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PM ACC 5/24/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Defender Put in Charge of EPA Unit Overseeing Toxins
May 24, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared 1-bromopropane dangerous enough to make it one of the first 10 chemicals it scrutinized under an updated federal toxins law. -
(ACC Mentioned) The Energy 202: Environmentalists Gear Up for Another Fight over ANWR
May 24, 2017 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
...Smith pointed out that while the Union of Concerned Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council were invited, groups like the American Petroleum Institute were not. (Smith's office said it was aware of only one industry group, the American Chemistry Council, that was invited.) -
Trump Budget Decried as 'Devastating' And an 'Assault on Science'
May 24, 2017 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
Total US government spending on research would decline by nearly 17% under the final 2018 budget proposed by President Trump yesterday, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). -
EPA: Trump Budget Ensures Resources Needed to Implement TSCA
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Despite the Trump administration’s proposal to massively cut the US EPA’s funding, the agency says the draft federal budget ensures it has the resources to address the safety of new and existing chemicals through implementation of the new TSCA. -
Trump EPA Advances First Final Rule to Implement Revised Toxics Law
May 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
The Trump EPA has sent for White House pre-publication review its first final rule to implement the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)... -
NGO Cautions Against 'Worrisome' Ingredients in US Sunscreen
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
NGO the Environmental Working Group (EWG) says almost three-quarters of sunscreens it tested contain ingredients that could have harmful health effects, or heighten sensitivity to the sun's harmful rays. -
(ACC Mentioned) Study Quantifies Benefits of Pyrolysis Technologies
May 24, 2017 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Jared Paben
Converting used plastics into ultra-low-sulphur diesel fuel yields notable environmental benefits over traditional oil drilling and refining processes, according to a U.S. lab. -
Oil and Gas Programs Survive 11% Budget Cut
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
Amid President Trump's federal spending diet, funding for the Interior Department's energy-related programs would swell to $791 million in fiscal 2018. -
Trump Budget Still Funds One Big Climate Program
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Niina Heikkinen
One U.S. EPA climate change effort survived the Trump administration's budget slaughter. -
Neb. Regulators Schedule Second Public Meeting
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
The Nebraska Public Service Commission has scheduled a second public meeting to take input on TransCanada Corp.'s proposed Keystone XL pipeline and its route that would cross the Cornhusker State. -
‘Persistent’ Growth Seen in U.S. Onshore Oil, NatGas as Completions Catch Up, Says Rystad
May 24, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
U.S. onshore unconventional growth began to exhibit "material and persistent" monthly output growth in the first quarter after bottoming out in mid-2016, a trend likely to continue through 2017, according to an analysis by Rystad Energy. -
How American Shale Drillers Flipped OPEC’s Script
May 24, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Lynn Cook
OPEC’s back is against the wall and U.S. oil producers put it there. -
(ACC Mentioned) Senators Spar Again over EPA's Ozone Standard
May 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA's 2015 ground-level ozone standard is: A) So strict that some parts of the United States may never be able to meet it, with potentially significant economic fallout. B) Not strong enough to fully protect public health. -
Trump Budget Proposal Would Cut EPA Funding by a Third
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The Trump administration has delivered to Congress a proposed budget calling for a 31.4% cut in the EPA’s funding for the 2018 fiscal year. -
Pope Stresses Climate, Paris Accord During Trump's Visit
May 24, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
Pope Francis this morning presented President Trump with a copy of his high-profile encyclical on the environment that calls for urgent action on climate change. -
Trump Won't Make Paris Decision Until He Returns to U.S.
May 24, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
President Donald Trump likely won't make a decision on the Paris Climate treaty until he returns to the U.S., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters today. -
Appliance Group Warns EPA Against 'Broad Reconsideration' of HFC Limits
May 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
As EPA is gathering input on which regulations it should scrap or significantly revise, a major commercial appliance industry group is urging the agency to maintain its rules limiting hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, requesting only targeted changes...
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(ACC Mentioned) Chemical Defender Put in Charge of EPA Unit Overseeing Toxins
May 24, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Lauren Coleman-Lochner
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared 1-bromopropane dangerous enough to make it one of the first 10 chemicals it scrutinized under an updated federal toxins law.
Nancy Beck disagreed. The EPA’s finding, she told a Senate hearing in March, “is not consistent with the best available science.” At the time, she represented the American Chemistry Council, an industry group whose members include Dow Chemical Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp.
Now Beck has moved to EPA, where she’ll be heading the unit overseeing the toxics law.
President Donald Trump has set up an adversarial dynamic between EPA staff and their new bosses. Trump’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, sued the agency over regulations when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general. Now comes Beck, who spent five years at the ACC, where she became known as a critic of EPA risk assessments. Beck’s task in government will be implementing the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, enacted last year after long and contentious negotiations between lawmakers, environmentalists and the industry, to regulate chemicals in commerce.
Industry Lobbying
“It’s disappointing, after a bipartisan legislative process that tried to respect the interests of all the parties, that an ACC official with a long history of hostility and a long history of lobbying for the industry is now being put in a position of controlling the policies and decisions of the EPA office responsible for implementing the new law,” said Robert Sussman, a former EPA official who serves on the National Academy of Science’s environmental science and toxicology board.
The EPA declined to comment. Beck referred a request for comment to the agency, which declined to comment.
“Dr. Beck is a dedicated scientist who brings with her to the agency extensive expertise in chemical management policy,” said Scott Openshaw, a spokesman for the ACC.
In her Senate testimony, Beck questioned the research methods that showed 1-bromopropane, used in degreasers and adhesive sprays, puts users at risk for lung cancer and kidney and reproductive harm.
Beck has also criticized the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System, a program that assesses the extent of a chemical’s toxicity. In her March testimony, she called the program outdated and reliant upon outmoded and overly conservative methods to weigh risk.
“EPA did not adequately consider study quality” or industry findings when making assessments, producing “overly conservative” estimates of cancer risk, she wrote. The White House’s U.S. government budget for fiscal year 2018 cuts EPA funding 31 percent.
Health Risks
“This is a shift in how we define acceptable public health risks in this country,” said Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and former EPA adviser.
Beck is a respected scientist who fulfilled her role as an advocate for the industry, Burke said. It “remains to be seen” whether she’ll take a different approach as a representative of an agency charged with protecting health and the environment.
Scott Faber, vice president of Government Affairs for the Environmental Working Group, called Beck’s appointment, in an administration that has pledged to drain Washington’s swamp, “the most brazen act of hypocrisy yet. There’s no one who has done more to delay and ultimately deny protection from chemicals linked to cancer than Nancy Beck. Trump’s EPA has completely abdicated its responsibility to keep us safe.”
Beck has worked in government before. She spent almost a decade, until 2012, at the Office of Management and Budget, where she advised the agency on chemical risks and policy.
Politicizing Science
A letter this month to Pruitt, signed by two dozen health and environmental groups, pointed to a report Beck wrote about risk assessment that was withdrawn after the National Academy of Sciences called it “fundamentally flawed.”
While she was at OMB, Beck’s actions were called into question as “potentially politicizing” the agency’s role to review EPA decisions on behalf of the White House and “second-guessing the professional judgment of career risk assessors,” Andy Igrejas, founder of Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, said in the letter.
Beck was front and center in negotiations over revising the 40-year-old toxics regulations signed into law last year, said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Her former group, the ACC, has pushed back on regulation in the face of what will always be a degree of uncertainty of how substances impact human health, he said.
“If you only restrict when you’re certain, you wouldn’t do anything,” Rosenberg said. “The position at EPA is to protect the public interest.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-24/chemical-defender-put-in-charge-of-epa-unit-overseeing-toxins
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(ACC Mentioned) The Energy 202: Environmentalists Gear Up for Another Fight over ANWR
May 24, 2017 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
When introducing his first budget on Monday, President Trump revived a long-dormant political issue: The future of the oil underneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
ANWR, as it's abbreviated, is a 19-million acre piece of wilderness in the northeastern corner of Alaska. Environmentalists value it for its migratory birds, caribou and other wildlife. The energy industry values it for the estimated billions of barrels of domestic oil beneath it.
For decades, industry and environmental lobbyists -- and their allies in Congress -- have tussled over the fate of the refuge. Trump's budget proposal pitches the sale of oil and gas leases in ANWR as one of several measures designed to balance the budget over the next 10 years (a goal that is, according to my colleague Max Ehrenfreund, an unlikely bet).
Trump is not the first Republican leader to attempt to open up ANWR since the 1980s, when Congress requested the Department of Interior review the energy prospects of the refuge and punted the issue to a future legislative session. Yet each failed effort demonstrated what a difficult political nut ANWR is to crack for the GOP.
If the Arctic refuge is again to become a political hot potato, it's useful to look back at GOP efforts to open ANWR to drilling -- and how each of those efforts failed.
Here we go:
1989: Congress took up the issue of ANWR after the Interior Department under President Reagan officially recommended two years earlier that the refuge be opened to drilling. In March of that year, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed a pro-drilling bill.
What happened? A few days later, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. The ship spilled roughly 11 million gallons of crude oil pumped from Alaska's North Slope, to the west of ANWR. Any chance to allow drillers into the refuge was lost with it.
1995: In the 1990s, then-Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) maneuvered to get pro-drilling legislation through the Senate by introducing, unsuccessfully, amendments to a defense authorization bill and to a budget package. But in 1995, with majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time in four decades, Republicans added language opening ANWR to drilling to the budget package, which under Senate rules could not be filibustered by Democrats.
What happened? The language could be (and indeed was) vetoed by then-President Clinton when the budget was sent to his desk.
2005: By this year, Republicans again had control of both chambers of Congress -- and, importantly, the White House too. Again using a budget resolution, the Senate, led by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), passed a budget measure that opened the Arctic refuge to drillers.
What happened? A group of moderate House Republicans, seeing ANWR as a litmus test on the environment, stripped the pro-drilling language from their own version of the budget. Undeterred, Stevens attached a pro-drilling amendment to a defense authorization bill. But that bill failed to break a Democratic filibuster, and died in the Senate.
Now in 2017, the Alaskan senator leading the charge to develop the oil and gas fields is Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Frank's daughter. In a statement on Trump's budget on Monday, the senator said: "I am particularly pleased to see a proposal for energy production from the non-wilderness 1002 area," as the oil-rich portion of the refuge is sometimes called, "and continued investments in Alaska’s defense infrastructure, which will improve Alaska’s economy and strengthen our national security." In the past, she and Dan Sullivan (R), the state's other senator, have introduced their own legislation to produce energy in ANWR.
What's different in 2017: There is no Democratic president, no strong coalition of moderate House Republicans or (most likely) no looming oil spill that will trip up a budget resolution. But even with a favorable climate for drilling advocates, the procedural hurdles in the Senate are steep.
If a budget resolution with a pro-drilling amendment garners simple majorities in the House and Senate, it still does not carry the force of law. The measure would have to go through the appropriations process, where it will be subject to a 60-vote threshold -- a high bar it's unlikely to meet. Nonetheless, it's possible that opening up ANWR will surmount the first hurdle -- the budget resolution, if it is acted upon -- and create some politically uncomfortable votes for a few Republicans headed into the 2018 midterms.
Or Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would have to choose to use the budget reconciliation process for ANWR drilling. But that would likely mean prioritizing it over agenda items like health care and tax reform that are much higher on the GOP wish list.
Nonetheless, environmentalists, pointing to polling that shows that two-thirds of voters oppose Arctic Refuge drilling, are gearing up for another fight.
"We’ve done this before and we’ll do that again," Lydia Weiss, government relations director for lands at The Wilderness Society, told me.
-- During Trump's visit to the Vatican today, Pope Francis gave the president a copy of his 2015 letter to Catholics on their need to combat climate change.
"Well, I'll be reading them," Trump told Francis, according to Reuters, referring to the encyclical. With the gift, Francis becomes yet another European leader leaning on Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement.
Here's a video showing the Trump meeting with the Pope:
-- BROWN V. PRUITT: The New York Times reports: "The environmental ministers of Canada and Mexico went to San Francisco last month to sign a global pact — drafted largely by California — to lower planet-warming greenhouse pollution. Gov. Jerry Brown flies to China next month to meet with climate leaders there on a campaign to curb global warming. And a battery of state lawyers is preparing to battle any attempt by Washington to weaken California’s automobile pollution emission standards. As President Trump moves to reverse the Obama administration’s policies on climate change, California is emerging as the nation’s de facto negotiator with the world on the environment. The state is pushing back on everything from White House efforts to roll back pollution rules on tailpipes and smokestacks, to plans to withdraw or weaken the United States’ commitments under the Paris climate change accord."
Pruitt's guiding federalism -- that states should control their own environmental regulations with minimal federal oversight -- seems to end when California tries to engage those beyond its borders on greenhouse gas reductions.
In one of his only interviews with non-right-wing publication, Pruitt tells the Times: "Is it federalism to impose your policy on other states? It seems to me that Mr. Brown is being the aggressor here. But we expect the law will show this.”
On Monday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) sent a letter to Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to ask why industry representatives were not invited to a scientific integrity meeting at the EPA.
Smith, who chairs the House Science Committee, wrote: "We can think of no scientific or policy-based rationale for limiting invitations to a meeting on EPA Scientific Integrity to a relatively small number of individuals and organizations whose overall mix skews decidedly toward pro-regulation environmental activism." Smith pointed out that while the Union of Concerned Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council were invited, groups like the American Petroleum Institute were not. (Smith's office said it was aware of only one industry group, the American Chemistry Council, that was invited.)
The purpose of the meeting, scheduled for June 14, is for the EPA to get feedback from outside organizations as it prepares an annual report that describes actions taken by the agency to enforce its scientific integrity policies. Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, attempted to one-up Smith and called for even more transparency for EPA meetings. He wrote in a blog post:
I’d like to know who from the chemical industry met or communicated with the EPA in advance of Administrator Pruitt’s decision to reject scientific advice and keep a dangerous pesticide on the market that has been shown to hurt endangered species and harm human brain development... I’d like many more EPA meetings to be made open to the public.
Another meeting the environmental community would probably be interested in: This one Pruitt had with the Congressional Coal Caucus earlier this week.
-- TRUMP TAKES OUT THE SCISSORS. The Environmental Protection Agency was dealt the biggest blow in Trump's budget proposal, but other parts of Obama's environmental legacy have been targeted too.
Here are some of Trump's proposals for the Energy Department:
-Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: 69 percent cut. Chris Mooney reports: "When it comes to the renewable energy office, the Department explained that the changes marked a 'shift away from later-stage development and deployment activities and the increased focus on early-stage R&D' — a realignment that some energy policy scholars have criticized, arguing that in the energy sphere, it’s also critical to invest in later stage projects in order to aid their commercial realization."
-Fossil Energy Research and Development Program: 56 percent cut. Mooney reports: "Within that, funding for research on carbon capture and carbon storage, which could allow for the burning of coal without such a heavy burden of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, would shrink to just $31 million from $206.6 million in the prior year..."
-And the coup de grâce: Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy: 93 percent cut. Created with bipartisan support under President George W. Bush and modeled after DARPA, ARPA-E aggressively funded clean energy startups under Obama.
The Interior Department was not spared either. Brady Dennis reports: "The White House wants to cut the Interior Department budget by about 12 percent as the Trump administration shifts the agency’s focus toward promoting fossil fuel drilling and extraction on public lands and in federal waters. The budget proposal released Tuesday would reduce Interior’s funding to $11.6 billion in fiscal 2018 — about $1.6 billion less annually — and eliminate programs that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has called unnecessary, duplicative or a low priority. Among them: discretionary grants to help reclaim abandoned mine sites, National Heritage areas that Trump administration officials say are more appropriately funded locally and National Wildlife Refuge payments to local governments."
Republicans also went after a favorite punching bag in citing "The Great Immensity," a now defunct-musical about climate change, which seven years ago won a government grant:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/05/24/the-energy-202-environmentalists-gear-up-for-another-fight-over-anwr/59247db3e9b69b2fb981db80/?utm_term=.276fd9e31b17
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Trump Budget Decried as 'Devastating' And an 'Assault on Science'
May 24, 2017 | Chemistry World
By Rebecca Trager
Total US government spending on research would decline by nearly 17% under the final 2018 budget proposed by President Trump yesterday, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
‘If the White House budget plan were to become law, it would devastate America’s science and technology enterprise,’ said Rush Holt, the AAAS chief executive, during a teleconference with reporters. ‘This severe and unjustifiably rapid cut comes at a time when our funding for science research is already far below what would be optimal – we are nowhere close as a nation to investing what we should be investing in research and development,’ added Holt, a former congressman and physicist.
The Obama administration fell just short on its goal of increasing federal spending on R&D to more than 3% of GDP.
One aspect of Trump’s budget that greatly concerns the AAAS, and other science organisations, is a 22% cut proposed for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During the teleconference, Research!America president Mary Woolley cited estimates that these cuts to the NIH alone in 2018 would mean the loss of nearly 90,000 jobs and $15 billion (£12 billion) in economic activity, as well as 2000 fewer research grants.
Beyond slashing the NIH, the White House also seeks an 11% reduction in funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), a 17% decrease for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science and a 70% cut for the DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy research programmes. The Trump proposal would also institute a 44% decrease in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) science and technology programmes.
‘Assault on science’Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and acting administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, publicly criticised the White House for proposing a 17% cut to the CDC’s budget. Frieden tweeted that such a cut would bring the agency to its lowest level in more than 20 years. He went on to call the administration’s budget an ‘assault on science’.
Although Trump’s proposal would shrink the EPA’s overall budget by 30% from current levels, the agency said increased resources will be provided to support its new responsibilities under the recently reformed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to ensure that new and existing chemicals are evaluated in a timely manner. The EPA added that it will ‘work aggressively’ to complete additional chemical risk assessments from the TSCA list of existing chemicals and meet its requirement to review all current pesticide registrations by 2022.
Among the most controversial aspects of the White House’s budget plan is its call to abolish the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which carries out independent investigations of industrial chemical accidents, and eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (Arpa-E), which funds R&D for advanced energy technologies.
Critical safetyNorm Augustine, a former chief executive of Lockheed Martin best known for chairing the influential National Academy of Sciences committee whose 2005 report called for a 10% annual increase in government funding of basic research for seven years, is also sharply critical of Trump’s budget. Augustine doesn’t agree with the administration’s proposal to do away with Arpa-E, although he says he can understand that one might incorrectly believe that industry will pick up the slack for that agency. However, Augustine argues that such a justification does not work when trying to shut down the CSB. ‘That belief certainly can’t apply to the safety board,’ he tells Chemistry World.
Back in March, when Trump had initially floated the idea in his blueprint budget to dissolve the $11 million CSB that has run for almost two decades, there was significant opposition.
Ultimately, it is Congress and not the White House that will determine science agency funding in 2018. In fact, earlier this month Congress reversed course on significant and immediate cuts slated for agencies like the NIH and NSF under Trump’s budget reduction plan for 2017. The House and Senate rejected the president’s strategy and instead produced an omnibus spending package that increased federal R&D by 5%.
‘Congress has made it clear already this year, really in numerous ways, that they do not buy into this really harsh and abrupt approach to science funding,’ said Holt. ‘They have not yet used the phrase “dead on arrival”, but it is pretty clear to me that they simply don’t buy this philosophy and they understand the importance of investment.’
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/trump-budget-decried-as-an-assault-on-science/3007467.article
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EPA: Trump Budget Ensures Resources Needed to Implement TSCA
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Despite the Trump administration’s proposal to massively cut the US EPA’s funding, the agency says the draft federal budget ensures it has the resources to address the safety of new and existing chemicals through implementation of the new TSCA.
This sentiment was expressed in the EPA’s "Budget in Brief" – a document that explains how the agency would make use of the funds allocated to it by the administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2018.
Viewing this together with documents leaked by the nonprofit National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA) – which include more details on the programme-level cuts posited by the Trump administration – sheds more light on the changes that could come in the EPA’s work on chemicals.
New and existing chemicals
The proposed budget calls for cutting spending for toxics risk review and prevention from $92m to $65m. Reductions would be achieved by zeroing out programmes for endocrine disruptors, lead risk reduction and pollution prevention.
The lone remaining line item – chemical risk review and reduction – would be boosted to $65m. The agency says it plans to begin collecting new TSCA fees by the second quarter of FY 2018, as well.
It says this increase in funding will support its "significant continuing and new responsibilities for ensuring that chemicals in commerce do not present unreasonable risks to human health or the environment".
And under this line item, says the EPA, it will prioritise the review of new chemicals. Scheduling will reflect "a need for the agency to eliminate the backlog in order to ensure chemicals go to market in a manner that better promotes economic development."
"Timely evaluation", it adds, will be based on the "intended" use of chemicals. This appears in contrast to its increased focus on 'foreseen' uses in pre-manufacture notice (PMN) reviews – a complaint from industry groups on the new chemicals programme since TSCA was reformed.
For existing chemicals, the EPA says it will be maintaining an "ambitious schedule" for conducting risk evaluations and regulatory actions to address identified concerns.
Here, named activities are largely consistent with statutory mandates under the new TSCA, including:
· work on the first ten substances subject to risk evaluation and identifying an additional ten for assessment;
· risk management activities on five fast-tracked PBTs;
· publishing an alternatives test methods strategy by June 2018; and
· finalising the designation of substances as active or inactive on the TSCA inventory (‘inventory reset’).
Chemicals research
The budget proposal would also cut research for chemical safety from $127m to $84m.
About a third of this – $15m – would come from the human health risk assessment (HHRA) programme. This would represent a 40% reduction from annualised 2017 funding.
The agency says in its briefing that this programme will nonetheless continue to develop assessments for other EPA programmes and regional offices. These include health hazard and dose-response assessments conducted under the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) – a programme that had been potentially slated for defunding in previous leaked budget documents.
Meanwhile, the chemical safety and sustainability (CSS) programme would be chopped by $27m.
Within this, research for endocrine disruptors and computational toxicology are slated to see some funding – $10m and $17m, respectively – compared with zero in the current year's budget. But less than half the $89m in funding for the broader bucket of ‘other’ chemical research activities would survive.
In its briefing, the EPA says the total $61m allocated to CSS funding will:
· promote use of read-across;
· use high-throughput hazard and exposure information to evaluate cumulative risk of chemicals exposures; and
· demonstrate how ToxCast data can be used to develop high-throughput risk assessments, particularly for data-poor chemicals.
The agency said in a statement that programme eliminations will help focus resources on "highest national priorities and core statutory requirements".
https://chemicalwatch.com/56077/epa-trump-budget-ensures-resources-needed-to-implement-tsca
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Trump EPA Advances First Final Rule to Implement Revised Toxics Law
May 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Anthony Lacey
The Trump EPA has sent for White House pre-publication review its first final rule to implement the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), advancing a measure establishing how to prioritize chemicals for risk evaluation that the Obama EPA proposed but the new administration will finalize based on its own approach to TSCA.
The rule, which EPA submitted to the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) on May 23, will establish a risk-based screening process for designating chemicals as high priority substances for risk evaluations under new authority in the revised TSCA, or as low priority substances that do not require risk evaluations. The updated toxics law, enacted June 22, requires EPA to finalize the TSCA prioritization rule within one year.
OMB review typically takes 90 days but can take more or less time depending on the rule, so EPA could feasibly still meet the June 22 statutory deadline for issuing the final version of the rule.
The entry for the rule on OMB's website says that the agency does not face a legal deadline for the rule and does not list a projected date for the final rule's publication in the Federal Register.
It also says the rule is not considered “economically significant,” which means it is unlikely to have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more or adversely affect the economy. That may also mean the rule is not subject to requirements under President Donald Trump's executive order requiring EPA and other agencies to repeal two existing rules for every new measure issued and offset any new regulatory costs.
The Obama EPA on Jan. 17 released the proposed version of the rule, which lays out a four-step process for implementing a mandate under TSCA that the agency screen existing chemicals as either high- or low-priority for the purposes of further review. The rule is one of several new chemical regulations mandated by the TSCA update, and some observers had questioned whether the Trump EPA would continue to implement it.
But Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, acting assistant administrator in the agency's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, told a Feb. 23 chemical policy conference that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is “very engaged” on implementing the new rulemaking mandates in the revised TSCA.
And in recent comments submitted to EPA as part of its regulatory reform push, both the chemical sector and environmentalists agreed on the need for the agency to implement the law.
Trump's fiscal year 2018 plan indicates the administration's push to continue implementing the revised TSCA, proposing $65 million “to support the agency’s significant continuing and new responsibilities for ensuring that chemicals in commerce do not present unreasonable risks to human health or the environment,” says the agency's budget justification to Congress.
In addition to the pending final TSCA prioritization rule, EPA is also working on several other rules required under the law including a rule to collect fees from some chemical manufacturers, importers, and processors; and a rule to require manufacturers to notify EPA of substances made and produced in the past 10 years.
Prioritization Rule
The proposed version of the TSCA prioritization rule that the Obama EPA released in January received support from environmentalists in their public comments, although they advocated for some changes that they argued would enhance the agency's review of chemical substances.
The rule will apply to reviews of existing chemicals, which are those substances that were in commerce in 1976 when the original TSCA was enacted, and were at that time largely grandfathered under the law. The updated TSCA mandates EPA to prioritize and assess this backlog of chemicals, and directed EPA to draft several rules by June 2017 laying out a framework to implement this. EPA says its goal in the prioritization proposal is a "pipeline" that will help the agency wade through the backlog of thousands of chemicals in commerce.
Section 6(b)(1) of the revised TSCA requires EPA to establish a risk-based screening process and criteria that EPA will use to identify chemical substances as either high-priority substances for risk evaluation, or low-priority substances for which risk evaluations are not warranted at the time.
The first action in EPA's proposed four-step process, what the agency calls the "pre-prioritization process," generated significant comments from stakeholders, with environmentalists and California's EPA generally supporting the proposal. EPA in January described this as an initial step in which it would narrow the pool of potential chemicals using the new statutory criteria.
The remaining steps in the proposed four-step prioritization process continue with an initiation phase in which the agency would announce a candidate chemical ahead of a 90-day public comment period. Then, under the third step, EPA would propose to designate a chemical as high- or low-priority, publish the proposed designation, information, analysis, and basis for the decision, and take a second round of public comment for 90 days.
Under the fourth and final step, EPA would either finalize a high-priority designation and initiate a risk evaluation, or finalize a low-priority substance, which would mean a review would not be necessary until or unless the agency received new information on that substance that indicated potential increased risks.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/trump-epa-advances-first-final-rule-implement-revised-toxics-law
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NGO Cautions Against 'Worrisome' Ingredients in US Sunscreen
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
NGO the Environmental Working Group (EWG) says almost three-quarters of sunscreens it tested contain ingredients that could have harmful health effects, or heighten sensitivity to the sun's harmful rays.
And Sonya Lunder, EWG senior research analyst and lead author of the 2017 Guide to Sunscreens, says the products "will not improve until the Food and Drug Administration sets stronger rules, reviews harmful chemicals, and allows the use of new ingredients that offer stronger UVA protection".
The 11th annual edition rates almost 1,500 sunscreens, moisturisers and lip balms that advertise sun protection. And EWG researchers found that 73% don't work well, or contain 'worrisome ingredients'.
The NGO advises consumers to avoid products with "harmful additives", and flags up two substances:
· retinyl palmate, a form of vitamin A, it says is linked to skin tumours when applied to sun-exposed skin; and
· oxybenzone, which the NGO says is a hormone disruptor and allergen.
In recent years, industry groups have criticised the guide's suggestion that products were unsafe, saying EWG's test methods lacked scientific vigour.
https://chemicalwatch.com/56049/ngo-cautions-against-worrisome-ingredients-in-us-sunscreen
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(ACC Mentioned) Study Quantifies Benefits of Pyrolysis Technologies
May 24, 2017 | Plastics Recycling Update
By Jared Paben
Converting used plastics into ultra-low-sulphur diesel fuel yields notable environmental benefits over traditional oil drilling and refining processes, according to a U.S. lab.
Argonne National Laboratory recently conducted a study of the energy, water consumption and greenhouse gas benefits of pyrolysis technologies, used to convert post-consumer plastics into fuels.
Comparing ultra-low-sulphur diesel derived from post-use plastics with the same fuel from conventional sources, the researchers found the pyrolysis technique reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 14 percent, water usage by 58 percent and fossil fuel-derived energy usage by 96 percent.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) issued a press release highlighting the findings of the report, which was published in the April 14 edition of the journal Fuel.
“Argonne’s analysis clearly determines that plastics-to-fuel (PTF) technology is a viable and beneficial materials management option,” Craig Cookson, director of recycling and energy recovery for ACC, stated in the release. “Not only does PTF reduce waste going to landfills, but these technologies can help reduce GHG emissions while conserving both water and energy.”
The greenhouse gas emissions benefits depend on which treatment method is used on the co-products of the pyrolysis process, including char and fuel gas, the study noted. In particular, the handling of fuel gas, which can be combusted internally to generate energy, is a key factor in determining the GHG benefits of pyrolysis.
Still, ultra-low-sulphur diesel from plastics “could therefore be considered at a minimum carbon neutral with the potential to offer a modest GHG reduction,” according to the report.
Based in the Chicago-area city of Lemont, Ill., Argonne National Laboratory is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.
https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2017/05/24/study-quantifies-benefits-pyrolysis-technologies/
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Oil and Gas Programs Survive 11% Budget Cut
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
Amid President Trump's federal spending diet, funding for the Interior Department's energy-related programs would swell to $791 million in fiscal 2018.
Key elements in an "all-of-the-above" energy development strategy touted by Secretary Ryan Zinke include a $1.1 million bump for Interior's offshore program and a $16 million increase to improve the Bureau of Land Management's oil and gas permitting process (Energywire, May 17). Those gains come as Interior anticipates a proposed 11 percent decrease from current funding.
The agency's managers, rangers and superintendents in the field are experiencing the strain of insufficient resources and authority to properly carry out their jobs, Zinke told reporters on a conference call yesterday.
"We need to shore them up," he said.
Interior's fiscal 2018 budget opens oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with an expected benefit of $1.8 billion in revenue over the next decade.
The proposal also carries a cut for renewable energy programs both on- and offshore.
The proposed $78.1 million budget allocation is consistent with expected demand, Zinke said.
"Although a reduction from prior years, this funding level will sustain the current pace of development which is at a consistent level after initial rapid growth and acceleration," according to departmental highlights.
Joshua Mantell, deputy director of the Wilderness Society's climate and energy campaign, questioned whether Interior's new budget represents a fairly balanced approach on energy.
"This is not so much of an all-of-the-above but a fossil-fuel-above-all strategy to public land management," he said.
Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma applauded the increase to Interior's onshore oil and gas program because, she said, industry returns billions of dollars in royalty and leasing revenue.
"That's an investment that pays off," she said.
Sgamma said she was pleased to see that BLM is not leaning too heavily on additional fees collected from industry that were meant to enhance — not offset — the bureau's ability to process applications for permit to drill in a timely fashion.
Additional funding is exactly what is needed to expedite that process, she said.
"We hear from the New Mexico BLM or other field offices that they don't have enough funding to move forward," Sgamma said. "I have some sympathy for that, although for the last eight years, BLM has spent a lot of money on new red tape and could have been using its resources in a more effective manner."
Offshore, the administration's proposal to develop a new five-year leasing program won the praise of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA). That update carries a $10.2 million price tag, in the form of a budget increase for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
"NOIA whole-heartedly appreciates the Trump administration's overall pro-American energy message, and supports the President's budget proposals that will serve to advance the safe and environmentally responsible development of offshore energy resources," the association said in a statement yesterday.
The group questioned a proposal to sell off half of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and to repeal state payments under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act.
"Eliminating Gulf state revenue sharing for offshore energy production would punish coastal states that support and host the development of home-grown energy and jobs, and would be a serious step backward in the quest for energy reliability and independence," NOIA said.
Zinke said yesterday that he expected to have a dialogue with stakeholders that oppose the change to state payments. He suggested that a streamlined federal budget would help introduce new employment opportunities and appease local worries about the loss of payments.
"When you start adding jobs, that goes a long way to mitigate" concerns, Zinke said.
The administration's budget proposal is likely to face heavy opposition in Congress.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have bristled against the steep cuts the Trump administration has proposed. Senior appropriator Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said that the budget will be dead on arrival when it reaches the Hill (E&E Daily, May 23).
"Once again, the Trump Administration has turned its back on Teddy Roosevelt-style conservatism and is instead trying to allow special interests to pillage our natural resources so a wealthy few can make themselves even wealthier," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said in a statement yesterday.
"We won't let them."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/24/stories/1060055013
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Trump Budget Still Funds One Big Climate Program
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Niina Heikkinen
One U.S. EPA climate change effort survived the Trump administration's budget slaughter.
Programs to track greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories, power plants and other sources will continue to receive funding, according to the fiscal 2018 budget proposal the White House released yesterday.
If Congress approves Trump's budget, the programs will be among the government's last substantive federal climate initiatives.
"Having the government pull that data together and do that in a consistent way is extremely important," said Kevin Kennedy, deputy director for the U.S. Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute.
EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program collects emissions data for carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, along with other greenhouse gases, from more than 8,000 major emitters across the economy, including some power plants and refineries.
The agency shares the data with members of industry, researchers, state and local government, and the public to "better understand emissions inform opportunities, and communicate progress of actions," according to EPA.
The agency uses that information collected by the program to help develop its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, which outlines most greenhouse gas emissions throughout the country. The United States is mandated under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to produce the inventory. The United States ratified the treaty in 1992.
"The only way to withdraw would be to go through congressional action, and that would take a lot of work at a time when they could be using that effort for other things," said Pam Lacey, chief regulatory counsel at the American Gas Association, in an interview earlier this year.
While the inventory is specifically required under international law, it's not clear why the program that feeds data into it escaped broad cuts. The fiscal 2018 budget request allocates $8.5 million for implementing the program. The funding would go to making revisions to data collection and release, according to EPA's congressional justification for appropriations.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/05/24/stories/1060055054
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Neb. Regulators Schedule Second Public Meeting
May 24, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
The Nebraska Public Service Commission has scheduled a second public meeting to take input on TransCanada Corp.'s proposed Keystone XL pipeline and its route that would cross the Cornhusker State.
The PSC said yesterday it would take comments from the interested public at a hearing in O'Neill, in Holt County, Neb., on June 7. Individuals will have three to five minutes to comment on the project at the seven-hour session.
O'Neill is in the northeastern part of the state, where the proposed pipeline path would cut diagonally across the state to avoid sensitive terrains and water crossings before turning south toward Kansas. The pipeline proposes to begin in Alberta and carry crude from the oil sands through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska on its way to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.
Since the Trump administration greenlighted the controversial Keystone XL project earlier this year, work has resumed on the process of selecting a route to cross Nebraska — the only state where it lacks a finalized pathway and all the major permits to proceed. Under Nebraska law, the PSC is considering filings from intervenors and soliciting public input through this summer. The agency has scheduled a weeklong public hearing, a semi-judicial process for recognized intervenors in the proposal, to take place in August.
The June meeting will be the second such opportunity for the general public to address the PSC. At a meeting earlier this month in York, Neb., the commission heard from more than 150 speakers for and against the project. Several labor groups and individuals spoke in favor of the project's promise to bring jobs and tax money to the state, while others condemned the environmental damage that could come from a spill or leak and argued against approving a project that would support a particularly carbon-intensive form of oil production (Energywire, May 4).
The PSC said when the first meeting was announced in April that there could be additional forums. With the announcement of this second public event, regulators again said that further meetings could be scheduled along the proposed pipeline route at a later date.
In a statement, regulators called on the public to respect law and order at the public meeting.
"We recognize the emotion and conviction surrounding this application," said Jeff Pursley, the PSC's executive director. "The Commission would like to thank the citizens who participated in York for the respect and consideration shown ... during the public meeting. We look forward to the sharing of information in the same respectful manner in O'Neill."
The York meeting had a considerable law enforcement presence, and attendees were required to pass through metal detectors and limited in what they could bring into the building. That was done in anticipation of possible disturbances from pipeline protesters, but the event took place without incident and without protests.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/05/24/stories/1060055047
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‘Persistent’ Growth Seen in U.S. Onshore Oil, NatGas as Completions Catch Up, Says Rystad
May 24, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
U.S. onshore unconventional growth began to exhibit "material and persistent" monthly output growth in the first quarter after bottoming out in mid-2016, a trend likely to continue through 2017, according to an analysis by Rystad Energy.
Using "sufficient fact-based visibility" compiled from state data of the first three months, onshore U.S. oil production growth was evident and "considerable growth" in natural gas could be restored by the second half of the year (2H2017).
"With a strong start to 2017, shale is set for steady growth throughout the remainder of 2017, due to indications of significant recovery in completion activity," Rystad analysts said.
A rising U.S. rig count has led to more drilling activity since mid-2016 for both oil and natural gas. However, completion activity naturally had lagged, exhibiting relatively flat development for drilled-but-uncompleted (DUC) wells through 2H2016. That resulted in a surplus inventory of DUCs.
However, between January and March, completion activity finally began to catch up with drilling growth, driven primarily by completions in the Permian Basin and in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.
"Along with the significant build-up of new inventory of high-quality DUCs observed in 2H2016 and 1Q2017, this positions completion activity for a prolonged expansion throughout the rest of 2017 as more pressure pumping equipment gets reactivated," said analysts.
Even with a rising rig count, however, "growth in drilling activity is stabilizing" because of "degrading drilling efficiencies in all major plays."
The first quarter, and notably February, proved particularly strong for unconventional U.S. plays in terms of monthly net additions in oil production, according to Rystad. February oil output reached an all-time high of 190,000 b/d from "overlapping completion rounds in several major basins and reactivated, inactive wells in the Bakken Shale after a winter shock in December," analysts said.
While the rate of oil output growth in February is considered "unsustainable" through 2017, U.S. horizontal shale oil monthly production should increase every month to the end of the year by an average 100,000 b/d because of the implied rate of current DUC completions, Rystad said.
Unsurprisingly, the largest completions growth is expected in the Permian. Rising onshore gas volume growth also is expected this year.
Rich gas production from U.S. shale plays had exhibited flat development since early 2016, analysts noted. "However, robust drilling in January-April 2017 shows signs of recovery and is expected to turn into new completions from mid-2017."
Rystad said "considerable growth in gas volumes can be restored from 2H2017, "driven by expansion in the Appalachian Basin, Haynesville Shale and recovery in associated volumes from liquid plays..."
Rystad also compared how productive wells were in 1Q2017 versus 4Q2016.
The Eagle Ford, along with the Permian's Delaware and Midland sub-basins, exhibited "further productivity improvements, despite some offsetting effects such as a stronger contribution from minor players and expansion of activity in noncore areas."
The Eagle Ford led among the major liquids plays sequentially in terms of new production per well, with an average of 785 boe/d of new volumes per well brought into the market in 1Q2017, followed by the Delaware, with 696 boe/d of new production per well.
"Overall, strong first quarter results suggest that shale is on track to grow further throughout the remainder of 2017," said the Rystad team. "While exceptional oil output additions observed in February are unsustainable through the rest of the year, 100, 000 b/d average month/month oil production growth in 2017 is in line with trends in completion activity."
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its Drilling Productivity Report issued in mid-May also said it expected gas and oil production from the nation's seven most prolific unconventional plays to increase again in June, but it is forecasting the number of DUCs to rise as well.
The Bakken, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara, Permian and Utica plays are forecast by EIA to produce an estimated total of 51.3 Bcf/d of natural gas in June from 50.8 Bcf/d in May. Gas production from the seven plays, which had been on a downward trend for more than a year, returned to the upside in January and has been on the upswing ever since, according to EIA.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/110564-persistent-growth-seen-in-us-onshore-oil-natgas-as-completions-catch-up-says-rystad
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How American Shale Drillers Flipped OPEC’s Script
May 24, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Lynn Cook
OPEC’s back is against the wall and U.S. oil producers put it there.
When the cartel reached a landmark deal in November to curtail production to bolster crude prices, it was betting U.S. shale drillers would be too weak to step in and fill the void. It was wrong.
As it turns out for OPEC, competing against American shale oil really means competing against Wall Street and its financial engineering—a prospect that has bedeviled government-run oil companies from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria.
U.S. oil output has surged since the OPEC deal, and is now on pace to exceed 9.9 million barrels a day in 2018, a record, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Hopes dashed, OPEC now has little choice but to extend the production cuts when the group meets in Vienna on Thursday in an attempt to ease the global oil glut.
American shale producers are prevailing because they have continued to innovate and cut costs as they refine hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling and other pioneering techniques to unlock a flood of oil from Texas to North Dakota.
But there is another major factor at play. Private-equity firms have continued to pump money into shale companies, even after many went bankrupt when oil prices plunged from $100 a barrel in 2014. U.S. drillers meanwhile have skillfully used a variety of financial instruments—special contracts called hedges, collars and swaps—to effectively lock in prices for future oil sales, insulating them from the potential fallout of falling prices.
While OPEC, Russia and others have struggled to curb their output by a combined 1.8 million barrels a day since their agreement was announced in November, the U.S. is pumping 750,000 barrels a day more. That has put American production at 9.3 million barrels a day, a level not seen since the summer of 2015, according to federal data.
The U.S. resurgence, along with rising output from Canada and Brazil, has all but forced the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to act if it hopes to draw down the oil in storage around the world, which remains exceptionally high.
Laredo Petroleum Inc. has hedged 70% of its expected oil production for 2017. Even as U.S. crude languished under $50 a barrel this spring, the independent producer got nearly $56 for most barrels it pumped in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. The contracts ensure that Laredo can continue plans to spend $500 million on 70 new horizontal wells under the West Texas desert this year.
Innovation is also helping. Most of Laredo’s horizontal wells are now super-sized to 2 miles long, which will allow Laredo to effectively produce as much as if it had doubled its rig count. Today it can also drill twice as fast. The efficiency gains have lowered Laredo’s break-even price to under $40 a barrel, down from $63 in 2014.
Randy Foutch, Laredo’s chief executive, noted that if Texas were an oil-producing country, it would rank among the top 10 producers between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
“The Saudis have come to grips with reality,” Mr. Foutch said, adding, “We’ve got it. We’re there. We have a seat at the table.”
OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said in an interview that all oil producers, including shale drillers, are suffering from an oversupplied market.
“All the producers have realized we are in the same industry, conventional, shale and offshore producers,” he said. “They know no one was insulated from the vagaries of this cycle.”
One reason shale is persevering is that it is graded on an entirely different curve than its OPEC rivals.
While many Middle Eastern nations can pull a barrel of crude out of the ground for far less money than it takes to pump a well in West Texas, those countries collectively need $95 a barrel to fund their government-run social programs, according to RBC Capital Markets, a global investment bank.
Shale producers, by contrast, still aren’t under substantial pressure to actually make money for investors, who are betting that the disruptive, fast-growing companies will eventually profit when prices increase.
“Private equity represents 40% of the activity in upstream and it didn’t exist 40 years ago,” said Charles Cherington, chairman at Argus Energy Managers, a network of private-equity firms in Houston. “You’ve got private-equity firms selling to private-equity firms.”
Profitability remains elusive for many shale producers, but more say they are able to break even today, even with prices hovering around $50 a barrel.
U.S. operators have been aggressively wringing costs out of their operations, with 60% of horizontal wells in the major shale basins now breaking even between $35 and $55 a barrel, says Allen Gilmer, chairman of Austin consulting firm Drillinginfo.
Even shale drillers that continue to lose money are going back to work, said Paal Kibsgaard, chief executive of the world’s largest oil-field service company, Schlumberger Inc.
Mr. Kibsgaard expects Schlumberger to redeploy all of its idle drilling and fracking equipment by year’s end. “Operators appear unconstrained by a sixth year of negative free cash flow,” he recently told investors.
Exxon Mobil Corp. , which traditionally focused on international mega projects, plans to put 25% of this year’s budget—roughly $5.5 billion—in short-cycle, high-return shale investments in the Permian and North Dakota’s Bakken formation where the company has a combined 5,500 well sites that are profitable at less than $40 a barrel.
OPEC, the International Energy Agency and several banks are warning that today’s oil glut could turn into a shortage, due to a lack of investment in new projects outside of the U.S.
Meanwhile, however, any new agreement to limit production from Iraq and other OPEC members will only spur production from the U.S., said Alan Eyre, who is in charge of Middle East energy at the State Department.
“The more success OPEC has in complying with and extending its November deal, the more it ensures U.S. production bounces back—taking a bite out of OPEC’s market share,” he said, predicting that U.S. production would reach 10 million barrels a day before mid-2018.
Andy McConn, an oil analyst with energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said that if OPEC extends its production cut this week as expected, it could once again allow U.S. drillers to hedge more of their future production at higher prices.
“They won’t pull back,” Mr. McConn said. “The same country that the market’s worried about oversupplying the market is protected. It’s not good for OPEC.”
—Benoit Faucon contributed to this article.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-american-shale-drillers-flipped-opecs-script-1495618203
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(ACC Mentioned) Senators Spar Again over EPA's Ozone Standard
May 24, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA's 2015 ground-level ozone standard is:
A) So strict that some parts of the United States may never be able to meet it, with potentially significant economic fallout.
B) Not strong enough to fully protect public health.
Between those familiar poles, a Senate panel spent almost 90 minutes yesterday taking testimony on the merits of two bills that would roll back implementation of the 70-parts-per-billion ozone benchmark until the middle of the next decade.
Despite some of the nation's toughest regulations, California's San Joaquin Valley has "reached the point where we cannot attain the federal standards" even if all businesses, agricultural operations and truck traffic were eliminated, said Ahron Hakimi, executive director of a metropolitan planning organization in the area.
But ozone exposure can harm health at levels as low as 60 ppb, Dr. Monica Kraft, a past president of the American Thoracic Society, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. It's "not just the young, the ill and the frail that feel the detrimental effects of ozone," Kraft said. "It's everyone."
Under S. 263, introduced in February by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the subcommittee's chairwoman, implementation of the 70 ppb limit would effectively be frozen until 2025. Among the bill's co-sponsors is Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who has also introduced a separate measure, S. 452, that would similarly roll back implementation.
In addition, both bills would permanently rewrite the Clean Air Act to require EPA to revisit the standards for ozone, particulate matter and four other "criteria pollutants" only once every decade instead of once every five years.
"Ground-level ozone is already declining nationwide due to emissions controls," Capito said in her opening statement. "There is no need to rush into implementation of new standards when the trend lines are positive." She added that EPA issued implementing regulations for its 2008 ozone standard only two years ago, potentially requiring states and industry to abide by two standards at the same time.
But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) accused the fossil fuel industry of resorting to politics to short-circuit the 2015 limit from taking effect. Although the Trump administration recently won an open-ended pause in litigation in order to reconsider the 70 ppb, he said, "there is neither the law nor the science to dismantle the ozone standard quickly through administrative action."
Ozone, a lung irritant that is the main ingredient in smog, is formed by the reaction of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in sunshine. Along with vehicle emissions, a major source of NOx is coal combustion.
In tightening the standard from 75 ppb to 70 ppb in October 2015, then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy had cited the need to protect public health in light of recent research. States turned in their nonattainment recommendations last fall; the agency is currently scheduled to make the final designations by this October, triggering the start of a compliance process that will take years to fully play out.
Critics, including many congressional Republicans, question whether the 70 ppb standard is achievable in parts of the western United States, both because of naturally occurring background ozone and because of foreign emissions sources.
Yuma County, Ariz., for example, has little industry but still exceeds the standard, courtesy of upwind pollution from California, Mexico and China, said Misael Cabrera, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
Arizona is among the states suing to overturn the standard on the grounds that it is unnecessarily strict. The American Thoracic Society is allied with environmental and public health groups arguing in court that the science instead warrants a 60 ppb threshold.
Yesterday's hearing was the latest in a series that Congress has held on ozone regulation, with similar arguments on both sides. Cabrera, for one, testified on Yuma County's circumstances before a House panel last year.
Capito introduced a similar measure last year in the 114th Congress, but the legislation never moved out of committee. In a brief interview after yesterday's hearing, Capito said she hoped to soon get a markup on S. 263. A companion bill, H.R. 806, introduced by Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas), is awaiting action by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The legislation has provoked a lobbying battle between industry and public health groups. In a statement yesterday, the American Chemistry Council said that both Senate measures would help ensure that manufacturers "can obtain permits in a timely and efficient manner." In a letter to senators earlier in the week, the thoracic society and more than a dozen other organizations wrote that Capito's bill would threaten "the health of children, seniors and people with chronic disease."
Gary Ewart, the society's chief of government relations, said he thinks that the measure has less chance of advancing than would be true in a "more normal" Senate environment, but still has to be taken seriously.
"We're concerned because we have to be concerned," Ewart said after the hearing. "I'm not sure that it's going to be moving in the foreseeable future."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/05/24/stories/1060055042
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Trump Budget Proposal Would Cut EPA Funding by a Third
May 24, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The Trump administration has delivered to Congress a proposed budget calling for a 31.4% cut in the EPA’s funding for the 2018 fiscal year.
The proposal does not stray from the heavy cuts set forth in a March 'budget blueprint' that called for dropping funding from $8.1bn to $5.65bn and axing some 50 agency programmes.
The EPA said in a statement that the budget will support work on its "highest priorities". These include ensuring the safety of chemicals in the marketplace.
The Trump budget fulfills the EPA’s requested $296m in FY 2018 to strengthen its capabilities "to assess chemical hazards and potential exposures, identify potential risks to human health and the environment and take appropriate risk management action." The agency says it will also implement fee-based funding, as laid out in the Lautenberg Act.
These resources will support its new responsibilities for evaluating new and existing chemicals in a "timely manner", it said. And it will "work aggressively" to complete risk assessments on TSCA workplan chemicals. "Programme eliminations totalling nearly $53m combined with nearly $60m in other major programme changes, including research programmes, will focus federal resources on highest national priorities and core statutory requirements," added the agency.
But Ken Cook, president of NGO Environmental Working Group, condemned the White House’s push for "dramatic cuts", including to programmes that protect people from chemicals.
"President Trump has proposed a budget that should be welcomed by chemical and pesticide makers and their lobbyists, though it would make ordinary Americans suffer from cuts to public health and environmental protections," he added.
Path ahead
The administration’s proposed budget – entitled ‘A New Foundation for American Greatness’ – reflects its policy priorities, but Congress budget negotiations will determine actual fiscal year 2018 spending levels.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Mick Mulvaney said in a press conference that he does not believe Congress will wholly adopt the budget. But he expects legislators will "work with the administration on trying to figure out places where we’re on the same page".
Earlier this month, Congress passed a continuing resolution to fund the government until September that cut EPA spending by $8m – only about 1%.
Despite this, the administration directed agencies last month to begin implementing agendas in line with the president’s draft budget.
A focus on core agency functions is also in keeping with broader efforts under the new administration tostreamline existing rules and to reform the regulatory process.
Mr Mulvaney is set to testify in front of House and Senate budget committees later this week.
https://chemicalwatch.com/56063/trump-budget-proposal-would-cut-epa-funding-by-a-third
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Pope Stresses Climate, Paris Accord During Trump's Visit
May 24, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Hannah Hess
Pope Francis this morning presented President Trump with a copy of his high-profile encyclical on the environment that calls for urgent action on climate change.
Ahead of Trump's visit to the Vatican, environmentalists had expressed hope that climate would be at the forefront of the meeting. They saw an opportunity to add a moral tone to the international chorus calling for the United States to stay engaged in the fight against global warming.
It's unclear how high climate change was on the agenda for the half-hour private conversation that preceded the gift exchange. It's customary for Francis to give heads of state his writings.
The pope greeted the president in Sala del Tronetto, the room of the little throne, on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace, where they shook hands, according to the White House pool report.
Francis and Trump then retreated to the pope's private study, where they sat down for a one-on-one meeting. It lasted 30 minutes, and Trump told the pope before he left: "Thank you. Thank you. I won't forget what you said."
Along with "Laudato Si'," the 2015 message that advocates for abandoning fossil fuels, Francis gave Trump "Amoris Laetitia," an encyclical on family, and "Evangelii Gaudium," which touches on social justice.
Francis also gave Trump this year's World Day of Peace message about nonviolence, telling him, "I signed it personally for you."
According to a readout from the White House, Trump focused his meetings with the Holy See on how the international community can work together to combat terrorism and suffering in crisis regions. The president also talked about the United States' commitment to fighting global famine.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is traveling with the president, told reporters on Air Force One that the Vatican's secretary of state brought up climate change and encouraged Trump to stay in the Paris climate accord.
Tillerson told reporters Trump has not made a "final decision," according to reports, and likely will not until "after we get home."
The Vatican described a discussion about "the promotion of peace in the world through political negotiation and interreligious dialogue" in a statement on Trump's visit.
Read, remember, heed message
Catholic activism around climate change boomed after Francis' 2015 encyclical, which called for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and developing sources of renewable energy.
"We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels — especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas — needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the lesser of two evils or to find short-term solutions," Francis wrote.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it would dedicate more resources to developing policies that protect the poor from climate change, including a program to help educate dioceses and hundreds of priests about the pope's message on the environment.
A spokeswoman for the Global Catholic Climate Movement sounded hopeful this morning.
"We were encouraged by the meeting and that President Trump said he would read 'Laudato Si' and remember what Pope Francis said in their private meeting," said associate director Christina Leaño in a statement to E&E News.
"'Laudato Si' not only emphasizes the need to celebrate and care for creation, but also the need for international cooperation, and to change our lifestyle and be willing to give up some of our own luxuries and convenience in order to care for the poor and vulnerable," Leaño said. "We pray that after receiving the message of 'Laudato Si,' President Trump will be convinced to stay in the Paris agreement and take steps to protect the climate."
Francis noted in the encyclical that international political responses to climate were remarkably weak. "The failure of global summits on the environment make it plain that our politics are subject to technology and finance," he wrote, pointing to special interests that manipulate information on climate.
Sierra Club's Global Climate Policy Director John Coequyt called it an "extraordinary gift" for Trump to receive directly from the pope. Coequyt said, "Trump would do well to heed its critically important message on the moral obligation to act on climate as he meets with world leaders in the coming days."
Trump said the meeting went "great" when asked by a reporter traveling in the pool.
"He is something," Trump said of the pope. "We had a fantastic meeting."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/05/24/stories/1060055084
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Trump Won't Make Paris Decision Until He Returns to U.S.
May 24, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
President Donald Trump likely won't make a decision on the Paris Climate treaty until he returns to the U.S., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters today.
The Vatican Secretary of State pressed Trump on climate change today and asked the president to keep the U.S. in the Paris Climate agreement.
"But we had a good exchange [on] the difficulty of balancing addressing climate change, responses to climate change, and ensuring that you still have a thriving economy and you can still offer people jobs so they can feed their families and have a prosperous economy," Tillerson said, according to a pool report. "And that’s a difficult balancing act to take, and so I think we had a good exchange there, and we look forward to having further talks with them on climate policy.”
Pope Francis had welcomed Trump to the Vatican by handing Trump a signed copy of his encyclical calling for action on climate change. Tillerson said he did not know if the Pope discussed the issue with Trump.
When asked about the meeting on Air Force One, Tillerson said Trump "hasn't made a final decision" on the Paris deal and likely will not until "after we get home."
That means Trump will likely spend two days starting Friday getting pressure to stay in the deal from the heads of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The Trump administration has left its options open in the preparation for the G-7 meeting, refusing to offer clear positions on climate change as part of the advance preparations typical for high level meetings.
WHAT'S NEXT: Trump will meet with G-7 leaders, and possibly make a decision after he returns home next week.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Appliance Group Warns EPA Against 'Broad Reconsideration' of HFC Limits
May 24, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
As EPA is gathering input on which regulations it should scrap or significantly revise, a major commercial appliance industry group is urging the agency to maintain its rules limiting hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, requesting only targeted changes to some of the deadlines.
The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) in May 15 comments to EPA is defending two Obama-era rules phasing out high global warming potential (GWP) HFCs, promulgated under the agency's Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program. They argue the SNAP rules are particularly important to achieve the goals of the so-called Kigali Amendment, a global deal reached last year to phase down HFCs as part of the Montreal Protocol.
“In light of the amendment, we are requesting that there is not broad reconsideration” of EPA's SNAP rules, “but instead a limited and minor modification,” AHRI writes. “We believe it is inappropriate to broadly re-open or repeal the rules as this could have negative consequences in meeting the U.S. obligations under the Kigali [A]mendment, which industry strongly supports.”
It is unclear if the Trump administration intends to move forward with the Kigali deal. The amendment likely must be ratified by the Senate, though President Donald Trump would first have to present the deal to the chamber for such a process.
The Kigali deal amends the Montreal Protocol -- the 1987 treaty originally crafted to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals -- to limit HFCs under a global phasedown schedule. But the deal is markedly different from the Paris climate agreement, which allows countries to submit voluntary and individually determined GHG reduction pledges with the aim of meeting the long-term temperature goals.
By contrast, the Kigali Amendment sets specific and mandatory steps for countries to phase down the chemicals, with trade sanctions to be imposed on non-participants and countries that do not meet the treaty's requirements.
Appliance and chemical industry groups broadly support the Kigali Amendment, and they have been making a quiet push for the Trump administration to back the deal.
As part of that push, they hope to separate any consideration of Kigali from the more controversial Paris pact -- which has sharply divided top Trump officials and led to a months-long back-and-forth saga over whether Trump will pull the United States out of the deal.
One industry source notes that the Kigali Amendment “might be something that [the administration] would be willing to support more than Paris,” in part due to broad and consistent industry support for the HFC deal. The source believes the administration will look at the Kigali deal “separate” from the Paris Agreement, and is “hoping that one will not jeopardize the other.”
Stephen Andersen, director of research for the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and a former EPA air official, says “companies and industry associations have been writing very constructive memos to the president, the State [Department] and EPA about the Kigali Amendment.”
He says such memos paint the Kigali Amendment as a “well-crafted, business-friendly approach to solving a problem that would be chaos if it were not there.” Andersen adds the benefit of the Kigali deal is that every country “is going in the same direction, rather than running around like chickens with no heads.”
'Without Re-Opening or Repealing'
The May 15 comments from AHRI, however, mark the industry's first public defense of EPA's SNAP rules since the Trump administration took office. The appliance industry group is urging EPA to largely maintain the rules, which would contribute to U.S. compliance with the Kigali Amendment.
However, it seeks a “very narrow and limited minor change” to the phaseout deadline for HFCs in certain products.
AHRI requests EPA delay by one to two years the phaseout deadlines for certain stand-alone commercial refrigeration equipment in the July 2015 SNAP rule, and delay by one year the phaseout deadlines for chiller equipment in the September 2016 SNAP rule.
The latter alteration would reflect the 2025 phaseout deadline for chillers agreed upon last year in a first-time deal on HFC limits between industry groups and environmentalists. The Obama EPA in its 2016 rule ultimately chose a phaseout deadline for chillers of one year earlier, in 2024.
AHRI notes these “minor” deadline changes “can be implemented without broadly re-opening or repealing the rules and without jeopardizing compliance with the U.S. obligations under the Kigali [A]mendment, which industry strongly supports.”
In its comments, AHRI also urges EPA to quickly grant a petition approving several low-GWP alternatives -- R-448A, R-449A and R-449B -- for use in medium-temperature, stand-alone refrigeration equipment. AHRI submitted a March 20 petition to expand the approval of these alternatives to medium-temperature equipment under the SNAP program. It notes the alternatives “are needed for commercial refrigeration systems to be compliant with transitions expected to start in 2019. The commercial refrigeration sector needs these alternatives very quickly to finalize business planning to meet these deadlines.”
AHRI argues the “expedient” approval of these chemicals is needed to meet the Kigali agreement's limits, which the group says it is “strongly committed” to implementing.
“Industry needs more alternatives approved and adequate time to provide manufacturers with much needed clarity to develop efficient products and resolve many technical issues surrounded with the use of low-GWP refrigerants, some of which are flammable and require complete equipment redesign, safety upgrades for manufacturing facilities, changes to safety standards and codes and increased training for workers and technicians,” AHRI writes.
The comments also request an in-person meeting with EPA officials to discuss these issues.
Risks of Not Ratifying
Despite a broad push for the United States to ratify the Kigali Amendment, it is unlikely the Trump administration will make an imminent move on the issue. Much of the global climate policy focus is on whether Trump will decide to exit the Paris Agreement. Domestically, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is pursuing a largely deregulatory path, reviewing several Obama-era climate rules for repeal or revision.
The industry source says that even if the administration is slow to move on Kigali, the United States would largely “be OK for the next four to five years,” noting that the two Obama-era SNAP rules will mostly meet the country's first phasedown requirement under the deal in 2019.
But beyond that, it is “going to be a little bit dicey if the agreement is not ratified,” the source adds, noting EPA would need to put in place further requirements, either through the SNAP program or through an industry-preferred allocation system that the agency has used to implement prior Montreal Protocol limits.
However, EPA would likely not be able to set up that allowance-based system, which would authorize both chemical producers and appliance manufacturers to buy and sell compliance credits to achieve the Kigali phasedown limits, until the amendment is ratified.
More broadly, not ratifying the HFC deal could carry significant risks. The Montreal Protocol includes strict trade sanctions banning the import of chemicals from countries that are not members of the deal and do not follow its phasedown requirements. Exporting chemicals to such countries would also be prohibited.
Thus, if the United States does not join the Kigali pact and does not follow its HFC restrictions, domestic chemical producers could not export HFCs to developing countries like India that are poised to be significant customers because the Kigali Amendment does not require them to begin phasing down the substances until 2028.
IGSD's Andersen outlines another concern regarding Kigali implementation, should the administration move forward with the pact. He warns that significant cuts to EPA staff -- as the Trump White House has sought -- could actually hurt industry efforts to comply with the HFC limits.
“Once an agency of the government decides to do something, a lot of the work from that moment forward is supporting industry in getting the job done,” Andersen says, noting his role at EPA consisted of “80 to 90 percent helping the industry accomplish the objectives and 10 percent regulation.”
He adds it is “not a good idea” for the president to “diminish the staff that are helping the industry accomplish cost savings or clean air” requirements, noting that compliance can be “labor-intensive” and EPA often helps to relieve some of that burden. Rather, Andersen suggests a “business-like approach” that expands the role of government “to help industry create jobs and clean the air.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/appliance-group-warns-epa-against-broad-reconsideration-hfc-limits
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