Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 2/20/2017
-
Pruitt Confirmation Sets Stage for Trump EPA Assault
Feb 20, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry and Timothy Cama
With his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in place, the stage is set for President Trump to begin his long-promised overhaul of the agency. -
Pruitt Questions Agency's Authority to Regulate Carbon
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is questioning whether his agency is empowered to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. -
Pruitt Wants 24/7 Bodyguards
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — one of President Trump’s most controversial Cabinet-level picks — was expected to request an around-the-clock security detail from his agency, according to an internal agency email obtained by E&E News. -
Intertek Provides Chemical Regulatory Services for TSCA Reform
Feb 20, 2017 | Water Technology
By Amanda Hosey
Intertek provides the local regulatory and assurance services integral to supporting global chemical notification strategies including those under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). -
Up Next in Congress: Kill Methane, Land-Use and Refuge Rules
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kellie Lunney
Republican efforts to unwind several Obama-era energy and environmental regulations will move to the Senate when Congress returns from its Presidents Day recess next week. -
Governor, Army Corps Block Deadline Extension for Dakota Pipeline Protesters
Feb 17, 2017 | The New York Times
By Reuters
Federal officials and North Dakota's governor on Thursday refused to extend next week's evacuation deadline for activists living in camps that have been a base for months for demonstrations against the multibillion-dollar Dakota Access oil pipeline. -
Texas Oil Fields Rebound From Price Lull, but Jobs Are Left Behind
Feb 19, 2017 | The New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
In the land where oil jobs were once a guaranteed road to security for blue-collar workers, Eustasio Velazquez’s career has been upended by technology. -
With Gasoline Glut, More Going Overseas
Feb 20, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By Bloomberg
The biggest gasoline market in the U.S. is bursting at the seams. Traders are lining up to export gasoline and diesel from New York Harbor, an area that normally relies on fuel imports from Europe and eastern Canada, shipping data compiled by Bloomberg show. -
Fire Hits California Refinery; Local Gasoline Prices Could Rise
Feb 18, 2017 | The New York Times
By Reuters
An explosion and fire at an oil refinery in Torrance, California, on Saturday forced the partial shutdown of the plant, leading oil traders to expect a spike this week in West Coast gasoline prices. -
Study Finds EMP Attack Poses Minimal Risk to Transformers
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Peter Behr
Electromagnetic currents triggered by a high-altitude nuclear explosion over North America would disable only three to 14 high-voltage transformers, according to a new study by the Electric Power Research Institute — a much smaller damage assessment than several government-sponsored reports have estimated. -
Two Cheers for a Carbon Tax, But Don’t Expect It to Fix Everything
Feb 19, 2017 | Washington Post
By Robert J. Samuelson
By all means, let’s have a carbon tax. It’s the best way to deal with global climate change. It would require Republicans and Democrats to compromise — a good thing — and would provide revenue for a government that desperately needs more revenue.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
-
Pruitt Confirmation Sets Stage for Trump EPA Assault
Feb 20, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry and Timothy Cama
With his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in place, the stage is set for President Trump to begin his long-promised overhaul of the agency.
EPA foes and Trump allies say the agency needs to be cut down to size and its regulations reined in after an expansion under President Obama, a position shared by new administrator Scott Pruitt, whom the Senate confirmed Friday.
Trump is expected to release a string of executive orders aimed at the agency's operations, and he could unveil them as early as this week.
The orders will likely delight industry and business groups that have long warned against overregulation from the EPA. But greens, Democrats and agency boosters warn that Trump and Pruitt could cripple the agency at a time when climate change and public health issues are calling for a strong federal regulator.
The Senate confirmed Pruitt on a 52-46 vote on Friday, a mostly party-line tally that illustrates the tense partisan divide over Pruitt’s nomination and the agenda he and Trump have set for the EPA.
Republicans spent years butting heads with an EPA that, under Obama, expanded its regulatory efforts in the administration’s fight against climate change.
They see Pruitt and Trump as agents of change, officials who won’t just undo Obama-era efforts but reduce federal rulemaking and give more deference to states and industries that are the subject of agency regulations.
“Over the past eight years, the Environmental Protection Agency, with its regulatory rampage, has hurt a lot of people in my home state of Wyoming and all across the country,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said during floor debate over Pruitt’s nomination.
“The EPA’s overreaching regulations have stunted job growth, hurt our economy, and failed to help the agency meet its mission, and the mission is to protect the environment and the health of all Americans. The EPA needs to be reformed and modernized. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is the right person for the job.”
Sources say Trump is considering visiting EPA headquarters soon to sign executive orders taking aim at agency operations, including its climate work. The move, first reported Tuesday by Inside EPA, would be the opening act of a reform effort that Trump referenced frequently throughout his campaign, one with heavy support among Republicans.
“I think there will be more of a balance between job creation and pollution prevent,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). “We can have clean streams and air without shutting down small business and job growth and American agriculture.”
Only two Democrats — Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp(D-ND) — voted for Pruitt. The rest steadfastly opposed him during more than a full day of floor debate, saying Pruitt’s ties to the fossil fuel industry and his frequent lawsuits against the EPA as Oklahoma’s attorney general should disqualify him for the administrator position.
“If you look at this individual, Scott Pruitt, if you look at his track record, you will see that his actual work has undermined the mission of the agency that he is now nominated to lead,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said in a floor speech.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) called him “maybe the last person who should be the next leader of the EPA.”
“We cannot afford to entrust the EPA to Mr. Pruitt or anyone else who has a history of putting polluters' interests above the public's and above the economy as a whole," Franken said.
Democrats had support from many environmental interests, including EPA staffers.
Nearly 800 former EPA employees signed a letter this week urging the Senate to vote down Pruitt, saying he “does not share the vision or agree with the underlying principles of our environmental statutes.” The group noted his lawsuits and what they consider a lack of environmental work in his career.
Pruitt’s opponents had sought to delay his confirmation until his office releases years’ worth of emails, something an Oklahoma judge ordered on Thursday.
The emails — which opponents suggest could reveal close ties between Pruitt and his industry supporters — became a key talking point for Democrats in the closing days of debate over his nomination.
“I think he’s going to find that there are a lot of limits” to his power at the EPA, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said. “My concern is that in the long run he’s going to run into some really serious trouble because of his conflicts of interests and various legal perils.”
Administration officials wouldn’t give details about a potential Trump visit the EPA or what his executive orders for the agency might look like. But agency critics have a list of issues for him to consider, from nixing Obama’s sweeping climate rule for power plans to reducing the agency’s staffing.
“I think just in general this is one of the really important jobs in the Trump administration in terms of rolling back the over-regulation that’s strangling the economy, particularly resource industries and manufacturing,” said Myron Ebell, the former head of the Trump transition team for the EPA who has since returned to his position at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute.
“My hope is that President Trump and Administrator Pruitt will move expeditiously to fulfill the president’s campaign promises on these issues.”
Ebell predicted Trump will first take aim at four key rules: carbon restrictions on new and old power plants, methane restrictions on new natural gas wells and a rule establishing federal jurisdiction over waters.
All four were Obama-era regulations — and the first three were centerpieces of his Climate Action Plan. They all drew seething opposition from industry groups and Republicans, and Trump vowed to undo them during his campaign.
Trump and his team also have their eyes on longer-term goals that will take tough work, such as shifting regulatory powers from the federal government to states, shrinking the size of the 15,000-employee, $8.1 billion agency or overhauling its use of science in rulemaking.
“You can expect a return to a pre-1980s EPA in big ways. That’s a smaller agency, more of a coordinating agency that might coordinate with state departments of environmental protection, but not hand them unfunded, top-down environmental mandates,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.
“You’re going to see a return to a more constrained EPA, which is really dealing only with pure transboundary issues when it comes to pollution in the states.”
EPA supporters have ravaged Trump’s proposals and have raised red flags over his proposals for the agency.
“It would be different if they said, ‘the Clean Power Plan, that’s over-designed and clunky and we don’t think they have the authority,’ if they had targeted couple of things and said they are going to slow down the rules and target the costs,” said Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and a former EPA enforcement official.
“This is a darker picture.”
Schaeffer predicted legal and public pressure on the agency, especially if Pruitt and Trump overhaul it as they have indicated they will.
“I think he’s been pretty controversial, and I think he’s going to stay that way,” Schaeffer said. “He’s not going to have a peaceful time at EPA.”
Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, said he expects a wave of legal fights against the agency.
“The courts will be one weapon, but the public is on our side. It wants clean air and clean water, it wants to protect public health and it’s against the polluters who want to run EPA,” Karpinski said in the Capitol as the Senate voted on Pruitt, while he thanked senators who voted against the administrator.
“I think we will win in the court of public opinion and in the courts themselves.”
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/320176-pruitt-confirmation-sets-stage-for-trump-epa-assault
-
Pruitt Questions Agency's Authority to Regulate Carbon
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kevin Bogardus
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is questioning whether his agency is empowered to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Pruitt, whom the Senate confirmed Friday on a mostly party-line vote of 52-46, already made waves in his first hours as EPA chief. In his first interview since his nomination in December, with Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel, Pruitt said "it's a fair question" whether EPA has the "tools" to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.
Pruitt said he expects to withdraw the Waters of the U.S. rule as well as the Clean Power Plan, which reduces power plants' carbon emissions, soon. As Oklahoma attorney general, he was part of litigation against both those rules.
Asked whether EPA would regulate carbon dioxide, Pruitt said that is under question.
"There will be a rule-making process to withdraw those rules, and that will kick off a process," Pruitt said. "And part of that process is a very careful review of a fundamental question: Does EPA even possess the tools, under the Clean Air Act, to address this? It's a fair question to ask if we do, or whether there in fact needs to be a congressional response to the climate issue."
Those sentiments seem to contrast with Pruitt's testimony at his confirmation hearing last month.
"I believe the EPA has a very important role at regulating the emissions of CO2," Pruitt said during one exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Pruitt also said he would respect EPA's endangerment finding against carbon emissions, which was issued in 2009 and is the basis for the agency's actions in combating climate change.
"The endangerment finding is there and needs to be enforced and respected," Pruitt told Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at the hearing. Pruitt also said he knew of nothing that could cause a review of that finding.
Environmentalists, who lobbied heavily against Pruitt's confirmation, believe the new administrator will have EPA retreat from the climate change fight. John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, "Pruitt is a smart enough lawyer to understand the science-based endangerment finding is the trigger to turn on regulations for CO2."
Regarding the differences between Pruitt's testimony and his Wall Street Journal interview, Walke said, "We call that a bait-and-switch."
"He says one thing at his confirmation hearing in order to get confirmed, and then he tells The Wall Street Journal that he is not going to do what he said at his confirmation hearing," Walke said.
In his interview, Pruitt said that as EPA chief, he would be committed to improving water infrastructure, citing the Flint, Mich., drinking water crisis and the Oroville Dam's problems in California. He wanted EPA career employees to know the Trump administration is committed to the agency, saying, "This isn't a disregard for the agency, it's a restoration of its priorities."
Pruitt said EPA under the Obama administration was aggressive in taking authority away from state regulators, who he said have "an enormous role to play" in environmental protection.
The EPA chief repeated one theme from his confirmation hearing — that one can be pro-energy and pro-environment — and said he is not worried about several lawsuits that he will have to face from environmental groups.
In addition, Pruitt said he plans to overhaul EPA's processes behind scientific studies and cost-benefit analyses.
"The citizens just don't trust that EPA is honest with these numbers," Pruitt said. "Let's get real, objective data, not just do modeling. Let's vigorously publish and peer-review science. Let's do honest cost-benefit work. We need to restore the trust."
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/02/20/stories/1060050312
-
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — one of President Trump’s most controversial Cabinet-level picks — was expected to request an around-the-clock security detail from his agency, according to an internal agency email obtained by E&E News.
Such protection would mark a dramatic increase from security given past administrators and could curtail resources available for EPA's criminal enforcement, according to former agency officials.
Ahead of Pruitt's Senate confirmation last Friday, the head of EPA's criminal enforcement office sent an email to staff noting, "Based on conversations with the transition team, we anticipate that Mr. Pruitt will initially request a 24/7 detail."
Henry Barnet, the director of EPA's criminal enforcement office, said the agency's existing Protection Services Detail — a small staff charged with protecting the administrator — doesn't have enough people to meet those needs.
In the past, EPA's administrators have received door-to-door security protections. That involved having agents provide transportation to and from work and travel with them to events during the workday or on international business trips.
Security for Cabinet-level officials was increased dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (Greenwire, Oct. 2, 2014).
Fred Burnside, who was director of EPA's Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training from 2008 until 2010, said the administrator's protection staff has ranged from about six to eight full-time employees in recent years.
If the administrator traveled outside of Washington, special agents from EPA's criminal enforcement office would be asked to pitch in. When former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy worked from her hometown in Massachusetts, for example, agents in EPA's Boston-based office would pitch in to offer security.
An EPA agent would meet McCarthy at the airport and drop her off at home, said Michael Hubbard, who retired after serving as special agent in charge of criminal enforcement in EPA's Region 1 office in Boston. McCarthy "made it as easy as humanly possible," Hubbard said.
It's unclear what Pruitt has requested for his protection. EPA spokesman Doug Ericksen today declined to comment on security procedures.
If Pruitt maintains a full-time detail, it's possible EPA could hire more staff for the Protection Services Detail.
But in the meantime, Barnet wrote to staff in the Feb. 16 email, he's asked special agents from EPA's criminal investigation division to offer support. He thanked the special agents who already volunteered to help provide security over the next several weeks.
"Moving forward, we will seek the necessary resources for the [Protection Services Detail] once we gain a better understanding of the Administrator's requirements," Barnet wrote. He added that "onboarding Special Agents to support an expanded PSD mission, if required, could take several months." Barnet also said he'd work to minimize the impact on the agents' criminal investigation work.
Former officials said that drawing on criminal investigators to pitch in on Pruitt's security detail will sap resources from an office that's already struggled in recent years.
"That will have a significant impact on the ability of EPA to enforce criminal regulations," said Burnside, who's now a managing member of the Burnside Environmental Group.
EPA is required by law to have 200 federal law enforcement agents to investigate and enforce environmental crimes. But the ranks have dropped below that number in recent years amid budget cuts and EPA staff reductions. The agency had about 177 agents in late 2013, and current and former staff have warned that environmental crimes have gone unchecked (Greenwire, April 10, 2014).
Hubbard said recruiting criminal investigators to provide security would hamper their ability "to work any meaningful cases." He added, "You're now going to take working agents and have them give babysitting service to Pruitt."
Pruitt protesters
Hubbard said, however, that there may be "legitimate and valid threats" that would prompt Pruitt and EPA officials to want to bolster his security.
Protesters on the left have been out in force against Pruitt, who has made it clear that he wants to scale back many of the Obama administration's signature environmental rules.
"I think there's more controversy with this appointment than I've ever seen in any of the past appointments for EPA administrator, so that could translate to more of a need," said Burnside.
Other Trump administration officials have gotten tighter security protections, too.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is getting security from the U.S. Marshals Service, The Washington Post reported last week. The unusual security move came after protesters prevented DeVos from entering a Washington middle school.
Myron Ebell, who was the head of Trump's EPA transition team, said boosting security for Pruitt is a wise move.
"I think it's prudent given the continuing activities by the left to foment hatred, and the reported hostility within the agency from some unprofessional activists," Ebell said.
Ebell was also the target of protests while he leading the EPA transition team. Hundreds of students marched in November from Georgetown University to protest outside his office at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Post reported.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/02/20/stories/1060050315
-
Intertek Provides Chemical Regulatory Services for TSCA Reform
Feb 20, 2017 | Water Technology
By Amanda Hosey
Intertek provides the local regulatory and assurance services integral to supporting global chemical notification strategies including those under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Recent amendments to the act require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to designate chemical substances on the TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory as either “active” or “inactive” in U.S. Commerce.
In January 2017, the EPA published a proposed rule open to comment that outlines the requirements for the electronic notification of chemical substances on the TSCA inventory that were manufactured or imported for non-exempt commercial purposes. The “active” and “inactive” designations will be included on this inventory. When this rule is finalized, companies will be required to collect and organize any substances any substances that have been manufactured or imported within the last decade. If substances are designated as “inactive” by the EPA, they will become unusable. Companies need to be prepared to respond in order to avoid delays within their supply chain. Intertek experts are available to interpret and react to these regulatory changes.
http://www.watertechonline.com/nsf-award-symbios-movers-shakers/
-
Up Next in Congress: Kill Methane, Land-Use and Refuge Rules
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Kellie Lunney
Republican efforts to unwind several Obama-era energy and environmental regulations will move to the Senate when Congress returns from its Presidents Day recess next week.
House-passed resolutions to repeal the previous administration's venting and flaring standards to reduce methane emissions, key land management planning regulations and predator-killing measures in national wildlife refuges in Alaska are among those the upper chamber likely will take up soon after it returns.
Republican leaders in both chambers are using the 1996 Congressional Review Act to roll back Obama-era regulations that they argue are burdensome and illustrative of the federal government's overreach on energy and environmental issues.
Any rules that were finalized within the previous 60 legislative days are subject to the CRA, which means regulations finished on or after June 13, 2016, are targets.
"We have a small window of opportunity, and we're taking it," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wrote in a Feb. 17 blog post. That means Republican leaders will need to keep the CRA resolutions on the front burner of their agenda, if they hope to push them through Congress.
Early this month, the House approved H.J. Res. 36 from Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), which would kill a Bureau of Land Management rule that seeks to curb greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas flaring, venting and leakage on public and tribal lands.
Republicans argue that in addition to the methane rule being burdensome and ineffective, U.S. EPA, not BLM, has the authority to curb emissions under the Clean Air Act. But Democrats counter that the resolution is a gift to wealthy GOP donors and that methane reductions have occurred in other energy production arenas, like transportation, but not in public land extraction (Greenwire, Feb. 3).
The week after that vote, the House approved H.J. Res. 44 from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). It would overturn the so-called Planning 2.0 rule, finalized by BLM in December, which congressional Republicans say leaves state and local input out of important federal land management decisions. BLM says the rule creates a more efficient process to update and revise the roughly 160 resource management plans for millions of acres of federal lands (E&E Daily, Feb. 8).
And last week, the House passed H.J. Res. 69 from Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). It would repeal a 2016 Fish and Wildlife Service rule that gave the federal government tighter control over managing predatory animal populations on national wildlife refuges in Alaska, an area of 76 million acres (E&E News PM, Feb. 16).
President Trump so far has signed two CRA resolutions into law: H.J. Res. 41, to overturn the Securities and Exchange Commission rule mandating that oil, gas and coal companies disclose payments made to governments, and H.J. Res. 38, to kill Interior's Stream Protection Rule.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week that the Senate will return to CRA actions "when we finish the Cabinet." The chamber is expected to take up several Cabinet nominations when it returns next week, including Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) to lead the Interior Department and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to head the Energy Department. CRA resolutions only require a simple majority in the Senate.
The House, which has passed 13 resolutions so far on a wide range of issues, plans to continue using the CRA to "repeal the regulatory burden" during the Trump administration's first 100 days, said House Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).
Young has another measure (H.J. Res 70) in the pipeline that would repeal an Interior Department rule that governs oil and gas exploration on the Arctic outer continental shelf.
Some environmental advocates have warned about the far-reaching consequences of using the CRA to roll back regulations.
"Before they vote, senators should step back and understand that the CRA resolution offers up an axe in place of the scalpel that many are seeking," wrote Carol Andress, the Environmental Defense Fund's director of legislative operations, climate and air, in a Feb. 11 op-ed published in The Hill.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/02/20/stories/1060050318
-
Governor, Army Corps Block Deadline Extension for Dakota Pipeline Protesters
Feb 17, 2017 | The New York Times
By Reuters
Federal officials and North Dakota's governor on Thursday refused to extend next week's evacuation deadline for activists living in camps that have been a base for months for demonstrations against the multibillion-dollar Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Opponents of the 1,170-mile (1.882-km) line met with officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, officials representing Republican Governor Doug Burgum and the state Department of Transportation on Thursday morning, asking to be given more time to remove their belongings and waste from the camps.
In a statement on Thursday evening, Burgum and the Army Corps refused to extend next Wednesday's deadline. Army Corps spokesman Ryan Hignight said contractors working for the agency would enter the camp as soon as they could.
"We're not going to necessarily wait for the 22nd," Hignight said.
Pipeline opponents say they fear fresh conflicts with law enforcement if Army Crops crews, including waste-removal personnel, are accompanied by police.
"It's completely impossible to remove everything down there in that short of a time frame," said Chase Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. "The people aren't opposed to the help of the Army Corps, but it's got to be without the presence of militarized law enforcement."
The exchange came a day after Burgum ordered pipeline opponents to move off of land owned by the Army Corps, citing safety and environmental pollution concerns posed by spring snowmelt and rising water levels in the nearby Cannonball River.
Hignight warned that anyone still occupying Army Corps land after the deadline could face fines as high as $5,000 and six-month jail terms. About 700 pipeline opponents have been arrested since August 2016.
Environmentalists and Native Americans who have opposed the pipeline, saying it threatens water resources and sacred sites, have faced a series of setbacks since Republican President Donald Trump took office in January.
A federal judge on Monday denied a request by Native American tribes seeking to halt construction of the final link of the $3.8 billion pipeline after the Corps of Engineers granted a final easement to Energy Transfer Partners LP last week.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/17/us/politics/17reuters-north-dakota-pipeline.html
-
Texas Oil Fields Rebound From Price Lull, but Jobs Are Left Behind
Feb 19, 2017 | The New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
In the land where oil jobs were once a guaranteed road to security for blue-collar workers, Eustasio Velazquez’s career has been upended by technology.
For 10 years, he laid cables for service companies doing seismic testing in the search for the next big gusher. Then, powerful computer hardware and software replaced cables with wireless data collection, and he lost his job. He found new work connecting pipes on rigs, but lost that job, too, when plunging oil prices in 2015 forced the driller he worked for to replace rig hands with cheaper, more reliable automated tools.
“I don’t see a future,” Mr. Velazquez, 44, said on a recent afternoon as he stooped over his shopping cart at a local grocery store. “Pretty soon every rig will have one worker and a robot.”
Oil and gas workers have traditionally had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs — just the type that President Trump has vowed to preserve and bring back. But the West Texas oil fields, where activity is gearing back up as prices rebound, illustrate how difficult it will be to meet that goal. As in other industries, automation is creating a new demand for high-tech workers — sometimes hundreds of miles away in a control center — but their numbers don’t offset the ranks of field hands no longer required to sling chains and lift iron.
So while there is a general sense of relief in the oil patch that a recovery is gaining momentum, discussions at company meetings and family kitchen tables are rife with aching worries, especially among those who are middle-aged with no more than a high school education.
Roughly 163,000 oil jobs were lost nationally from the 2014 peak, or about 30 percent of the total, while oil prices plummeted, at one point by as much as 70 percent. The job losses just in Texas, the most productive oil-producing state, totaled 98,000.
Several thousand workers have come back to work in recent months as the price of oil has begun to rise again, but energy experts say that between a third and a half of the workers who lost their jobs are not returning. Many have migrated to construction or even jobs in renewable energy, like wind power.
“People have left the industry, and they are not coming back,” said Michael Dynan, vice president for portfolio and strategic development at Schramm, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of drilling rigs. “If it’s a repetitive task, it can be automated, and I don’t need someone to do that. I can get a computer to do that.”
Indeed, computers now direct drill bits that were once directed manually. The wireless technology taking hold across the oil patch allows a handful of geoscientists and engineers to monitor the drilling and completion of multiple wells at a time — onshore or miles out to sea — and supervise immediate fixes when something goes wrong, all without leaving their desks. It is a world where rigs walk on their own legs and sensors on wells alert headquarters to a leak or loss of pressure, reducing the need for a technician to check.
And despite all the lost workers, United States oil production is galloping upward, to nine million barrels a day from 8.6 million in September. Nationwide, with a bit more than one-third as many rigs operating as in 2014, production is not even down 10 percent from record levels.
Some of the best wells here in the Permian Basin that three years ago required an oil price of over $60 a barrel for an operator to break even now need about $35, well below the current price of about $53.
Much of the technology has been developed by the aviation and automotive industries, along with deepwater oil exploration, over more than a decade. But companies drilling on land were slow to adapt until oil prices crashed and companies needed to get efficient quickly or go out of business.
All the big companies, and many smaller ones, have organized teams of technicians that collect well and tank data to develop complex algorithms enabling them to duplicate the design for the most productive wells over and over, and to repair valves and other parts before they break down.
The result is improved production and safety, but also a far smaller work force, and one that is increasingly morphing from muscle to brain power.
Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the most productive West Texas producers, has slashed the number of days to drill and complete wells so drastically that it has been able to cut costs by 25 percent in wells completed since early 2015. The typical rig that drilled eight to 12 wells a year just a few years ago now drills up to 16. Last year, the company added nearly 240 wells to its Permian Basin inventory without adding new employees.
The faster operations, Pioneer executives say, are due in large part to more effective well planning and drill steering. Both have been made possible by the real-time computer connections between the rig and top geoscientists back at corporate headquarters and intense analysis of the data gathered at every well.
The laborious task of checking tank levels by climbing a flight of steps and popping open a series of latches, for instance, has been replaced by pressing a few icons on a computer touch screen. A fully automated water pump station installed last summer is intended to save hundreds of truck trips every day hauling water for hydraulically fracturing wells, yielding diesel and labor cost savings.
“We want to transform our work force to the point where we need to hire fewer people,” said Joey Hall, Pioneer’s executive vice president for Permian operations. Improved computing streamlines operations, he noted, and lets technicians optimally space their wells and more accurately perforate the sweet spots of shale veins to squeeze every drop of oil out of the ground.
“We’re heading toward artificial intelligence and machine learning, analyzing thousands of algorithms,” Mr. Hall added, sounding more like a Silicon Valley futurologist than a wildcatter. “Through repetitive operations, you learn the patterns, and through patterns you learn to make automated decisions.”
With the loss of manual jobs has come a transformation in the job force, with demand growing for more data analysts, math scientists, communications specialists and robotic design engineers. In the last two years, ABB, the Swiss technology company, has opened two plants in Houston for assembling and packaging robotics and integrating advanced instrumentation into oil field operations.
GE Oil and Gas opened a technology center in Oklahoma City in October to place scientists closer to the oil fields to research and apply new digital industrial technologies for exploration and production. Among its many projects is an experiment to use drones to inspect equipment and identify methane leaks on oil sites. Nabors, the oil services giant, has 100 employees developing software, 10 times the number it had only a few years ago.
“With the adoption of all this gee-whiz software and stuff, we’ve had to bring in a lot of new technicians,” said Dennis A. Smith, a Nabors vice president.
A typical new oil company employee is Andre Nel, a 25-year-old mechanical engineer who is a rising star at Pioneer Natural Resources. In less than two years, he has helped rewrite computer software to instruct workers on the best designs for hydraulic fracturing, optimizing the amounts of fluids, sand and chemicals pumped into the wells.
Now, connected by computers to technicians in the field, he is monitoring the production of 950 wells, instantly checking the maintenance history and production trends of every well with the click of a mouse.
“I’m lucky and happy that the tech revolution in the oil field has created the need for engineers like me with backgrounds in computer science,” he said.
But smaller companies and their workers are struggling to keep up.
S.O.C. Industries, a small local pump truck operator and chemical services provider, is forced to invest $100,000 a year to keep up with the computer programs and monitoring equipment its clients request. The added expenses are one reason the company has let go 15 of the 60 field workers employed three years ago. Another is that well operators that once hired five or six people on a drill site to mix chemicals and drilling fluids as well as clean up spills are now hiring only three as mechanization has sliced their drilling time in half.
Some of the remaining S.O.C. employees are straining to keep up with new computerized pump truck monitors and GPS systems.
“It’s a struggle,” said Rodrigo Urias, 59, an S.O.C. truck driver, who for many years only had to look at a needle on a gauge to monitor flow pressures. Now he needs to reset computer screens, take work orders on a computer tablet and sometimes do algebraic calculations.
“A lot of the guys can’t operate these new technologies, tablets and instruments, and they keep whining,” he added. “They want to know why we can’t do things like we used to.”
Manufacturing executives say they are trying to minimize the complexity for field workers, and sometimes design their equipment with the advice of video game makers.
That’s a good thing for Michael Manga, 34, an employee of Latshaw Drilling, an Oklahoma company active here. A college dropout, he knocked around from job to job before finding his way to the oil patch. Now, playing video games like Call of Duty and Mario Kart with his friends over the years has paid off, giving him the eye-hand coordination to monitor and operate the control panels and joy sticks that control the drilling rig.
“We do such a good job now,” he said, “we’re drilling ourselves out of a job.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/energy-environment/oil-jobs-technology.html?_r=0
-
With Gasoline Glut, More Going Overseas
Feb 20, 2017 | Fuel Fix
By Bloomberg
The biggest gasoline market in the U.S. is bursting at the seams.
Traders are lining up to export gasoline and diesel from New York Harbor, an area that normally relies on fuel imports from Europe and eastern Canada, shipping data compiled by Bloomberg show.
While at least 6 cargoes that were headed to New York from Europe in January and early February were diverted to the Caribbean or the U.S. Gulf Coast, that wasn’t enough to stem the oversupply building up in terminals along the Eastern Seaboard. Record-high inventories in the region are now pushing prices low enough to turn the typical trade flow on its head.
“We have been exporting out of the New York Harbor, but clearly not enough, so that’s putting pressure on the products,” said Robert Campbell, head of oil products research for Energy Aspects, by phone from New York Thursday.
At least two million barrels of clean products like gasoline and diesel are planned to be exported from New York Harbor and Philadelphia in coming days. BP Plc and Glencore Plc are among shippers sending fuels to West Africa and Europe as the U.S. East Coast saw its gasoline stockpiles break a fresh record high for the third consecutive week.
Gasoline supplies in the Central Atlantic region of the East Coast, the delivery point for New York Mercantile Exchange futures contracts, rose to a record 42.3 million barrels last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Imports of fuel to the entire East Coast averaged about 350,000 barrels a day in the first 11 months of 2016 while exports averaged 138,000 barrels, EIA data show.
Total U.S. gasoline stocks also touched a record 259 million barrels, even as American refiners produce less fuel during the height of refinery maintenance season. U.S. crude unit outages are expected to average about 1 million barrels a day this month, and peaked last week at 1.29 million, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2017/02/20/with-gasoline-glut-more-going-overseas/
-
Fire Hits California Refinery; Local Gasoline Prices Could Rise
Feb 18, 2017 | The New York Times
By Reuters
An explosion and fire at an oil refinery in Torrance, California, on Saturday forced the partial shutdown of the plant, leading oil traders to expect a spike this week in West Coast gasoline prices.
Police and the plant owner said no one was hurt in the fire, which was extinguished by local firefighters.
Two years ago, a fire at the same plant led to its closure for several months and a sustained increase in West Coast gasoline prices for more than a year. After the fire on Saturday, a group of local residents worried about pollution and accidents protested at the refinery. The event had been planned to mark the anniversary of the Feb. 18, 2015 incident.
Catherine Leys, one of the protesters, lives 1.4 miles from the plant and said industrial ash drifted down on the playground near her home after the 2015 blast.
The plant supplies 10 percent of California's gasoline. Traders said they expected local gasoline prices to jump this week.
“I expect prices will be firming on Tuesday, maybe 5 cents or 15 cents a gallon," a West Coast refined products trader said. He was talking about wholesale gasoline prices in the Los Angeles market. In California, pump prices normally follow wholesale price movements within hours.
PBF Energy owns and operates the refinery in the city of Torrance, just outside Los Angeles. PBF purchased it from Exxon Mobil Corp in 2016.
PBF shuttered the plant's crude distillation unit after the pre-dawn blaze, energy industry intelligence service Genscape reported.
The unit refines 155,000 barrels of oil per day, turning it into gasoline and diesel among other products.
PBF told state regulators it was forced to use its safety flare system on an emergency basis after the incident.
The crude distillation unit, which produces motor fuel, is the workhorse of the refinery. Within 24 hours of the Feb. 18, 2015 explosion, wholesale gasoline prices initially jumped 10 cents a gallon.
A RAND study found drivers ultimately paid an extra $2.4 billion for gasoline because of the 2015 Torrance refinery outage.
The Torrance refinery had at least two outages in 2016 after a power outage at a local utility knocked the facility offline. In October, PBF received a violation notice from the California's air regulator for excessive flaring following one of the outages.
California gasoline prices are frequently among the highest in the United States. Only Hawaii residents pay more.
California requires cleaner-burning fuel than most other U.S. states do. The state is geographically isolated with no pipeline connections to major refining centers on the Gulf Coast and Midwest, leaving the market tightly balanced between what West Coast refineries can produce and what can be shipped in.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/02/18/us/18reuters-california-fire.html
-
Study Finds EMP Attack Poses Minimal Risk to Transformers
Feb 20, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Peter Behr
Electromagnetic currents triggered by a high-altitude nuclear explosion over North America would disable only three to 14 high-voltage transformers, according to a new study by the Electric Power Research Institute — a much smaller damage assessment than several government-sponsored reports have estimated.
The report is likely to fan more debate over the gravest potential threats to the U.S. electric power.
A research report released by EPRI, a nonprofit, industry-supported research firm, examined the effects of a nuclear blast on all U.S. transformers rated at 69,000 volts and above, the backbone of the interstate "bulk" power grids.
"The results are that a limited number of bulk power transformers would be at risk of thermal damage," said Rob Manning, EPRI vice president for transmission.
The conclusion of minimal transformer damage from the EMP weapon's "slow" E-3 pulse challenges disaster scenarios projecting that hundreds of transformers could be destroyed in an attack.
The E-3 pulse distorts the Earth's magnetic field, triggering rogue currents that travel over transmission lines to substations, raising temperatures inside transformers. If enough transformers were destroyed, the result could be a catastrophic, long-lasting power outage across large parts of the United States, with unprecedented loss of life and economic damage, the congressionally chartered EMP Commission reported in 2008.
Typical of the warnings about an EMP attack was testimony last May from Brandon Wales, director of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Cyber and Infrastructure Analysis. "The question of whether the grid can withstand a large electromagnetic pulse today, clearly, the answer is no," Wales told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency. "We are not prepared for that type of significant attack."
The EPRI test simulated the transformer heating effects of a 1.4-megaton nuclear explosion 250 miles above the United States in a number of locations, approximating the U.S. Starfish Prime nuclear test in 1962 in the mid-Pacific Ocean, which knocked out streetlights and triggered burglar alarms in Hawaii, nearly 900 miles away. Unlike with the Starfish case, however, an EMP attack on North America would come directly overhead of the U.S. power network.
"It is a very important conclusion, but it is also a limited conclusion," Manning said, because it is not coupled with the effects of two other components of an EMP blast. "It is an important piece of a complex puzzle we are trying to assemble," Manning said.
The "fast," very high-intensity E-1 pulse could damage myriad unprotected electronic devices from mobile phones, banking machines and gas pumps to the digital controls that operate power, pipeline and communications networks, according to the EMP Commission. EPRI has scheduled continuing research on effects of E-1 and E-2 pulses, the latter resembling lightning strikes.
"We still have a lot to do to understand not just the impact on bulk power transformers, but the effects on the system itself," he added. "Next year, we will try to link all these together and see how all these things couple onto the electric grid, so we can understand the total impact and think about what mitigations could be."
Lines of defense
Vital electronic devices and even control rooms can be shielded against EMP currents, and transformers can be protected with blocking devices. Dominion has announced intentions to invest $500 million to protect its most critical facilities, including building an EMP-shielded control room.
Grid planners count on receiving advance warning from satellites of incoming solar storms in time to put power networks in safer configurations, or even shut off power temporarily to protect the most vulnerable transformers. But an EMP attack could come too fast for human grid operators to react, Manning said.
Manning said the test design was conservative. "We believe it would give us the worst case," he said. The key factor in a transformer "passing" or "failing" was its condition, not its size or model, he said. "The condition is based on age, how it has been used, how many faults has it seen, whether it has moisture inside. There are dozens of criteria that could impact the susceptibility of a transformer" to damage, he said.
The E-3 geomagnetic pulse resembles the disruption of the Earth's magnetic field caused by a very large solar storm, and thus the EPRI analysis, if accepted by policymakers or Congress, could affect ongoing federal regulation of geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) from unpredictable solar eruptions.
But the threat of EMP and GMD currents to the power grid has triggered both scientific and political controversy. The specter of an EMP attack on the U.S. power network by North Korea, or Iran, if it develops that capability — or even a terrorist organization's pirated nuclear weapon in a weather boom floated over the United States — drives demands among some political conservatives in Congress for the revival of a U.S. anti-missile shield and laser weapons in space.
James Woolsey, former CIA director, and Peter Pry, executive director of the congressional EMP Task Force, have attacked a 2012 EPRI study on solar storms as "junk science" and criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for bowing to what they said was utility industry pressure in establishing inadequate protection requirements for the GMD threat.
"It is our intention to provide a good, solid, scientific basis for decisionmaking, and to be honest. We would welcome people to come in and analyze what we've done, provided they have adequate security clearances," Manning responded.
"I expect many will disagree with us, and we will probably find labels attached to us.
"We believe we have impeccable expertise," he added. "We have no agenda to make this hard or make this easy. Our only purpose is to understand it."
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/02/20/stories/1060050302
-
Two Cheers for a Carbon Tax, But Don’t Expect It to Fix Everything
Feb 19, 2017 | Washington Post
By Robert J. Samuelson
By all means, let’s have a carbon tax. It’s the best way to deal with global climate change. It would require Republicans and Democrats to compromise — a good thing — and would provide revenue for a government that desperately needs more revenue. Fine. But let’s not pretend that a carbon tax is a panacea for either climate change or too much debt.
With most Republicans — and some Democrats — hostile to any tax increase, a carbon tax remains a long shot. Still, the odds have shortened, because some respected Republican elders recently endorsed it. These include George P. Shultz, James A. Baker and Henry Paulson. All were treasury secretary and/or secretary of state in administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.
Under their proposal, the tax would initially be $40 for each emitted ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). This corresponds to about 36 cents on a gallon of gasoline and a 5 to 10 percent increase in retail electricity rates, says economist Marc Hafstead of Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan think tank. The tax would increase annually by the rate of price inflation, plus two percentage points. (If inflation were 2 percent, the tax would rise by 4 percent.)
Carbon dioxide represents about 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The theory is that higher prices for fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) would favor more efficient cars and appliances while also accelerating the switch of electricity utilities to wind and solar. Studies by Hafstead and others suggest that this sort of carbon tax could reduce U.S. emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. That’s the goal the United States accepted at the 2015 Paris climate change summit. The Republicans’ proposed carbon tax would also raise slightly more than $200 billion annually.
But none of this eliminates the main objection to a carbon tax — for most Americans, it’s all pain and no gain.
“It is inherently difficult to convince people to endure costs now for benefits that accrue to others 30 years hence,” writes Ted Halstead, head of the Climate Leadership Council, sponsor of the carbon-tax plan. “Even then, such ‘benefits’ will manifest in the form of the situation getting less worse, rather than an outright improvement.”
To overcome this objection, the Republican plan would rebate all the money raised by the carbon tax. There would be a flat quarterly “carbon dividend” — the poor would get the same as the rich — starting at about $2,000 annually for a family of four. As the tax rose, so would the “dividend.” The politics of a carbon tax would change, argues Halstead, because most Americans would receive “benefits in the here and now.”
What’s not to like? We can fight global warming and favor the middle class and poor. Actually, it’s not so simple.
A carbon tax is one of the last big revenue sources left for a government facing budget deficits of roughly $9 trillion over a decade. If the carbon tax goes entirely to “dividends,” deficit reduction will suffer. Or taxes on labor and business will have to rise. But if (say) half the carbon-tax revenue went toward deficit reduction, the dividend would be less politically appealing.
Regardless, the tax will probably have to increase substantially. Halstead cites studies concluding that the tax needs to go up to as much as $200 a ton (nearly $2 on a gallon of gasoline) if fundamental changes are to occur. In part, a carbon tax is bait and switch. It starts low but must rise sharply to be effective.
What matter for global warming are the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. These will increase even if the rate of annual emissions declines. How well we do depends on how well others do. The United States may hit its emission target, and other countries may miss theirs. Indeed, most of the growth in global emissions occurs in China, India and other “emerging market” countries.
Fossil fuels now supply four-fifths of the world’s energy, a share that has dropped only slightly since 1990. To stabilize CO2 concentrations, we must essentially stop burning fossil fuels. How is this to happen? Supporters of a carbon tax hope that the market mechanism — higher prices for fossil fuels — will unleash a torrent of innovation: safer nuclear, less costly solar, better batteries. This is a leap of faith. Higher prices do not guarantee technological breakthroughs.
We should not ignore climate change but should acknowledge the limits of what we know and can do. We are seeing a political convergence around a carbon tax. Thoughtful Republicans — perhaps President Trump? — want to be rid of their do-nothing stigma on climate change. Thoughtful Democrats are tired of the political paralysis. As Ronald Reagan once said: “If not us, who? And if not now, when?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/two-cheers-for-a-carbon-tax-but-dont-expect-it-to-fix-everything/2017/02/19/edfdc07a-f52d-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html?utm_term=.3894cd467048
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested