase-downs or phase-outs were aimed at helping "provide confidence and peace of mind to our customers."
As part of its safety assessment process, Johnson & Johnson says it has evaluated the toxicological profile of all 2,500 raw materials used in its products. Ingredients lacking a full safety profile, it says, are rejected.
"Restricting ingredients [because they have an] incomplete safety profile or composition is a best practice within personal care," says Ms Goodrich, and the company"s safety process "has been one of the most thorough and rigorous product testing processes in our industry".
The company also recognises that identifying areas of stakeholder concern is a "core component of strategic and tactical product stewardship planning". It has established an emerging issues committee to identify and track new areas of concern.
Nanotechnology, endocrine disrupting chemicals and biomonitoring continue to be a focus the company says.
"We ensure the safety and quality of every single product we make, [and] it' also why we continually reevaluate ingredients to be responsive to the latest scientific developments and to consumer feedback," says Ms Goodrich.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48458/johnson-johnson-meets-ingredient-commitments
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IRIS Managers Seek to Strengthen Novel Dermal BaP Cancer Risk Estimate
Jul 7, 2016 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Managers of EPA's influential risk analysis program are seeking additional expertise on how to strengthen their draft risk analysis of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), particularly its novel skin cancer risk estimate, but one expert who has reviewed the draft is suggesting the agency just needs to better support its dose metric rather than change that piece of the analysis.
The most scrutinized aspect of EPA's draft BaP assessment is its first-time attempt at calculating a skin cancer risk estimate. Numerous critics have urged EPA to withdraw the number and first craft guidance on how to calculate such numbers, instead of using an important assessment to develop the process.
The BaP assessment is important not just because the compound is a common environmental contaminant but also because EPA has proposed using it as the index chemical in a relative potency factor approach for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) -- ubiquitous environmental contaminants.
Vincent Cogliano, director of EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program, explained in opening remarks at a June 30 stakeholder meeting that "one of the issues that the science advisors gave us the most comments on was the modeling for the dermal slope factor, so those are the issues that we're getting at," he said. "We'd like some discussion before we submit" a final draft through the approval process.
Kathleen Newhouse, EPA's chemical manager for BaP, reiterated the agency's interest in having such an estimate when she spoke at the stakeholder meeting in Arlington, VA. Newhouse referenced EPA's risk assessment guidelines for Superfund site cleanups, which she said "note the lack of dermal toxicity values may significantly underestimate" the risks PAHs in soil pose.
Industry critics, however, have argued that the new draft dermal potency factor is overestimated -- though peer reviewers on EPA's Science Advisory Board panel who met in the spring of 2015 to begin reviewing the draft document did not necessarily consider the conclusion overly strict.
One of the panelists, American Cancer Society Managing Director Kenneth Portier, noted that skin cancer is extremely common, and that removals of small malignant patches of skin are generally not reported to cancer registries. As a result, Portier suggested, EPA's draft BaP potency estimate may not be overly large.
Cancer Risk
The science advisors struggled with the recommendations on how to best calculate the dermal cancer risk, noting both its novelty and scientific uncertainties in various approaches. The final report, released last April, suggests that there are multiple dose-metric approaches for beginning to estimate the dose, and little information to guide which method EPA should choose.
"The draft assessment used mass rather than mass/skin area as the dose metric for cancer risk at 'low doses' of BaP. Published dermal slope factors for BaP skin carcinogenesis have used mass and mass/skin area as dose metrics and there do not appear to be any empirical data available to inform a choice between these two dose metrics or another metric," the panel's report states.
"The SAB does not have a specific recommendation as to BaP dose metric, but strongly recommends that in the absence of empirical data the decision be based upon a clearly articulated, logical, scientific structure that includes what is known about the dermal absorption of BaP under both conditions of the bioassays and anticipated human exposures, as well as the mechanism of skin carcinogenesis of BaP. The SAB recommends that cancer risk calculated from the derived [dose slope factor] should use absorbed dose, and not applied dose."
But one of the panelists appeared to walk back this concern in remarks at the stakeholders' meeting. John Kissel, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, served as both a discussant on BaP-related topics during the June 30 meeting, as well as a peer reviewer of the document. Kissel said at the stakeholders meeting that the comment referenced the information EPA had included in the assessment, not what is generally available. "When we said [there was not] adequate information to choose the dose metric, we meant in the document, not" what might be available in the public literature, he said.
http://insideepa.com/daily-news/iris-managers-seek-strengthen-novel-dermal-bap-cancer-risk-estimate
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Skin Penetration Not Relevant for Sensitisation Potential
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies
A chemical's ability to penetrate the skin may not be relevant to its skin sensitisation potential. A study by the US EPA casts doubt on a widely held assumption that chemicals with a high molecular weight (MW) – thought too big to penetrate the skin – are unlikely to be sensitisers.
Working with David Roberts from Liverpool John Moores University, UK, Grace Patlewicz and Jeremy Fitzpatrick from the EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology analysed REACH skin sensitisation data for 2,904 substances. Of these, almost 200 had a molecular weight (MW) exceeding 599, 33 of which are skin sensitisers.
The researchers examined the chemical structures of the 33 substances, ruling out those containing metals, to leave 14 sensitisers with a MW exceeding 500.
Such examples help to "disprove the widely held belief that substances with a MW > 500 will not be sensitising on account of their inability to readily penetrate the stratum corneum", write the researchers in the Journal of Applied Toxicology.
According to the OECD's published adverse outcome pathway (AOP) for skin sensitisation, an 'induction' phase involves a chemical or allergen 'penetrating”' the skin's outer epidermis.
Physico-chemical parameters such as MW and an octanol-water partition coefficient (Log Kow) – which gives a measure of how water-loving a substance is – are widely used to propose skin sensitisation thresholds, based on penetration (MW > 500 and a Log Kow < 1).
It is generally accepted that substances with a molecular weight exceeding 500 are unlikely to be sensitising. Meanwhile, those with a Log Kow < 1 are thought to be too hydrophilic to penetrate the lipid-rich outer skin layer, known as the stratum corneum.
The study's examples, say researchers, refute the MW 500 threshold,. This, they say, is based on a widespread misconception that the ability to penetrate the stratum corneum efficiently is a key determinant of skin sensitisation potential and potency.
In a related study in the same publication, the team also looked at the incidence of skin sensitisers above and below a Log Kow of 1. They identified at least 37 sensitisers out of 305 substances with Log Kowvalues below 0 for which "plausible explanations" could be proposed to account for skin sensitising effects, independent of penetration.
For example, they suggest that sensitisers can become bioavailable by passing through hair follicles or sweat glands.
Although skin penetration is an important parameter for some endpoints, it is, the team concludes, an "irrelevant one as far as evaluating the skin sensitisation potential is concerned".
The team has also tested thresholds using a freely available integrated testing strategy (ITS) to identify potential skin sensitisers. This was developed by the National Toxicology Program and Procter & Gamble (P&G).
The researchers say that their results support the notion that using Log Kow and MW thresholds as 'surrogates' for skin penetration is not helpful in predicting skin sensitisation.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48468/skin-penetration-not-relevant-for-sensitisation-potential
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Health Canada Releases GHS Technical Guidance
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Sylvia Palmer
Health Canada has released the first of a two-part series of technical guidance intended to help industry comply with the new Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) 2015 requirements.
The initiative is in support of the US-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) commitment to promote ongoing alignment of hazard classification and communication requirements for workplace chemicals.
Health Canada has given industry time to come into compliance with the new WHMIS 2015 requirements. These were adopted to bring Canada in line with the UN's Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labelling of chemicals. It's an approach that's similar to the US's implementation of the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS 2012).
Canada is halfway through the transition, with deadlines ranging from 1 June 2017 to 1 December 2018.
During this initial period, industry has stressed the need for guidance to facilitate compliance, and urged Health Canada to address variances between Canadian and US regulations.
Phase One
Phase one of the technical guidance focuses on classification principles, hazard communication and confidential business information (CBI). It provides suppliers with information on the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act (HMIRA), and its process for protecting CBI.
Phase two of the technical guidance, expected this autumn, will focus on physical hazard and health hazard classification.
Variances addressed
Although GHS adoption makes it possible to meet both Canadian and US requirements for a hazardous chemical using a single label and safety data sheet (SDS), some variances in regulations exist.
According to the guidance, the two countries collaborated to keep the variances to a minimum. Health Canada says that those that remain are necessary to ensure effective worker protection, or they are due to requirements of the respective legislative frameworks.
Variances between Canada's Hazardous Product Regulations and the US HCS 2012 are discussed throughout the guidance. The key ones include Canadian requirements for:
· bilingual labels and SDSs;
· updating information on labels and SDSs when suppliers becomes aware of significant new data;
· a Canadian supplier identifier on the label and SDS;
· label elements for a mixture containing a Category 2 carcinogen at a concentration between 0.1-1.0%;
· label elements for physical hazards not otherwise classified and for health hazards not otherwise classified;
· label elements for water activated toxicants and for combustible dusts; and
· labels on multi-container shipments and kit outer containers.
No consultation
Amira Sultan, manager of policy and external relations division at Health Canada, says the agency will not consult on the guidance. Speaking at the recent Stewardship 2016 conference in Baltimore, Ms Sultan explained that Health Canada's decision was consistent with the approach taken by US Osha.
Releasing the guidance in final form enables users to rely on it immediately for authoritative information in support of their compliance efforts, said Ms Sultan.
But, she noted, stakeholder comments will be welcome after its release. These will be used to adjust future versions of the technical guidance, or to develop standalone guidance, as appropriate.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48459/health-canada-releases-ghs-technical-guidance
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Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
Webinar: REACH 2018 assess hazards and risks of your chemicals
There will be a webinar on 20 July to help with registration for the REACH 2018 deadline. It is the fourth to focus on information needed to register a substance. It will give an understanding of the type of data that needs to be collected for the tonnage being registered, Echa says. The event will end with a Q&A session.
SVHC intentions
The agency has added two substances to its registry of current SVHC intentions:
· 4-tert-butylphenol; and
· p-(1,1-dimethylpropyl)phenol.
Dossiers for both are expected from Germany by 8 August.
New requirements for skin sensitisation
Echa has reminded registrants for the 2018 REACH deadline that the information requirements for skin sensitisation are changing. In future they must be met through non-animal test methods.
In vivo methods will only be permitted if the in chemico or in vitro test methods are not adequate for the substance.
The agency says that predicted skin sensitisers must be assessed for skin sensitisation potency. In vivotesting may still be necessary for this.
The amended REACH annexes are expected to enter into force in the autumn. They will then be implemented in the Iuclid and REACH-IT completeness check.
Meanwhile, the draft guidance takes the new information requirements into account and has advice for registrants, says Echa.
OECD test guideline advice for eye/skin irritation
Now that non-animal approaches are required for REACH 2018 registration, the agency has published advice on using new or revised OECD test guidelines relating to serious eye damage/eye irritation and skin corrosion/irritation.
For most substances, the use of the adopted OECD in vitro test guidelines for skin and eye irritation testing will provide results which are accepted under REACH, the agency says.
Testing proposals
Echa has invited third parties to submit scientifically valid information and studies on two testing proposals:
· 1,2,4,5,7,8-Hexoxonane, 3,6,9-trimethyl-, 3,6,9-tris(Ethyl and Propyl) derivatives; and
· boron orthophosphate.
Both have a submission deadline of 15 August.
Drafts of updated guidance available
The agency has sent the following updated guidance out:
· Guidance on information requirements and chemical safety assessment (IR &CSA) version 5.0, proposed amendments to chapter R.7a endpoint specific guidance, section R.7.3 related to skin and respiratory sensitisation, to the Competent Authorities of REACH and CLP (Caracal) for consultation;
· Guidance on IR &CSA chapter R.7a, section R.7.4 (related to acute toxicity), for consultation with Echa's Risk Assessment Committee and Member States Committee; and
· Guidance on IR &CSA chapter R.14 (occupational exposure assessment) for Caracal consultation.
ongoing guidance consultations: http://echa.europa.eu/support/guidance/consultation-procedure/ongoing-reach
REACH/CLP tips for downstream users
Echa has produced a series of one sheet documents to provide tips on the key elements of REACH and CLP relevant to downstream users.
Updated Qsar toolbox released
Echa has released a new version of the Qsar toolbox, with an expanded ability to predict substance properties based on data from similar chemicals, it says.
Three new databases have been added with more than 10,000 results on in vivo and in vitro properties.
Other key features are:
· more details on experimental results can be displayed and exported;
· improved endpoint vs endpoint correlation function;
· update of 13 profilers that help users define and refine the category for their substance; and
· new profiler for interaction with DNA, mainly relevant for chromosomal aberration and micronucleus tests.
The release is part of a collaborative project between the OECD and the agency. It can now be downloaded from the Qsar Toolbox project website.
https://chemicalwatch.com/48423/echa-round-up
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Echa Urges 'Transparency' on Lead Registrant Role
Jul 7, 2016 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
Echa has announced plans to publish a list of substances for which there is an appointed lead registrant (LR).
The agency is responding to calls for clarity on the issue, and hopes that as many names as possible will appear on the list.
"Echa is encouraging all lead registrants to accept the publication of their name on the list, which will be available in September on our website," Javier Sánchez, from the agency's dossier submission unit, said at Cefic's REACH information and experience exchange forum (RIEF V) on 1 July.
"We want to be more transparent and show what is happening for these substances, which helps everyone to monitor the registration process."
"In the past we had a 'lead registrant notification scheme' which worked in a different way: potential lead registrants communicated to us their nomination and we included them in a list. However, we did not receive many notifications," Mr Sánchez told Chemical Watch.
"We have changed the approach now: we will take the information on the lead registrant directly from REACH-IT and publish it on the website if the company agrees to it. We believe this is more effective and efficient for everybody."
Low registration numbers
At the conference, Jan Tuinstra, senior regulatory consultant at Knoell Netherlands, said "only 100 additional lead registrants are known on top of the ones that have already submitted lead registration dossiers."
According to Echa figures on registration dossiers for the 2018 deadline compiled at the end of May, there have been 5,773 registrations for 3,075 unique substances. Some 1,522 companies have submitted registrations – a figure "far from the 20,000 expected", said Mr Tuinstra.
"It is a very tiresome process to find out who is the lead registrant for a substance and getting feedback from other members during pre-Sief."
Call for communication
Earlier this year, Echa urged companies intending to register substances under the 2018 deadline to contact their fellow registrants and organise their Siefs as soon as possible.
Mercedes Viñas, from Echa's computational assessment and dissemination unit, said the agency shares the concern that there are many substances for which there is no movement on registration yet.
"Echa has taken all actions it can to raise awareness and we hope you, as an industry, echo those actions," she told the audience. "If we get closer to the deadline and still it is the case, then maybe we were over-optimistic."
https://chemicalwatch.com/48472/echa-urges-transparency-on-lead-registrant-role
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(ACC Mentioned) Gulfport Energy - A Star Utica Independent
Jul 7, 2016 | Seeking Alpha
Even more so than the oil industry, the natural gas industry has undergone a brutal shakeout but Gulfport Energy (NASDAQ:GPOR) is a survivor. Prices have been off their peaks for longer and prime gas season winters have been warm, leaving plenty of gas in storage. Gas is so plentiful that in April 2016, the United States' imbalance was representative: 73.7 billion cubic feet per day of production overmatched the 70.4 billion cubic feet per day of demand continuing the historically-high storage levels. More recently a number of events, including reduced drilling, have cut production to as low as 70.7 billion cubic feet per day at the end of June. There is still a big storage surplus relative to last year of 600 billion cubic feet although it is smaller than the surplus of nearly 1000 billion cubic feet three months ago.
A few strong companies have made it through this sieve. By keeping its costs under control and its balance sheet strong, Gulfport Energy is well-positioned not only for the next upturn, but even to continue to make money at low natural gas prices. Its operations are primarily in the Utica shale, a reserve in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia that lies three miles beneath the surface, much of it below the large, prolific Marcellus gas play.
In this report, heat and volume units are used interchangeably: a thousand cubic feet of dry natural gas has a heat value of one million British Thermal Units. Thus, $2.50 per thousand cubic feet is the equivalent to $2.50 per million British Thermal Units. The basis for the interchange is the frequent pipeline shipping requirement that a standard cubic foot of natural gas contains one thousand British Thermal Units of heat.
In the field, natural gas is often co-produced with higher-heat-content liquids (ethane, propane, even butane) that are then frequently extracted to yield dry gas with a pipeline-standard thousand British Thermal Units per cubic foot.
U.S. Natural Gas Supply, Storage, and Prices
Low Utica natural gas prices are Gulfport's biggest revenue exposure. The July 5, 2016 close for August futures for natural gas at Henry Hub, Louisiana was $2.76 per million British Thermal Units. The current maximum futures price is $3.34 for the January 2017 contract.
The Potential Gas Committee estimates that as of December 31, 2014, the country's technically recoverable natural gas reserves were 2.5 quadrillion cubic feet. This was the highest resource evaluation in the 50-year history of the group and represents a 150% increase from the committee's assessed level twenty-five years ago of 1.0 quadrillion cubic feet. The more conservative measure of proved gas reserve supply is still enormous: 389 trillion cubic feet. U.S. consumption has increased to about 28 trillion cubic feet/year, so the proved level alone is a 14-year supply and the technically recoverable level is a 90-year supply.
When the Marcellus, Utica, and Rogersville shales are put together, they contain 35% of the total United States natural gas resource. The Energy Information Administration estimates that the Marcellus (Pennsylvania, West Virginia) holds 141 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas and the Utica (Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) holds 39 trillion cubic feet. Some estimates of the Utica run up to twenty times higher.
So the Marcellus shale formation is the whale in the bathtub. Every natural gas producer is evaluated by how well it navigates either its direct Marcellus competitors or the impact Marcellus production has on its other gas production.
In light of these reserves, it is no surprise the Appalachian region--Marcellus, Utica, and Rogersville plays--has shown enormous production growth, from 2 billion cubic feet per day to 22 billion cubic feet per day in the last several years. Current Utica natural gas production is 3.6 billion cubic feet per day.
Outsized 24-hour initial production rates are a norm in the Utica: Consol Energy tested a 62 million cubic foot/day Utica well in Greene County, Pennsylvania; EQT had a Scotts Run Utica well in Pennsylvania that spiked to an astonishing 110 million cubic feet per day before being choked back to its operations level of 20-30 million cubic feet per day.
More-productive wells and lower prices have led to a reduction in the Utica rig count from 47 at the beginning of last year to less than 12 this year.
The 500 million cubic foot/day decline projected for U.S. gas production between June and July by the Energy Information Administration can be readily reversed, and represents less than one percent of current U.S. production. Companies additionally have thousands of locations in inventory, available for drilling if prices rise. Moreover, if oil production increases, associated gas production will also increase.
Thus, it is no surprise that per the Energy Information Administration's most recent Natural Gas Weekly Update, natural gas in underground storage at the end of June was 3.1 trillion cubic feet, 23% higher than a year ago.
The charts below show the price history for natural gas at Henry Hub.
Gas Demand Growth
Natural gas is lower-carbon raw energy than coal and so has benefited from the regulatory push toward low-carbon sources. Gas-fired electric generation has been routinely surpassing coal-fired since last year; however, coal prices still act as a sometime cap on natural gas prices. In Ohio, six new gas-fired power plants were proposed or under construction, due to the Utica shale. According to Grimes, natural gas demand for power plants is expected to increase by 3.1 billion cubic feet per day within the next year or two.
The big increase in natural gas supply has led in better economics for petrochemical plants and many have expanded or announced plans to expand. At the end of last year, chemical companies had announced 223 shale-related projects with a cumulative investment of $137 billion, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Overall demand for US gas could increase by as much as 22 billion cubic feet per day, or 28%, between now and 2020.
This year, natural gas demand is up 3.8 billion cubic feet per day over last year or about 6 percent. Again, natural gas prices are highly dependent on the weather: more gas is used when summers are very hot (to make electricity) and obviously, when winters are very cold.
Export: Liquefied Natural Gas and Pipeline to Mexico
The first cargo of liquefied natural gas left the Cheniere facility in Louisiana at the beginning of the year. Current liquefied natural gas exports are 0.5 billion cubic feet per day. Several more plants have been approved and under construction. With online dates from late 2017 to 2020, the new LNG export plants could add up to 7-8 billion cubic feet/day of demand for United States natural gas.
Of course, liquefied natural gas from the United States doesn't enter a vacuum: it competes with similar projects around the world, particularly in the Qatar and Australia. As a consequence liquefied natural gas, whose price was formerly tied to the price of oil, is now untethered and competes at a lower price. Nonetheless, as countries such as India and China look to transform the majority of their primary energy source from coal to inexpensive but less-polluting sources, natural gas use will continue to surge.
Another big source for demand is export to Mexico, currently 3.5 billion cubic feet per day. Mexican officials would like to expand this to 9 billion cubic feet per day by 2019.
Basis Differentials Due to Limited Takeaway Capacity
Another complication for even the savviest operators in the Utica and Marcellus fields is the negative basis differential relative to standard Henry Hub, Louisiana pricing. For example, while the Henry Hub price may be $2.75 per million British Thermal Units, the field price for Utica gas could be $1.20 to $1.50 less. The reason for the difference is that pipeline takeaway capacity has not grown as fast as production, so the rent goes to the pipeline rather than the producer. This is hardly a surprise, given the above-mentioned growth in regional production from 2 billion cubic feet per day to 22 billion cubic feet per day in just a few short years.
It is also the reason that companies such as EQT, Rice Energy, and Cabot Oil and Gas have done well: they have their own pipeline divisions. Although Gulfport does not, in 2015 it is phasing in the acquisition of 287 billion cubic feet of firm (non-interruptible) transportation capacity. It also has firm transportation agreements with Rockies Express Pipeline (equivalent of 50 million cubic feet per day) and Texas Gas Transmission (equivalent of 54 million cubic feet per day.) It has total firm transportation commitments for 900 million cubic feet per day, more than sufficient to cover its existing production.
In addition, many billions of cubic feet per day of new Appalachian takeawaycapacity is expected to be online by 2018.
Gulfport's Locations and Reserves
Gulfport's primary location is the eastern Ohio Utica Shale where it has 231,000 acres. It has with much smaller volumes in the Louisiana Gulf Coast West Cote Blanche Bay and Hackberry fields. It also has small interests in the Colorado Niobrara formation, the North Dakota Bakken, the Alberta oil sands, and the Phu Horn gas field in Thailand. The company is headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
As of December 31, 2015, Gulfport had 1.7 trillion cubic feet equivalent ofproved reserves. It also had proved undeveloped reserves of 338,000 barrels of oil, 907 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and 4.8 million barrels of natural gas liquids. It is often the second-largest Utica producer, after Chesapeake.
Gulfport's Operations and Demand
The company's first quarter production was 692 million cubic feet per day equivalent. Of this 85% was natural gas, 9% natural gas liquids, and 6% oil. Its production guidance for the second quarter is 664-692 million cubic feet per day equivalent. All but about 20 million cubic feet per day equivalent are produced from the Utica.
The company reports it reduced lease operating expense 41% in the first quarter of 2016 relative to the first quarter of 2015 from $0.44/thousand cubic feet equivalent to $0.26/thousand cubic feet equivalent. It also reduced expected well costs by $300,000 per well and reduced its midstream gathering and processing cost by 10% to $0.60/thousand cubic feet equivalent from $0.66/thousand cubic feet equivalent.
Hedging
Gulfport's hedging helped its results enormously in the first quarter of 2016. Realized natural gas price before derivatives but including transportation was$1.39 per thousand cubic feet, $0.70 less than the average futures settle gas price. Yet due to its hedging, the company's realized gas price after derivatives was $2.46 per thousand cubic feet, a 77% increase. Although the volumes are far smaller, the company also realized uplift from hedging its crude oil but lost slightly on its natural gas liquids hedges.
Gulfport's first quarter report notes the company's 2016 swaps cover 518 million cubic feet per day at an average price of $3.20 per thousand cubic feet. Its 2017 swaps cover 355 million cubic feet per day at an average price or $3.08 per thousand cubic feet.
Market Position, Competition, and Margins
In an overall U.S. natural gas supply of 70 billion cubic feet per day, Gulfport's share is about one percent.
Gulfport's list of former Utica competitors includes companies that are now either bankrupt (Halcón, Magnum Hunter) or have pulled back entirely (Chesapeake and Rex). Nonetheless, many competitors in the Utica continue: Range Resources, Ascent Resources, LLC (a spinoff of Aubrey McClendon's American Energy Partners), Rice Energy, Chevron, Antero Resources, XTO/Exxon, and Hess-Consol.
Break-even gas prices in the Appalachian region average around $2.50 per thousand cubic feet. According to Neal Dingmann, managing director of equity research for SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, operators like Rice and Gulfport have well breakeven costs of around $1.75 per thousand cubic feet.
In general, Utica wells are deeper than Marcellus wells and so are much more expensive to complete.
Strategy and Capital Expenditures
The company's first quarter 2016 capital expenditure budget was $94.2 million: $74.5 million for drilling and completion and $19.7 million for leasehold capital expenditures.
Stock and Financial Highlights
Gulfport's enterprise value is $4.3 billion and its market capitalization is $3.8 billion. The company's July 5, 2016 stock closing price was $30.43 per share and trailing twelve months' earnings per share of -$14.05. Gulfport's 52-week price range is $20.21-$39.92 per share so its July 5 closing price is 87% of its one-year high. The company does not pay a dividend.
In the first quarter of 2016, Gulfport took several charges and impairments: 1) a non-cash derivative loss of $7.7 million, 2) an oil and gas property impairment loss of $219.0 million, 3) an impairment loss for the company's interest in the Grizzly Oil Sands of $23.1 million, 4) a loss of $7.7 million due to the company's equity interests and 5) and adjusted taxable benefit of $0.2 million.
Without these losses and one-time impairments, Gulfport's first quarter revenue was $164.6 million; its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for the first quarter was $96.7 million; and its first quarter adjusted net income was $15.1 million. The company's 2016 earnings per share is projected positive at $0.33 per share. This results in a steep forward price-to-earnings ratio of 95.
Per its financial statements, Gulfport's liability-to-asset ratio is considerably lower than its peers at 37%. Its ratio of current assets divided by current liabilities is 2.3. The short position in the company's stock is 6.1% of shares outstanding. It does not have a measurable percentage of shares held by 5% owners and insiders.
Gulfport's one-year target price is $35.11. Energy analysis and banking company Tudor Pickering is among those who rate it a buy. Overall, the company's mean analyst rating is 2.1--basically a "buy"--from the thirty analysts who follow it. Six analysts rate Gulfport a "strong buy," 16 analysts rate it a "buy" and eight analysts rate it a "hold." Its most recent downgrade was from KLR Group, from "buy" to "accumulate."
At the end of March 2016, the company had $454 million in cash and a net of $472 million in its revolving credit facility, derived as $700 million total with $228 million of outstanding letters of credit.
Less than one percent of Gulfport's shares are held by insiders, with the largest number, 226,000 shares, held by Chief Executive Officer Michael G. Moore . The top five institutional holders are Viking Global (9.1%), Vanguard (7.0%), Putnam (6.8%), Goldman Sachs (4.7%), and BlackRock Fund Advisors (3.5%).
Potential investors should consider their natural gas price expectations with an eye on current high storage levels and Gulfport's continued ability to hedge as factors most likely to affect Gulfport's stock price.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3986891-gulfport-energy-star-utica-independent
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Insults Fly as House Hearing on EPA Regs Veers Out of Control
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Elizabeth Harball and Niina Heikkinen
Tempers flared and accusations flew as Republican congressmen grilled a top U.S. EPA official yesterday about the agency's climate regulations at a fiery House subcommittee hearing.
"You have killed the coal industry, basically," Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said to EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe.
"You guys are consistently overreaching," said Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio). "I think it's absurd, I think it's irresponsible, quite honestly, Miss McCabe, I think it's un-American."
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told McCabe, "Unfortunately, I have lost a tremendous amount of respect for the EPA and what their mission statement has turned into."
As the Obama administration scrambles to set its climate agenda in stone before the next president takes office, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing provided a platform for Republican lawmakers to blast the suite of regulations EPA has set forth to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions.
On both sides of the aisle, anger boiled over more than once.
During an heated exchange, Mullin accused McCabe of "working against the industry from day one."
"That is absolutely not true, congressman," McCabe replied.
Democrats rushed to EPA's defense. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) accused Republicans of "badgering" McCabe, calling the charge that EPA's work is "un-American" "absurd" and "extreme."
"This hearing is getting way out of hand," Rush said.
Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), a frequent critic of EPA's climate regulations, disagreed.
"People have a right to ask questions," Whitfield said, "[McCabe] has not been badgered."
However, during an earlier heated exchange among Rush, Johnson and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Whitfield was forced to bang his gavel to silence the room, saying, "Obviously, climate change and regulations are something we all feel very strongly about."
EPA: No Clean Power Plan implementation underway
Long-fought arguments against EPA's signature climate rule resurfaced at the hearing. One of the main sticking points was whether EPA exceeded its authority by forcing more low- or zero-emissions energy onto the U.S. electric grid under its climate rule for power plants, the Clean Power Plan.
In his testimony to the committee, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners President Travis Kavulla charged that the Clean Power Plan is "a regulation that essentially requires states to build new power plants in a gambit to mitigate the emissions of existing ones."
Republicans on the subcommittee also homed in on this point.
"Where in the Constitution or statute has Congress authorized EPA to go from end-of-pipe controls to generation shifting?" Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) asked McCabe.
McCabe said that EPA gained the authority to set "reasonable standards" for the power sector under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act.
"Our job is to develop rules to reduce air pollution setting technology-based standards," McCabe said. "We are not requiring any particular fuel to be used."
Following the Supreme Court's decision to stay the Clean Power Plan in February, Republicans have repeatedly criticized EPA for continuing to release information on several emissions-reduction programs under the rule, such as the voluntary Clean Energy Incentive Program.
Although EPA claims it is not implementing or enforcing the rule by rolling out these programs, yesterday's hearing proved Republicans aren't satisfied by this answer.
Whitfield and others raised concerns that despite the Supreme Court stay, EPA is holding a comment period for the Clean Energy Incentive Program. EPA is soliciting comments on this program through Sept. 2.
Whitfield asked, "If a state or an affected stakeholder does not comment on this proposed rule during the public comment period, will they have forgone their right to comment on the rule?"
McCabe replied that the program is "completely voluntary," adding that "we believe that taking this action is not inconsistent with the stay."
"EPA is doing nothing to implement the Clean Power Plan," McCabe said.
Utilities leader blasts federal 'overreach' on methane
The subcommittee hearing also addressed EPA's recently finalized regulations of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
Kavulla testified that EPA's regulations on methane from new and modified sources infringed on states' rights to set their own regulations of the oil and gas industry. He described the methane rules as an undue economic burden especially on the smaller oil and gas companies that make up the "overwhelming majority" of the industry in Texas.
"History shows that decreases in emissions and improved environmental conditions have come about as a result of often innovative technological advances with market-driven efficiencies, not through the overreach of federal bureaucrats," Kavulla said.
"When businesses are forced to operate in bureaucracies that the EPA seems intent of achieving, it creates unwarranted and overreaching rules, innovation is stymied, and both consumers and the environment pay the price," he said.
Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Industrial Commission Department of Mineral Resources, also criticized the use of vague language within the new federal methane regulations.
"This rule contains all sorts of undefined things like 'technically feasible,' 'technically achievable,' 'technically infeasible,'" Helms said.
According to Helms, both the Clean Power Plan and EPA's methane rules interfered with North Dakota's ability to reduce flaring by reducing the amount of power available for natural gas processing plants and by making the state change the configuration of its oil fields. He added that EPA's regulations on new and modified sources would require the addition of three to four times as much pipeline in order to reach smaller well pads.
McCabe defended the methane regulations before the subcommittee, saying the new rules had both environmental and economic benefits.
"It's important to remember that any leak of this material is leak of a product that
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/07/07/stories/1060039878
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Private Appalachian Producers Highlight Different Approaches During Downturn
Jul 7, 2016 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Privately owned EdgeMarc Energy Holdings LLC is coping with the commodities downturn no differently than its larger, publicly traded peers operating in Appalachia, aiming to keep its leverage low and leaning on its dry natural gas assets in Ohio's Utica Shale to keep moving forward.
"Most of our capital has been focused on Butler County, PA," COO Callum Streeter said. "It was the first asset that we received, so that's where we started focusing. But as commodity prices have shifted away from natural gas liquids (NGL) and oil, we've kind of shifted our capital focus into the dry gas phase of the Utica."
EdgeMarc holds 50,000 net acres across Ohio and Pennsylvania. About 25,443 acresof that is located in Butler County, while the rest is in Ohio's Monroe and Washington counties.
The Canonsburg, PA-based company is not drilling any wells today. It was focused on maintenance and completions in Butler County earlier this year.
Most of the Appalachian Basin's leading producers have retreated almost exclusively to their dry natural gas acreage, where low breakeven prices and prolific wells have outperformed wetter assets during the price collapse (see Shale Daily, April 7). Streeter saidEdgeMarc's dry gas assets in Monroe County are more attractive for the time being. "That’s where the focus of our capital will be for the remainder of this year and into next,” rather than in the wetter areas in Butler and Washington counties, he said.
The rig count has continued to decline in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, it stood at 12 at the end of last week, down from 18 at the same time a year ago. The decline was even steeper in Pennsylvania over the same period, going to 13 from 47, according to Baker Hughes Inc. data.
Apex Energy LLC CEO Mark Rothenberg said his company has taken a different approach. The company’s assets are in Westmoreland County, PA, where it's focused on proving-up its acreage. Rothenberg joined Streeter for a private operators panel last month at Hart Energy’s DUG East Conference & Exhibition in Pittsburgh.
"We spent the last 12, 18 months during this market downturn drilling some wells, proving up the well performance and then building up the permit inventory, and we were able to do that because we are wholly focused on just that initial project build phase of development," Rothenberg said. "We had no distractions of trying to do development programs somewhere else."
Rothenberg said he anticipates a natural gas supply shortage after a prolonged rig decline. He added that he expects Marcellus and Utica shale production to be flat this year compared to last.
Given fewer new wells, a dwindling inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells and increasing demand from the power sector, liquefied natural gas and other exports, Rothenberg joined his peers at the conference in predicting firming natural gas prices beginning next year (see Shale Daily, June 23).
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/106985-private-appalachian-producers-highlight-different-approaches-during-downturn
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This Could Be a Completely Different Strategy for Tackling the World’s Carbon Emissions
Jul 7, 2016 | Washington Post
By Chelsea Harvey
Electricity generation is the single biggest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions in the world — which is why there’s such a global effort to cut down on power plant emissions and expand alternative energy sources. And when it comes to power plants, research suggests that there may be new and more effective ways to tackle emissions in the future.
A new study in the journal Scientific Reports examines the issue of “disproportionality” in fossil fuel-burning power plant emissions — the idea that some plants produce a heftier share of a nation’s total electricity-based emissions than others.
“Disproportionality is thinking about how much inequality there is in responsibility across different facilities in terms of how much they’re contributing to overall pollution levels,” said Andrew Jorgenson, a sociologist at Boston College and the study’s lead author. “So the more uneven the responsibility is across facilities, the more disproportionality there is.”
The new report suggests that greater degrees of disproportionality in power plant emissions may be associated with greater overall amounts of national carbon emissions. And it also suggests that slashing emissions from the plants that produce the most emissions — instead of trying to cut emissions from all plants evenly across the board — may be an effective alternative way to approach climate mitigation.
The study builds on previous research by the late sociologist William Freudenburg, whose work suggested that “within different sectors of the economy … it’s likely that a small number of plants or factories are likely to be responsible for the lion’s share of that entire sector’s pollution,” according to Jorgenson.
“On the one hand, it’s kind of an obvious idea,” Jorgenson added. “It’s very likely that there’s probably some [facilities] that are the big polluters — and if so, shouldn’t we think about effective strategies if we’re concerned with reducing pollution of any kind?”
He and two colleagues, coauthors Wesley Longhofer of Emory University and Don Grant of the University of Colorado at Boulder, decided to focus on the electricity sector, given its massive contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions. They drew on a database of nearly 20,000 fossil fuel-burning power plants — relying on coal, gas or liquid fossil fuels — in 161 nations around the world.
Using information on each plant’s carbon output, they estimated the degree of disproportionality in power plant emissions on a national level. In other words, they determined the degree to which the amount of emissions produced by power plants in any country were similar or different. Nations with power plants producing very different levels of emissions — for instance, nations that had a few power plants with very high carbon output, while the rest produced lower levels of emissions — would have a greater degree of disproportionality than nations whose power plants mostly all produced similar levels of emissions.
These differences can exist for a variety of reasons. According to Jorgenson, the type of fossil fuels being burned by different plants is one major factor. And the technology being used in any given plant — and how new or outdated the systems are — can also affect emissions, even in plants that are otherwise similar.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the researchers found that every nation had some degree of disproportionality — but the exact amount differed greatly from one country to the next. Additionally, Jorgenson pointed out that the researchers found that the size of the plants studied was not the driving cause behind the disproportionality.
“It’s really important to emphasize that this isn’t just about bigger power plants that generate more electricity being these egregious polluters,” Jorgenson said. Rather, after controlling for larger and smaller plants (which will produce different levels of emissions just based on their size), the disproportion still existed.
Perhaps most important, the researchers investigated the relationship between disproportionality and overall electricity-related emissions in any country. They found that there was a link. Their analysis suggested that a 1 percent increase in disproportionality leads to a 0.37 percent increase in overall national-level carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants.
This is an important finding, according to Jorgenson, because it means that tackling just the few, biggest carbon emitters among a nation’s power plants — which are typically those contributing to the inequalities in power plant emissions on a national level — can be an effective climate change mitigation strategy.
There are several benefits to this kind of approach, according to Thomas Dietz, a sociologist and environmental policy expert at Michigan State University.
“The suggestion that comes from these results is that instead of targeting all power plants in a country, one could get big reductions with relatively less cost by targeting the most inefficient plants,” he told The Washington Post by email. “The same line of analysis suggests that one could look carefully at the plants that are doing very well and learn lessons from them to apply to other plants and new plants. That is, one could learn why some plants do a really good job and some do a bad job.”
Still, studying these types of inequalities doesn’t actually pinpoint which plants are the worst offenders — it just tells us that the disproportion exists. So there’s plenty of work to be done, even after conducting a study of this type, when it comes to figuring out which plants to target.
“To target the worst plants, one might want to do what we do with CEO salaries — compare the biggest numbers, the worst plants, to the average ‘worker,’ or the best plants, to see how bad the worst are,” Dietz suggested. “Given the data they have, it should be easy to find the plants to look at. But at that level, it would be best to be in discussion with interested and affected people and business to develop a fair and effective plan.”
Jorgenson also pointed out that it’s possible countries with low levels of disproportionality can still have overall high electricity-related carbon output if all the plants are producing large amounts of emissions — a point he says is important not to overlook. In general, focusing future studies on particular nations can help answer additional questions about any one country’s power plant emissions, how they differ across regions, why they differ from one another and how they contribute to overall national greenhouse gas emissions.
“The more we scale this down, perhaps the more effective it could be in coming up with reasonable and effective mitigation strategies,” Jorgenson said.
And, of course, improving the power sector in one nation has benefits that radiate all over the world. While cutting down on the most egregious polluters in any area comes with multiple local benefits — cleaner air, more efficient and cost-effective electricity production — the authors’ particular focus in conducting the study was helping to aid in global climate efforts.
“We see this is as a potential double- or triple-dividend beneficial approach,” Jorgenson said. “[But] it’s clearly and fundamentally for us about climate change mitigation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/07/this-could-be-a-completely-different-strategy-for-tackling-the-worlds-carbon-emissions/
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Carbon Capture Is Technically Feasible, and It Can Be Financially Feasible
Jul 7, 2016 | New York Times
By Howard J. Herzog
To adequately address climate change concerns, we will need to radically alter our energy systems to eliminate practically all carbon dioxide emissions. In analyzing the different technology options, the important measure of comparison is how much emissions reductions can be achieved and at what price. Unfortunately, the debate usually moves from objective analysis to emotional arguments that can obscure the facts and stall progress toward the ultimate goal of eliminating carbon dioxide emissions. The truth is that all energy technologies have strengths and weaknesses. We need to build on their strengths and to minimize their weaknesses.
Carbon dioxide capture and storage addresses a major weakness of fossil fuels by reducing their carbon dioxide emissions to near zero. It has several strengths. Unlike wind or solar, it can produce power when it's needed. It is the most efficient form of clean energy for energy-intensive industries like cement, refineries, petrochemicals and iron and steel. It's compatible with our fossil fuel infrastructure, which supplies over 80 percent of the commercial energy used today, and its capacity to produce negative emissions when combined with biomass-fired power plants.
Carbon capture has been demonstrated successfully at about two dozen projects worldwide that each store about a million tons or more of carbon dioxide a year. Most problems with the Kemper project are due to issues not directly related to the carbon capture technology.
However, in today’s marketplace, carbon capture is generally too expensive. That is because policy is not in place to set significant limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, it is cheaper to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than to capture and store it. But based on many studies that were summarized in theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 5, having more options, including carbon capture, lowers costs for meeting carbon dioxide stabilization targets.
The magnitude of the climate challenge is so large, we need as many options as possible, including renewables, nuclear and carbon capture. But arguing that renewables can do it alone is a very risky proposition. One weakness of wind and solar is their intermittency. But proponents are now claiming energy storage can solve that problem. Here is what Bill Gates, generally a technology optimist, saidin a recent interview in M.I.T.’s Technology Review: “I’m in five battery companies, and five out of five are having a tough time… When people think about energy solutions, you can’t assume there will be a storage miracle.”
Do we want to put all our eggs in a speculative basket? I think the more prudent course is to develop a portfolio of low-carbon energy options that includes carbon capture.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/07/07/clean-coal-or-a-dirty-shame/carbon-caputre-is-technically-feasible-and-it-can-be-financially-feasible
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Utilities Give a First Peek at N.Y.'s Distributed Energy Future
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Energywire
By Saqib Rahim and Peter Behr
In 2014, Consolidated Edison Inc. asked an $800 million question.
In parts of Brooklyn and Queens, power demand was growing. ConEd could meet that need with a $1 billion upgrade to the power grid -- paid for by ratepayers.
Or it could put that off and try something else: an estimated $200 million worth of energy efficiency, distributed solar, energy storage and other clean-tech solutions that are getting more economical every year.
State regulators approved the plan, and it's now underway. The jury's out as to what it will ultimately cost; New York has never deployed distributed energy sources (DERs) at scale. Today, solar makes up less than 1 percent of ConEd's peak demand.
But with Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) pushing hard for a modernized, decarbonized grid, the plan has also gotten New York utilities wondering: If they really wanted to add distributed energy en masse, how would they do it?
Last week, they took their first crack at the question. The state's six investor-owned utilities gave regulators their five-year plans to add distributed energy sources to their grids.
The tome-like documents, called Distributed System Implementation Plans (DSIPs), also discuss what will be needed to add DERs in the decades ahead. It's a crucial plank in Cuomo's "Reforming the Energy Vision" (REV) platform.
"It's basically a way to kind of roll back the curtain on utility system planning in a way that really hasn't been done before at this scale in New York," said Jackson Morris, director of Eastern energy for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Backstage, the utilities are looking at their grids in a whole new way. Following on the Brooklyn-Queens project, ConEd said it's checking out six new candidates for a similar strategy. Avangrid Inc. named nine candidates, according to Miles Farmer, a legal fellow with NRDC.
A look at ConEd's plan
ConEd, which serves New York City and part of Westchester County, said overall power demand is growing by around 0.2 percent per year. Still, peak demand periods are getting harder to meet. And in certain parts of town, such as Brooklyn and Midtown West in Manhattan, demand is growing much more than the average.
With that vantage point, ConEd has planned to invest $5 billion in power distribution over the next five years. Among other uses, the money will replace old cables, harden the grid against storms and make reliability improvements.
But how much distributed energy sources will end up on the grid, where, and at what price remain open questions.
The utility's overall goal is to add about 800 megawatts of DERs by 2020. This year, it sees enough distributed solar to offset about 8 MW of peak demand. But by 2020, ConEd forecasts, distributed solar could be offsetting 60 MW of peak demand.
Combined heat and power (CHP) is another growing resource, according to ConEd. It sees CHP chopping 22 MW off peak demand this year and getting to 91 MW by 2020.
Energy storage has a more modest increase in the near term, ConEd said.
"Batteries are expected to contribute 2 MW of load reduction in 2016, ramping to 4 MW of reduction in 2020," the document said. "Trends and the interconnection queue will be monitored and analyzed to refine the forecasts going forward as batteries become cheaper and in turn become a larger load modifier."
"The penetration of DER is expected to follow an 'S' curve of adoption, now in the early stages," it said.
But ConEd also pointed to technical issues that have to be worked out.
For example, home solar panels -- their inverters, more precisely -- are currently optimized for the customer's use, not the grid's. Then there's CHP: Customers can turn it off whenever they wish, so it's not a guaranteed resource. And batteries have to pass fire code.
And utilities have yet to answer the critical question of what DERs are worth. How does one quantify their technical and financial value on a two-way grid? That question is being pursued in a separate regulatory proceeding.
Upstate testing grounds
While ConEd tries to plan for its vast metropolis, upstate New York utilities have put forward initial REV experiments that they can get their arms around.
Avangrid, parent company of New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E), is proposing an "Energy Smart Community" initiative in Ithaca to test technologies and new electricity rate plans that it says are central to grid transformation.
Ithaca will get 12,000 new advance electric meters and supporting data systems at a cost of $10 million, which will allow NYSEG to monitor power coming from rooftop solar installations and other customer-owned power applications. The new equipment will help keep the grid stable and allocate energy revenues among customers and the utility, and allow the utility to test customers' responses to real-time power prices that bounce up and down during the day as demand fluctuates.
The utility is hoping that Ithaca's Cornell University population will be fertile ground for promoting energy conservation and carbon-free solar power.
Rochester will get an e-commerce site called Your Energy Savings Story where customers can buy energy management devices or storage batteries, with the utility serving as storekeeper, sharing in the sales revenue.
Another trial offers wind and solar energy developers a chance to jump to the head of the queue for connection with the Avangrid utilities transmission network. In exchange for priority access for their projects, developers will allow the utilities to cut back on power deliveries when the grid is becoming too contested, reducing the need for investment in more power lines. A 2-megawatt solar farm and a 450-kilowatt farm waste biodigester are leading candidates for this project.
Along with testing smart grid technologies, the first round of DSIP projects may also provide a reality check on customers' and ratepayers' tolerance for the increased costs of grid transformation, whose payoffs can stretch into the future.
The 1.8 million smart electric meters planned for the two utilities' entire systems will cost an estimated $542 million with installation completed in 2021. Key to its success is customer acceptance of "time-varying pricing" (TVP). "More than four decades of empirical research demonstrates that many consumers can and will enroll in TVP tariffs and will reduce usage during higher-priced periods," the utilities said.
The utilities estimate that the 20-year cost of the advanced meter plan, in today's dollars, will total $603 million but will produce $736 million in savings and benefits, for a net value of $133 million. The largest part of the savings is operational, due to lower costs for meter reading, reduced costs of storm recovery and more efficient business operations, the utilities said. But another large piece, $73.5 million, depends on how many customers embrace TVP.
Next steps
A number of grid experts passed on the chance to comment yesterday, saying they had a thousand DSIP pages to read.
The DSIP review process is expected to stretch into the coming months, with environmental, business and consumer voices weighing in. In November, utilities will jointly release another document showing how they plan to coordinate the rollout.
For Darren Suarez, director of government affairs at the Business Council of New York State, cost will be a key issue.
Suarez largely represents commercial and industrial interests, and he said they could bear an unfair share of the cost for bringing residences onto the smart grid.
"We've been generally supportive of many things of REV," he said. "Our concerns lie that sometimes the price signals that are agreed upon are heavily influenced by the societal costs, and those tend to be slightly more politicized."
It's just one of many knotty issues that New York regulators will have to referee in the coming months and years.
But Lisa Frantzis, senior vice president at Advanced Energy Economy, said clean-tech companies are getting a clearer sense of where the grid is crying out for their services.
"It's really going to allow us to understand each utility's plan going forward on how they plan to integrate distributed energy resources into the grid," she said. "In the past, it's been a little bit of a black hole."
Click here to read the DSIPs.
http://www.eenews.net/energywire/2016/07/07/stories/1060039893
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The E.P.A.’s Civil Rights Problem
Jul 7, 2016 | New York Times
By Editorial Board
An oil refinery in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Beaumont, Tex. A hazardous waste disposal site in Chaves County, N.M., a largely low-income, largely Hispanic area. Two power plants in Pittsburg, Calif., where most of the residents are from minority communities.
These facilities were the subject of civil rights complaints filed with the Environmental Protection Agency more than 10 years ago. The complainants in most of them are still waiting for decisions.
The E.P.A.’s Office of Civil Rights is supposed to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race by any recipient of federal money. So when state or local regulatory agencies that get federal assistance allow refineries, landfills or other facilities to disproportionately affect the health or safety of minority communities, those communities have a right to turn to the Office of Civil Rights for help.
Under the rules, the E.P.A. is supposed to decide within 20 days of a complaint whether to investigate, and to issue a preliminary finding within 180 days. But in practice, the agency takes an average of 350 days just to determine whether it will investigate, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, and a number of investigations by the agency have been open for years. The office has dismissed or rejected more than 90 percent of the complaints it has received and has never made a formal finding of discrimination.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice sued the E.P.A. in Federal District Court in California on behalf of the complainants in the Beaumont, Chaves County and Pittsburg cases and two other groups, alleging that the E.P.A. “unlawfully withheld and unreasonably delayed” action on the cases. Part of the challenge, environmental advocates say, is that the E.P.A., accustomed to enforcing clean air and water rules, has not made antidiscrimination enforcement a priority. A lack of clear standards for determining compliance with Title VI is another problem.
The Office of Civil Rights seems aware of these concerns and has beenhiring new employees with civil rights experience. The office is also working on clearer guidance to help recipients of federal money comply with antidiscrimination law.
In May, the E.P.A. issued a draft of its five-year plan for ensuring that all communities have equal protection from environmental threats. The period for public comment on the plan was to close on Thursday, but has been extended to July 28. The plan calls for changes to the agency’s rule-making, permitting and enforcement practices, as well as programs to reduce exposure to lead and other hazards in low-income and minority neighborhoods. If the agency hopes to hold states and cities accountable for shielding vulnerable residents from environmental harm, it will need to address complaints more rigorously — and much more quickly — than it has.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/opinion/the-epas-civil-rights-problem.html
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Are Oil Trains Just Too Heavy? No Regulations, No Weigh to Know
Jul 7, 2016 | DeSmog
By Justin Mikulka
The cause of the most recent bomb train derailment and fire in Mosier, OR has been determined to be lag bolts that had sheared off resulting in the derailment. This once again raises concerns that the unit trains of oil are putting too much stress on the tracks due to their excessive weight and length.
There is precedent for this issue according to rail consultant and former industry official Steven Ditmeyer. In the early 1990s, there was a similar problem with some double stacked container cars being too heavy for the infrastructure — because of overloaded containers — resulting in sheared rail spikes.
“This sounds like a very similar circumstance to what was happening in the early 1990s with overloaded double stack container cars,” Ditmeyer told DeSmog.
So, since double stacked containers are currently in wide use but there are no longer derailment issues like in the 1990s, what changed?
“Once they began weighing the containers before they loaded them — and they made sure the center plates of the trucks under the cars were lubricated so they could swivel more easily — the problem basically went away,” Ditmeyer explained.
So, by implementing a practice of weighing the containers before loading them it was possible to avoid overloaded rail cars. Nothing too far fetched in that reasoning.
These Oil Trains Are Too Heavy, Too Long, Too Fast
While the Mosier accident provides more evidence that unit trains of oil are putting more stress on the tracks, it isn’t the first time we have learned of this problem.
As the LA Times reported in 2015, investigators at Canada's Transportation Safety Board suspect that the oil trains are causing unusual track damage.
“Petroleum crude oil unit trains transporting heavily loaded tank cars will tend to impart higher than usual forces to the track infrastructure during their operation,” the safety board said in a report. “These higher forces expose any weaknesses that may be present in the track structure, making the track more susceptible to failure.”
One of the other suspected causes of the oil train derailments is the length of the trains, which create repetitive stresses on the tracks not made by shorter trains. Doug Finnson, president of the Teamsters Rail Conference of Canada, expressed concerns about this to CBC News after an oil train derailment in Canada last year saying, “These trains are likely too long, too heavy and going too fast for the track conditions in place.”
Federal Railroad Administration Concerned About Train Weight in 2013
In the weeks following the oil train disaster in Lac-Megantic, a lot of important questions were asked.
Some of these questions were posed by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in a July 2013 letter to the American Petroleum Institute (API).
In the July 2013 letter, Thomas J. Herrmann, Acting Director of the Office of Safety Assurance and Compliance addressed APICEO Jack Gerard outlining several safety concerns including the following:
FRA notes that tank cars overloaded by weight are typically identified when the tank cars go over a weigh-in-motion scale at a railroad's classification yard. As indicated above, crude oil is typically moved in unit trains, and the cars in a unit train do not typically pass over weigh-in-motion scales in classification yards.
So, we know that the weight of oil trains is a safety concern. And in 2013 the FRA had information showing that the industry wasn’t using weigh-in-motion scales to check loaded tank car weights.
And we also know that using scales to weigh containers before double stacking them solved the overloading problem in the 1990s.
So what was the API’s response to this letter? We don’t know yet because last week the Federal Railroad Administration told DeSmog it will require a Freedom of Information request to get a copy. (DeSmog’s last FOI request submitted to the FRA took almost two years to get a response.)
American Petroleum Institute Makes the Rules
So why was the FRA asking the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group questions about oil-by-rail safety?
The answer to that helps explain why unsafe oil trains continue to roll through communities across America. The American Petroleum Institute is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in America with a CEO paid as much as $13 million a year to advance the oil industry agenda.
However, the API also happens to be the organization responsible for writing the standards for “safety” for oil trains.
A Washington Post article summed it up nicely saying, “API, which still sets global technical standards…”
Still. Anyone see a problem with letting an organization that has denied the scientific facts about climate change be responsible for determining the facts and science regarding the safe operation of oil trains?
“The development of standards is a major part of API’s ongoing work to enhance safety throughout our industry,” said APIPresident and CEO Jack Gerard in 2014. “This particular standard is one element of a much broader approach to safety improvement.”
Gerard was referring to the 2014 standard on filling oil tank cars.
It is important to remember that the more oil you can put in a tank, the more money you can make. So the oil industry has an incentive to overfill tank cars.
Despite the evidence of weighing double stack containers to make sure the trains weren’t too heavy — which eliminated the issue of sheared rail spikes — scales are not being used to avoid overloaded oil tank cars.
So, if as the FRA noted in its 2013 letter, overloaded tank cars are typically identified in the rail industry by weigh-in-motion scales — but those aren’t used for oil unit trains — the question is why not?
And the answer is because the American Petroleum Institute makes the rules. And this is what the API standard says about weighing tank cars to check for overweight cars.
Static (stationary) or weigh-in-motion (dynamic) weigh scales (railway track scales) are acceptable methods for quantity determination of crude oil. If an operator considers weigh scales as an option…
Acceptable, not required, and up to the operator. And thus the scales are not currently used. If The Oil Is Boiling At Room Temperature, Testing Results May Be “Erroneous”
So if you choose to not weigh your tank cars to see if they are too heavy, what are your options? According to the APIstandard, there is the option of “Calculating the Loading Target Quantity (LTQ).”
To do this the standard says “the LTQ calculation system or process will require density as an input variable.”
And it goes on to say:
Multiple test methods exist for measuring density. Methods for determining density include API MPMS Ch. 9.1, APIMPMS Ch. 9.3 or ASTM D5002 [13]. Application of the test method for density requires a dead crude oil (3.7) or field stabilization of the crude oil prior to sampling and testing. Indications of un-stabilized crude oil are visible bubbling, foaming, and/or boiling.
Never mind the basic fact that the industry may be shipping oil that is boiling at room temperature — which should make everyone worried. The problem with this approach is that all of the Bakken crude is unstabilized. So then the standard includes this note:
NOTE Use of density test methods on un-stabilized/live crude oils can yield erroneous results due to loss of light components.
The API standard notes that testing unstabilized crude for density can yield erroneous results. Which is a bit of a problem since Bakken crude is not stabilized before it's loaded into rail tank cars.
This is what happens when you let oil companies and oil lobbyists write the standards on how to safely operate oil trains.
Industry Plays By The Rules It Writes, And Wins
It is clear that heavier trains can increase the likelihood of things like lag bolts shearing as they did in Mosier, Oregon, causing an oil train derailment and subsequent fire and spill. That is basic physics.
And as they did in the 1990s with overloaded container trains, the problem was solved in part by weighing the containers to eliminate overloading.
After the Mosier accident, FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg commented to the Associated Press on concerns about the oil tank cars being too heavy.
“Feinberg said tank cars that haul crude oil and other products have weight limits, but there's been no suggestion Union Pacific's cars exceeded them.”
The FRA was concerned about this issue in 2013. We know Canada's Transportation Safety Board said, “Petroleum crude oil unit trains transporting heavily loaded tank cars will tend to impart higher than usual forces to the track infrastructure during their operation.”
And in the case of Mosier the sheared lag bolts certainly suggest that the trains could be too heavy.
But the reality is that whether anyone suggests it or not, there is currently no way to know. Because the American Petroleum Institute is writing the rules.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/07/07/are-oil-trains-just-too-long-and-heavy-tracks
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Nine Ways Chemistry Contributes to High Performing Buildings
Jul 6, 2016 | HPB Magazine
By D’Lane Wisner
The choice of building materials is a key component in the construction of high-performing, or any, buildings. While designers are sometimes limited by the building type and size, they still must weigh a number of factors to pick which of potentially several options to use. Once the choice of building materials is made and construction has begun, it is harder to go back and change than it would be for, say, systems specified for the building.
Building materials have innate qualities that set them apart from each other. These intrinsic strengths and weaknesses, for the most part, cannot be altered by designers or engineers. More malleable brick or transparent concrete cannot be specified. Building materials are what they are.
What makes materials what they are is their chemistry—the composition, structure, and properties. Chemistry-related traits such as density, reflectiveness, adhesiveness, viscosity, and thermal properties not only define what materials are, but also what role they can play in the construction of a building. Indeed, the materials must ultimately have "chemistry" with each other, to act as the elemental "molecules" that make up a building and determine to a significant degree how it can perform.
Here are nine examples of how building materials' chemistry plays a role in the building process.
1. Energy-efficient, highly reflective roof coatings made from acrylics, urethanes, silicones, and styrene block copolymers (such as SBS and SEBS) can lengthen the life of a roof, help lessen air leaks, reduce heat transfer and decrease thermal shock that occurs when different layers of the roof expand and contract.
Case Study: A government center building in Doral, Florida, features highly reflective roof coatings that help lower energy use. A reflective cap sheet on the roof reflects the sun’s heat off of the building, keeping the building’s interior cooler and reducing air-conditioning costs.
The chemistry connection: Scientists fine-tune the chemical materials used to create roof coatings by controlling film thickness and layering UV resistance, enabling more options for builders and architects.2. Lightweight yet durable materials like polyurethane help builders do more with less.
Case Study: The city of Edmonton, AB, Canada, recently refurbished its historic Dawson Bridge, lightening the load of the bridge deck by adding a polyurethane core between the bridge’s two steel plates while adding high rigidity and strength.
The chemistry connection: The discovery of polyurethane dates back to the beginning of World War II, when chemist Otto Bayer developed it as a replacement for rubber. It wasn’t long before the material was used in building and construction applications, thanks to its strength-to-weight ratio, insulation properties, durability and versatility.3. Continuous insulation is an innovative building science design that creates an uninterrupted blanket of insulation, which improves the energy efficiency of a home or building by minimizing air infiltration, which can amount to as much as 40% of the heating and cooling loss in a typical home. The added insulation also helps meet current building energy code requirements for wall and roof R-values, contributing to a higher R-value for the building envelope.
The chemistry connection: Continuous insulation is an assembly approach to designing a building envelope that often involves the use of thermosets (polyurethane foams—spray and polyiso rigid board) or thermoplastic foams (polystyrene, extruded polystyrene or extended polystyrene) as the primary insulator. These foam insulation products can be spray-allied, in the case of spray polyurethane foam, to form a continuous layer of insulation or installed as insulation board. Any “seams” between insulation boards are tapped or sealed together to wrap the building in a “cocoon” of insulation.4. Cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE or PEX) is used to make flexible hot and cold water piping that can be threaded and curved into a variety of configurations, reducing installation time and cost and revolutionizing indoor plumbing options.
Case Study: The Minnesota Vikings will debut its new home field, U.S. Bank Stadium,this summer. It uses XLPE piping on its pitched roof to keep snow from sliding off and onto the playing field below. Also, hot water running through the XLPE tubes raises the surface temperature of the roof to melt snow before it accumulates.
The chemistry connection: Polyethylene is a flexible, lightweight synthetic resin used in consumer products such as packaging and water bottles. In building applications, the cross-linking process can change the temperature and impact resistance of materials.5. Vinyl, often referred to as the “infrastructure plastic,” has been used in building and construction for decades, and innovations in material science offer new applications for this stalwart material. For example, luxury vinyl tile (LVT) offers high-end aesthetic designs and patterns for flooring surfaces that can be both warmer and more comfortable underfoot than ceramic tile. LVT can be installed with or without grout. And outdoor vinyl trim looks and acts like wood trim while resisting moisture, rot and decay.
The chemistry connection: Vinyl is composed of two simple building-block chemicals: chlorine, an element that can be derived from common salt, and ethylene, derived from natural gas. Because vinyl’s chemistry enables the material to be formulated to be either flexible or rigid, architects and builders have more freedom in designs and can also reduce the amount of cutting and cutoff wastes that occur with intricate shapes when installing vinyl trim, for example.6. Chemistry helps make concrete that is 100 times lighter than concrete made with traditional fills like soil. Polystyrene beads added to dry cement powder makes concrete that is lighter weight and easier to transport without sacrificing durability and strength.
Case Study: This science-powered concrete blend, used in both of the new World Trade Center Buildings in New York City, and the Burj Khalifa hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the tallest building in the world, provides structural strength and also is a good insulator.
The chemistry connection: Adding polystyrene beads to dry cement lowers the viscosity of the mix so it can be pumped more easily up to floors higher than 100 stories.7. Nanotechnology is used in a variety of applications: to create corrosion-resistant pigments and coatings, heat management coatings and antimicrobial coatings, as well as lightweight composites. Glass buildings with “smart” windows featuring nanotech electrochromic glass can change from clear to opaque and back at the touch of a buttonto shade the building from direct sunlight and promote energy savings while maintaining the window’s aesthetic appeal and transparency.
The chemistry connection: Nanotechnology is the engineering of very small materials on a molecular scale. As a result, materials can be designed and specified at levels even smaller than a strand of DNA, which measures 2.5 nanometers in diameter. For example, nanotechnology enables extremely small structures called carbon nanotubes, measuring only one nanometer. This microscopic science helps researchers work at remarkably small scales and is already bringing benefits in areas such as health care, the environment and energy—including new technologies that can target cancer cells deep within the body, remove pollutants from groundwater and soil, and enhance the performance of solar panels.
Case Study: One New York-based architectural firm is already researching how carbon nanotubes might create buildings with features such as windows and doors that can move on their own.8. Engineered wood products, including plywood, veneers, particleboard, fiberboard, engineered beams, and trusses, are made by using adhesives to bind or fix wood particles or fibers to form composite materials that are often harder, denser and stronger than solid wood. Engineered wood products are used in a variety of construction applications, from simple beams and headers in a house to soaring arches for a stadium’s domed roof. For building lobbies and atria that require tall walls and large open spaces with minimal intermediate supports, engineered wood products can enable builders to construct spans as long as 100 ft (30 m) and walls up to 20 ft (6 m) tall.
The chemistry connection: The chemical compound formaldehyde contributes to the sustainability of engineered wood products. Formaldehyde-based resins and glues are added to wood chips, wood waste or sawdust that might otherwise be disposed of to create particleboard and fiberboard used in making cabinets and laminated countertops.9. In many modern buildings, glass is the primary exterior building material. Structural silicone glazing (SSG) helps glass achieve larger spans and dimensions. This happens when specific silicones are used to bond glass and metal panels to a structurewithout the use of mechanical fixation. As a result, SSG allows for aethestic facades, impressive curtain walls and large, unique windows in modern buildings.
The chemistry connection: Silicones can bond materials together with staying power and lightness, as well as be designed and specified for permanent or temporary adhesion. The benefits of silicones as a material rely on its chemical structure. Silicone’s chemistry binds together materials that traditionally can be difficult to bond, such as glass, metal and stone. With silicone technology, formulators are able to define the exact characteristics of the bond needed. A silicone-bonded system provides weather-ability and UV resistance to a structure. It also allows glass glaze to resist wind load, dead load and thermal dilation.
http://www.hpbmagazine.org/Nine-Ways-Chemistry-Contributes-to-High-Performing-Buildings/
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Amendments Pile up for House Interior-EPA Bill
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
House lawmakers have filed dozens of proposed amendments to the fiscal 2017 spending plan for the Interior Department and U.S. EPA, several of which are likely to ignite partisan bickering.
By this morning’s deadline, members had filed 127 amendments to the bill, according to the tally kept by the House Rules Committee. Another 15 amendments were filed late.
Some amendments would restrict the display of the Confederate flag. The issue helped derail the appropriations process last year.
Other amendments seek to undermine the Obama administration's regulatory goals in the areas of greenhouse gases, offshore oil and gas production, conservation, and air and water pollution.
The underlying bill already contains numerous policy riders aimed at curtailing Obama regulations, including greenhouse gas limits, new ozone standards and the Clean Water Act jurisdiction rule (E&ENews PM, June 15).
EPA would receive $7.98 billion in fiscal 2017, about $164 million less than the agency's current funding level and well below President Obama's request of $8.26 billion. Other agencies would see generally modest cuts or small increases.
The House will likely take up the legislation next week. Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) has expressed the desire to finish the bill before the long summer recess.
He may get his wish. Because House Republicans changed their strategy for handling appropriations bills -- the Rules Committee now gets to pick what amendments make it to the floor -- leaders may be able to quash poison pill provisions.
Confederate flag, climate
Confederate flag amendments come from Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California. They would prohibit Confederate flag decorations at graves in federal cemeteries and would bar the sales of items with a Confederate flag in National Park Service facilities.
Last year, the House passed similar amendments co-sponsored by Huffman on voice votes, but GOP leaders pulled the entire bill after Democrats and Republicans sparred over another amendment to overturn those votes (Greenwire, July 9, 2015).
Another amendment by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) would put in place a 1 percent across-the-board spending cut to the bill's funding levels.
An amendment by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) would prohibit the administration from using funds to implement or enforce new regulatory actions that cost $100 million or more. The House is set to vote on a similar amendment to the financial services spending bill.
Most other amendments concern specific regulations. An amendment by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), for example, would block the development, implementation or enforcement of any rules or guidances to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
Huffman is attempting to strike a Republican provision that would prohibit Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from proceeding with new air pollution regulations on some offshore oil and gas operations without more study.
Fuel economy, water
Lawmakers are targeting vehicle fuel economy requirements, albeit from opposite sides.
Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), for example, would bar EPA from enforcing proposed "Phase 2" fuel efficiency regulations for heavy-duty trucks on "glider kits," which can include a truck frame or cab but lack an engine or transmission.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) would keep EPA and other agencies from adding to their light-duty fleets unless they adhere to a 2011 Obama administration policy limiting all new car and truck purchases or leases to "alternative fueled vehicles," such as hybrids or those using biofuel.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), a top EPA critic, is floating an amendment to prohibit funding to carry out a draft technical EPA-U.S. Geological Survey report on the effects of water management on aquatic life.
The research is generating criticism from the agricultural community, which sees it as an attempt to create a legal justification for more Clean Water Act regulations.
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) is seeking to strip the legislation of a controversial rider to address California's drought. The rider, a modified version of California Republican Rep. David Valadao's H.R. 2898, would change operations on the state's major water projects to prevent excess rainfall from flowing to the ocean.
Environmentalists and most Democrats oppose the Valadao bill because they say it would reduce the water available to protect threatened species habitat.
Two Republican lawmakers from the Chesapeake Bay watershed -- Reps. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania -- entered a measure to shield states from further regulation if federal bay cleanup goals aren't met.
Natural resources, public lands
A bipartisan amendment from Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) would block Land and Water Conservation Fund money for wetland restoration projects unless those efforts include a structure to control water levels for flood control.
An amendment by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) would forbid the Obama administration from implementing a final land-use plan that recommended new wilderness protections for the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
While the amendment would have little practical effect on how the 19-million-acre refuge is managed -- only Congress can designate wilderness -- it would offer Republicans another chance to bash the president over his refusal to consider opening the area to drilling.
Another amendment by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) would prohibit the Bureau of Land Management from implementing its rule to regulate hydraulic fracturing on federal and tribal lands.
A federal district judge in Wyoming last month overturned the BLM rule after finding the agency had exceeded its legal authority, but the administration has appealed the decision before the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
For critics of the rule -- namely oil drillers and Republicans -- the Lamborn amendment would offer insurance in case the district court's ruling is overturned.
An amendment by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), co-sponsored by nearly a dozen other Republicans, would block Interior from implementing its new offshore oil and gas well control rule, which updated industry standards for the design, manufacture, repair and maintenance of blowout preventers.
Even before the rule's release in April, the American Petroleum Institute called it too expensive and warned it could make offshore drilling less safe.
Interior officials in April said the rule was a "significant milestone" for improving safety after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, filed an amendment to strip a rider from the spending bill limiting Interior's mineral valuation reforms (E&ENews PM, June 30).
Outlook
Even though the House may finish the Interior-EPA bill by next week, South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, a member of his party's leadership team, said the measure was unlikely to emerge before recess.
Leaders on both sides of the aisle are already talking about how to keep the government funded into the next fiscal year. The House and Senate have each passed three of 12 spending bill.
Rogers said this week he was partial to a short-term continuing resolution to give members more time to come up with a longer-term solution.
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said he would like to see an omnibus spending bill to set spending into next year.
Reporters Sean Reilly, Tiffany Stecker, Phil Taylor, Colby Bermel and Dylan Brown contributed.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/07/07/stories/1060039918
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EPA Drafts Guidance for States on Haze Rule
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA, already well under way with proposed revisions to its regional haze rule, is now poised to formally release draft instructions to help states meet the program's goals during the second implementation phase, set to run until 2028.
The draft guidance, spanning almost 250 pages and scheduled for publication in tomorrow'sFederal Register, covers such areas as evaluation of small stationary pollution sources, the relationship between a long-term haze reduction strategy and reasonable progress goals, and how states can deal with foreign sources of air pollution "in a realistic but effective way," according to an EPA fact sheet.
The proposed guidance would apply to implementation plans that states are currently scheduled to deliver in 2018, although EPA has broached the possibility of pushing back that deadline until 2021.
Dating back to 1999, the regional haze rule requires states to restore visibility to natural conditions in the Grand Canyon and 155 other large national parks and wildlife refuges by 2064. The first phase of implementation plans runs from 2008 to 2018.
At the National Parks Conservation Association, a private nonprofit group that closely follows the program, Clean Air Program Director Stephanie Kodish said this morning that the proposed guidance is overall a net positive that reflects EPA's receptivity to feedback from states and other stakeholders.
But Kodish voiced concerns that the proposal also contains "off-ramps" that could allow states to sidestep requirements. While flexibility is important, she said, some level of rigidity is also crucial "so you achieve the end result."
When published tomorrow, the proposed guidance will carry a 45-day public comment period. At the same time, EPA officials are continuing to collect input on proposed revisions to the broader regional haze rule, having recently extended the comment period in that instance until early next month (Greenwire, June 29).
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/07/07/stories/1060039919
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Greens Sue EPA to Force New NOx, SOx Standards
Jul 7, 2016 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
Environmentalists today sued to force EPA to update two major air quality standards covering nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides.
The two standards were last reviewed in 2010 — meaning EPA is currently a year behind the five-year review schedule for those standards set under the Clean Air Act.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Environmental Health filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in Northern California.
It isn’t unusual for EPA to take action on air quality standards only after being sued; for example, EPA last year issued its new ozone standard, which had previously been reviewed and updated in 2008, under a court order. The agency frequently cites resource and budget limitations for the slow action.
The primary NOx standard, which uses nitrogen dioxide as a surrogate for the NOx family of pollutants, was last updated in February 2010. It sets a limit of 100 parts per billion averaged over one hour. The primary SOx standard, based on sulfur dioxide as a surrogate, was last updated in June 2010 and sets a one-hour average limit of 75 parts per billion.
Both pollutants emitted by coal-fired power plants and other sources, cause health problems and contribute to environmental issues like acid rain and algal blooms.
The House last month passed legislation that would extend the National Ambient Air Quality Standards review period from five years to ten years, drawing a veto threat from the White House.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy
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House Chairman Threatens to Subpoena AGs in Exxon Case
Jul 7, 2016 | E&E Climatewire
By Benjamin Hulac
The chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology threatened yesterday to subpoena the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general in connection with their investigations of Exxon Mobil Corp.
In a statement, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he is considering "the compulsory process to obtain documents" from the offices of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D), as well as several environmental organizations and lawyers.
Smith and other Republican lawmakers have sent two comparable requests in recent months to Democratic attorneys general and environmentalists. None have turned over documents.
"If you continue to refuse to provide information responsive to the Committee's requests on a voluntary basis, I will be left with no alternative but to utilize the tools delegated to the Committee by the Rules of the House of Representatives," Smith said in letters to the attorneys general.
A spokeswoman for the committee said the statement came only from Smith and confirmed that it is a subpoena threat.
Smith said environmental groups and Democratic attorneys general have long worked on "coordinated efforts to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations, scientists and scholars of their First Amendment rights and their ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution."
Schneiderman and Healey have ongoing investigations into whether Exxon Mobil misled investors and the public about the dangers of climate change for decades.
Representatives from their offices did not respond immediately for requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), who has decried Smith's letters as "unreasonable demands" and is the committee's ranking member, said the new efforts don't appear to raise fresh legal arguments.
"Lately, the Committee on Science has seemed more like a Committee on Harassment," Johnson told Smith last month.
Yesterday's message is Smith's third attempt to compel Schneiderman and several other attorneys general who attended a press conference in March to share internal documents (ClimateWire, March 30).
U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker investigated Exxon, as well. He withdrew a subpoena last week but said he would continue a broader investigation (ClimateWire, July 1).
Republicans have criticized the probes from New York, Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands as partisan intrusions into climate change debate and free expression on climate science.
As Republican state officials have come to the defense of Exxon, the issue has become politically polarized.
"This effort by our colleagues to police the global warming debate through the power of the subpoena is a grave mistake," 13 Republican attorneys general said in a note June 15, describing global warming as open to debate and suggesting that renewable energy companies overstated climate change risks.
"Does anyone doubt that 'clean energy' companies have funded non-profits who exaggerated the risks of climate change?" the letter reads. "This is not a question for the courts."
The environmental groups that Smith contacted yesterday include the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace USA, 350.org, the Climate Reality Project and the Climate Accountability Institute.
Smith also sent letters to two foundations connected to the Rockefeller family and two legal groups.
http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2016/07/07/stories/1060039895
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