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(ACC Mentioned) ETHYL, FMC and BASF Receive Responsible Care Awards from ACC
Jun 6, 2017 | Chemical Engineering Online
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) presented its Responsible Care Company of the Year award today to three companies: Ethyl Corporation in the small size category, FMC Corporation in the medium size category... -
(ACC Mentioned) US to Ride Wave of Growth - ACC
Jun 7, 2017 | ICIS
By Joseph Chang
The US chemical industry is poised for accelerated growth, riding on a wave of global economic growth and a surge of investments based on cost competitive shale gas, the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) chief economist said on 6 June. -
(ACC Mentioned) Vitter Lands Law Firm Gig
Jun 7, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
Former Republican Sen. David Vitter has a new gig practicing law back in his home state of Louisiana. -
(ACC Mentioned) DeLay Signs First Lobbying Clients in Years
Jun 7, 2017 | Politico - Influence
By Theodoric Meyer
...Former Sen. David Vitter has a new gig. The Louisiana Republican, who joined Mercury in February after retiring from the Senate, has joined the New Orleans office of the law firm Butler Snow as of counsel. -
Senate Panel Advances FERC, Interior, Energy Nominees
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Alan Kovski
A Senate committee voted June 6 to advance two nominations for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a step toward restoring the quorum the commission needs to make basic decisions on electric grid regulation, natural gas pipeline projects and more. -
Trump Picks Lawyer Involved in Carbon Rule Challenge for DOJ Enviro Chief
Jun 7, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
President Donald Trump plans to nominate longtime Washington lawyer Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who is involved in the lawsuits challenging EPA’s Clean Power Plan, to run DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, the White House announced today. -
NGOs Challenge US FDA Decision on Perchlorate in FCMs
Jun 7, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Nine NGOs have filed an objection to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to continue to allow perchlorate in dry food packaging materials. -
State Attorneys General Challenge EPA's Reversal on Chlorpyrifos Ban
Jun 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A coalition of seven Democratic state attorneys general (AGs) is challenging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's reversal of an Obama-era plan to ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food, arguing that the decision violates federal law and also an appeals court... -
The EPA’s Inspector General Is Probing Whether an Agency Staffer Colluded With Monsanto
Jun 6, 2017 | Huffington Post
By Paul D. Thacker
The inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a probe into possible collusion between a former high-ranking EPA official and Monsanto, the maker of the herbicide glyphosate, according to a letter the IG sent to a lawmaker last Friday... -
U.S. Oil Exports Double, Reshaping Vast Global Markets
Jun 6, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Lynn Cook
American oil exports are emerging as a disruptive new force in global markets. -
'Cancer Alley' Residents Say Industry is Hurting Town: 'We're Collateral Damage'
Jun 6, 2017 | The Guardian
By Lauren Zanolli
We’re sick of being sick, we’re tired of being tired,” said Pastor Harry Joseph of Mount Triumph Baptist Church, which serves this sleepy riverside town of about 1,000 residents, mostly poor and African American. -
Congress Cautiously Eyes Plan to Drain Petroleum Reserve
Jun 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink and Geof Koss
Since the nation's massive Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created more than four decades ago, Congress has treated it as a homeowner treats her fire insurance policy: Lawmakers have maintained the safeguard but otherwise haven't thought much about it... -
Renewable Energy Push Is Strongest in the Reddest States
Jun 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Justin Ellis and Nadja Popovich
Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state. -
EIA STEO Highlights: US Oil Output Nears New Record
Jun 6, 2017 | Platts
By Brian Scheid
US crude oil production will, for the first time in nearly 50 years, climb to 10 million b/d by March 2018, the US Energy Information Administration said Tuesday. -
Gas, Renewables Outpace Coal Expansions — FERC
Jun 6, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Natural gas, wind and solar continued to dominate additions to the U.S. energy system during the past four months, according to a new federal study. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump's Infrastructure Push Could Soothe Chemical Makers’ Worry
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Jack Kaskey
President Donald Trump's plan to channel $1 trillion into improving the country's infrastructure couldn't come at a better time for chemical makers increasingly concerned that the country won't be able to handle exports from a record wave of new factories. -
Infrastructure Projects Need More Open And Competitive Bidding
Jun 6, 2017 | RedState
By Dan Spencer
There is bi-partisan agreement in Washington, D.C. that America needs to shore up its creaky infrastructure. How to fix it is a different matter. -
Norquist on Infrastructure: State and Local Governments Should Adopt Open Competition Laws Now
Jun 6, 2017 | Americans for Tax Reform
By Elizabeth McKee
Grover Norquist appeared as a panelist today at the 7th Annual Summit on the Economy, speaking on the topic of “Understanding Debt in the Context of Tax Reform and Economic Growth.” -
Deadline for States to Meet Obama-Era Emissions Rule Is Extended
Jun 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
The Trump administration will extend by one year a deadline for states to comply with a major Obama-era regulation on emissions of a smog-causing pollutant that spews from tailpipes and smokestacks. -
Paris Climate Deal Needs New Rules and Clarity, Scientists Say
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Jonathan Tirone
The Paris climate accord needs to be strengthened through new negotiations and national commitments to transparency, scientists argued in a report. -
Existing Climate Efforts Expected to Keep US Goals on Track
Jun 7, 2017 | AP (In The Wall Street Journal)
The momentum of climate change efforts and the affordability of cleaner fuels will keep the United States moving toward its goals of cutting emissions despite the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris global accord, business and government leaders... -
Poll: Most Want ‘Aggressive Action’ on Climate Change
Jun 6, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Mark Hensch
Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults think America should take “aggressive action” against global warming caused by climate change, according to a new poll. -
Will Pruitt Review GHG Endangerment Finding?
Jun 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
Recent statements from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are renewing speculation that he might review the prior administration's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, a landmark document that forms the basis of all... -
Trump Pitches Solar Panels for Border Wall After Paris Withdrawal
Jun 6, 2017 | Roll Call
By Lindsey McPherson
President Donald Trump may have found a place where he can embrace renewable energy: on his proposed border wall.
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(ACC Mentioned) ETHYL, FMC and BASF Receive Responsible Care Awards from ACC
Jun 6, 2017 | Chemical Engineering Online
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) presented its Responsible Care Company of the Year award today to three companies: Ethyl Corporation in the small size category, FMC Corporation in the medium size category and BASF Corporation in the large size category, recognizing each company’s outstanding performance and leadership in environmental, health, safety and security (EHS&S) performance.
“Responsible Care exemplifies the chemical manufacturing industry’s commitment to working and performing with safety and sustainability as top priorities,” said ACC President and CEO Cal Dooley. “ACC is proud to recognize BASF, FMC and Ethyl Corporation for their leadership and commitment to the safety of our facilities and products and the health of our employees and communities in which we operate.”
To be eligible for the Responsible Care Company of the Year award, companies must demonstrate they have met and surpassed Responsible Care performance criteria, including: a safety performance rating in the top 10 percent of companies in their size category, with no significant process incidents in the previous year; positive performance measures in the areas of transportation safety, process safety and emissions reduction; and demonstrated improvements in EHS&S performance, product stewardship, distribution safety and emergency preparedness.
Ethyl Corporation has been a strong proponent of Responsible Care since the program’s inception. Today, Ethyl is being recognized as a Responsible Care Company of the Year for the fifth time in the past seven years. Ethyl continues to make energy conservation a top priority. Over the last 11 years, Ethyl’s Houston plant’s conservation efforts have resulted in a 31 percent reduction in electrical usage in kilowatt hours per million tonnes. In addition Ethyl’s Houston Terminal experienced a 50 percent reduction in hazardous waste production from 2014 to 2015.
“Ethyl Corporation’s corporate culture is propelled by a commitment to product safety, the safety of our people and the safety of our communities,” said John Street, CEO of Ethyl. “We are honored to be recognized as Responsible Care Company of the Year for the fifth time as we strive to embed the principles of Responsible Care into all that we do.”
FMC Corporation practices the principles of Responsible Care at its facilities worldwide. The company recently received a leadership ranking from the Carbon Disclosure Project for its climate change strategies. Specifically, FMC converted to natural gas at a Rockland, Maine, facility, which resulted in a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, the company surpassed by 17 percent its goal of spending 50 percent of its research and development budget on sustainability projects, including biologicals, seed treatments and micronutrients for more sustainable crop protection.
“Responsible Care has been part of the fabric of FMC a long time,” said Pierre Brondeau, President, CEO and Chairman of FMC. “It has become a part of everything we do. It is a core value in many aspects, much more than what we would call a system or a process. This has led to a culture of continuous improvement that has produced winning results with employees and through the communities we serve.”
The principles of Responsible Care are reflected in BASF’s corporate purpose to create chemistry for a sustainable future. With a focus on addressing global megatrends such as demographic and social needs, increased urbanization and climate change, BASF works to increase the proportion of its products and solutions that make an extensive sustainability contribution along the value chain. Last year, BASF products related to climate protection helped reduce its customers’ emissions by nearly 50 percent – preventing 540 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.
“Responsible Care is always a priority in every aspect of what we do at BASF,” said Wayne T. Smith, Chairman and CEO, BASF Corporation. “Not only does it provide a framework for our environment, health and safety programs – a way to track and measure our success – it imparts a common set of principles and a language to use with our employees, our customers, and our communities. It allows us to understand our roles as individuals, as an industry, and as a global environment so we can follow a common path toward a sustainable future.”
Responsible Care is the chemical industry’s world-class EHS&S performance initiative. Since 1988, Responsible Care companies have reduced hazardous releases to the air, land and water by 77 percent, improved energy efficiency overall, and have a worker safety record that is three times better than the overall chemical manufacturing sector and six times safer than the manufacturing industry as a whole.http://www.chemengonline.com/ethyl-fmc-and-basf-receive-responsible-care-awards-from-acc/?printmode=1
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(ACC Mentioned) US to Ride Wave of Growth - ACC
Jun 7, 2017 | ICIS
By Joseph Chang
The US chemical industry is poised for accelerated growth, riding on a wave of global economic growth and a surge of investments based on cost competitive shale gas, the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) chief economist said on 6 June.
“The global economy is on a synchronised upswing, and the Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB) in the US is projecting growth well into Q4 2017 and Q1 2018 where we could see an acceleration of activity,” said ACC chief economist Kevin Swift at a press event at the ACC Annual Meeting in Colorado Springs.
Business investment is set to take over from consumer spending as the driver of the US economy, he noted. US chemical industry volumes, excluding pharmaceuticals, are expected to rise by 2.1% in 2017 after a 1.1% gain in 2016, and then lift off to 4.2% in 2018 and 4.1% in 2019 as a wave of new capacity comes online, according to the ACC.
Much of the new US chemical capacity will be exported, lifting the US trade balance in chemicals (excluding pharma) from $28.2bn in 2016 to 32.5bn in 2017 and $41.1bn in 2018, the trade group projects. Capital spending is also projected to surge from $31.9bn in 2016 to $33.8bn in 2017 and $35.7bn in 2018.
There have been 310 US chemical projects totaling $183bn-184bn announced because of competitive shale gas, Swift noted, with 62% of the amount representing foreign direct investment (FDI). “We continue to see a flow of investment – this is the place to be,” said Swift.
On key end markets, the US automotive sector likely peaked in 2016 with record light vehicle sales of 17.5m units, but the economist sees a “fairly high plateau” with unit sales in the 17.2m-17.3m range in the next few years.
“Some bloated inventories need to be worked off and auto loans are a concern,” said Swift. And the US housing market is continuing a long, slow climb out of the financial crisis of 2008-2009 with housing starts gradually headed back to 1.5m – “growth in line with underlying demographics”, said Swift.
ACC optimistic on Trump
The ACC is encouraged by the Trump administration’s approach to US energy production and regulatory and tax reforms, the head of the trade group said on 6 June.
“While it is a difficult time to understand exactly what is happening, there are a lot of positive things happening that are key to enhancing our competitiveness,” said Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the ACC, at the group’s press event.
“The foundation of our industry is on energy, natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs). We have a political environment and regulatory construct that will allow us to have an abundant supply of natural gas,” he added.
The first actions of the administration demonstrated its commitment to maximise production, noted Dooley. This included approvals of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline to help ensure the US has the infrastructure to capitalise on its vast energy resources, he said.
The head of the trade group is also optimistic on the passage of US tax reform legislation as well as an infrastructure bill. “We see an administration and Congress that are very focused on maximising economic growth and creating jobs,” said Dooley.
“The path to tax reform looks uncertain, but we are confident that we will see a lower corporate rate to enhance the equity between the US tax regime and that of our competitors,” he added.
On the negative side, Dooley said it was “a mistake to withdraw from the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership)” free trade agreement, which had benefits for the US chemical industry. The ACC is working with its partners in Canada and Mexico to ensure that any reforms to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) further enhance benefits for the US chemical industry, he said.
“The US chemical industry accounts for 14 cents out of every dollar of US exports, so we have a vested interest in trade,” said Dooley.
While the ACC has no official position on the Paris Accord, which the US administration has decided to withdraw from, “we are in complete alignment in our commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions”, said Dooley.
The ACC’s Responsible Care programme tracks its members’ GHG emissions, which have fallen 25% since 1992. “We have a record that demonstrates our commitment, regardless of Paris,” said Dooley.
“And there is not another industry so critical to helping other countries achieve reductions of GHG emissions by providing plastics that lightweight, lubricants to enhance engine efficiency, materials for tyres that reduce rolling resistance and insulations and coatings that improve energy efficiency,” he added.
For every unit of GHG emissions that the US chemical industry emits, it saves two units for its customers, said Dooley.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/06/07/10113499/us-to-ride-wave-of-growth-acc/
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(ACC Mentioned) Vitter Lands Law Firm Gig
Jun 7, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Amanda Reilly
Former Republican Sen. David Vitter has a new gig practicing law back in his home state of Louisiana.
Butler Snow LLP announced yesterday that Vitter, who left the Senate at the beginning of this year after serving two terms, joined the firm as counsel in the New Orleans office. He will focus on business and economic development in the energy sector, the firm said.
"David has a long and successful track record as a legislator and political leader," firm Chairman Donald Clark Jr. said in a statement. "His significant experience, especially in helping lead major public policy and economic development initiatives, makes him a really valuable addition to Butler Snow in Louisiana."
In the Senate, Vitter served as ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and chairman of the Small Business Committee. He was also previously a member of the House from 1999 to 2005.
Vitter announced his retirement from the Senate after losing a bitter race for governor in 2015 in which his involvement in a decades-old Washington prostitution scandal played a major role.
After leaving the Senate, Vitter in February joined Mercury, a lobbying and public affairs shop in Washington. His clients have included the American Chemistry Council, real estate firm Atlantic Development Group, chemical maker Cabot Corp., and Louisiana pharmaceutical wholesaler Morris and Dickson Co. LLC (Greenwire, April 6). Vitter will continue in his role as vice chairman at Mercury, according to Butler Snow.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/06/07/stories/1060055644
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(ACC Mentioned) DeLay Signs First Lobbying Clients in Years
Jun 7, 2017 | Politico - Influence
By Theodoric Meyer
With David Beavers and Aubree Eliza Weaver
TOM DeLAY WILL LOBBY ON HEALTH CARE: Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has returned to lobbying, nearly four years after shedding his last lobbying client. DeLay’s firm, First Principles, has registered to lobby for the HAPPE Corporation, a firm based in rural Coolin, Idaho, not far from the Canadian border, that has never hired a lobbyist before. Its business is listed as “Health care partnerships” on the disclosure form. DeLay will lobby on the American Health Care Act as the Senate takes up the bill. The firm is DeLay’s first lobbying client since he stopped lobbying for Argus Global in 2013. The former Texas congressman, of course, resigned in 2006 after getting caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
VITTER LANDS A SIDE HUSTLE: Former Sen. David Vitter has a new gig. The Louisiana Republican, who joined Mercury in February after retiring from the Senate, has joined the New Orleans office of the law firm Butler Snow as of counsel. The news was first reported by the Associated Press. He will continue to work full-time as a lobbyist in Washington for Mercury, where his clients include Morris & Dickson, Cabot Corporation, the Atlantic Development Group, the American Chemistry Council, Morganza Action Coalition and the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, according to disclosure records. “This doesn’t change his role or work at Mercury,” a Mercury spokeswoman wrote in an email.
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/politico-influence/2017/06/06/delay-signs-first-lobbying-clients-in-years-220694
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Senate Panel Advances FERC, Interior, Energy Nominees
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Alan Kovski
A Senate committee voted June 6 to advance two nominations for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a step toward restoring the quorum the commission needs to make basic decisions on electric grid regulation, natural gas pipeline projects and more.
The votes of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson to be FERC commissioners were by identical lopsided margins of 20-3, possibly reflecting the commission's relatively unpoliticized nature.
The committee also voted 14-9 to support the nomination of David Bernhardt to be deputy secretary of the Interior Department and 17-6 for Dan Brouillette to be a deputy secretary of energy.
Welcoming the FERC nomination votes, Don Santa, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said in a statement, “We estimate that about $14 billion in private capital—ready to be deployed on energy infrastructure projects—is being held on the sidelines while FERC lacks a quorum and cannot act on major projects.”
Votes by the full Senate have not yet been scheduled for the nominees.
Cantwell Opposes Bernhardt
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of the committee, opposed Bernhardt out of concern for what she called the risk, or at least the appearance, of conflicts of interest because of his work as an attorney for energy, water and mining companies.
He has represented energy companies including Noble Energy Inc., Cobalt International Energy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. and Sempra Energy (parent of San Diego Gas & Electric utility and Southern California Gas Co.), among others. Their work intersects Interior regulation in various ways, such as when Noble Energy or Cobalt seek to produce oil and gas in the Interior-regulated federal offshore.
Cantwell criticized him for having helped sue the Interior Department on behalf of clients, including the Westlands Water District, a large water distribution district that relies on contractual water supplies controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation, an Interior agency.
Bernhardt has promised to avoid participation in decisions affecting former clients for two years, Cantwell said, but she took the position that the revolving door of government and private-sector employment made the two-year restraint inadequate. He currently chairs the natural resource practice at law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP.
Environmental advocates also have opposed Bernhardt because of his legal representation of corporate interests. A May 17 letter to senators from a coalition of groups—American Rivers, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice and others—criticized him for such issues as providing legal services to Cadiz Inc., which is seeking a Interior Department of a right of way for a water pipeline. Activists oppose the project because they fear its water production from private land would affect groundwater in neighboring public land in the Mojave Desert.
Bernhardt responded to such criticisms during his nomination hearing by saying he would be leaving his law firm and legal clients if he is confirmed and will have no reason to allow previous legal work to affect his government service.
Cantwell also reminded listeners that Bernhardt had been Interior counselor during the administration of President George W. Bush, during which controversies emerged over staff misbehavior and a political appointee tampering with the wording of scientific assessments.
“I know there is no evidence Mr. Bernhardt personally participated in these activities,” Cantwell added.
Murkowski Likes Four, Seeks More
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the committee, had brief words of praise for all of the nominees. She and Cantwell were the only senators who spoke at the hearing.
“I believe all four of these nominees are capable, competent, and well-qualified for the roles that they have been selected for,” Murkowski said.
She was critical of the slow pace of nominations from the Trump administration, however. “I don't think that's an acceptable pace,” she told reporters after the votes.
Cantwell sounded a similar note. “Only two of the 40 offices under our jurisdiction have been filled,” she said. The two offices are Interior secretary and energy secretary.
Chatterjee, a long-time energy staffer for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Powelson, the president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, were nominated for FERC terms expiring in 2021 and 2020, respectively.
Brouillette is senior vice president of the United States Automobile Association, an organization providing financial services to military personnel, veterans, and their families. Before that he was a vice president of Ford Motor Co. He served in the Energy Department in the George W. Bush administration as an assistant secretary of energy for congressional and intergovernmental affairs from 2001 to 2003.
He previously worked in Congress for the House Energy and Commerce Committee and for lobbying firms, including FleishmanHillard Inc. His clients at that firm included Entergy Corp., Allegheny Energy Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp., according to OpenSecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics that tracks money in politics.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=113571507&vname=dennotallissues&fn=113571507&jd=113571507
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Trump Picks Lawyer Involved in Carbon Rule Challenge for DOJ Enviro Chief
Jun 7, 2017 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
President Donald Trump plans to nominate longtime Washington lawyer Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who is involved in the lawsuits challenging EPA’s Clean Power Plan, to run DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, the White House announced today.
Clark has been a partner at Kirkland & Ellis since 1996, except between 2001 to 2005, when he was the deputy assistant attorney for ENRD.
Clark is involved in the litigation over EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and likely will have to recuse himself from that lawsuit while running ENRD. He represented Consumers' Research, a self-described "independent educational organization," in filing a "friend of the court” brief along with the state of Nevada that urged the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the carbon rule.
He previously successfully argued on behalf of the Bush EPA before the D.C. Circuit in Massachusetts v. EPA, though that ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court and ultimately established EPA's mandate to regulate greenhouse gases.
Clark has testified before Congress several times recently, including last year, when he supported legislation that would end Chevron deference, the doctrine in which courts are supposed to accept an agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutes.
Coincidentally, Jeffrey Wood, the Trump appointee currently acting as head of ENRD who has had to recuse himself from the Clean Power Plan lawsuit because he represented Republican lawmakers in a filing, will testify on Thursday at a House Judiciary oversight hearing.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2017/06/trump-picks-lawyer-involved-in-carbon-rule-challenge-for-doj-enviro-chief-088719
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NGOs Challenge US FDA Decision on Perchlorate in FCMs
Jun 7, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Nine NGOs have filed an objection to the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to continue to allow perchlorate in dry food packaging materials. The consumer advocacy groups are seeking a formal evidentiary public hearing to secure an independent judgment of the determination.
Their action follows the FDA’s announcement last month that it was rejecting the NGOs’ 2014 food additive petition (FAP). This had called on the agency to:
· revoke its 2005 approval of "threshold of regulation" (TOR), which allows up to 1.2% sodium perchlorate monohydrate in dry food packaging;
· prohibit the use of perchlorate as a conductivity enhancer in the manufacture of antistatic agents used in food contact articles; and
· remove potassium perchlorate as an allowed additive in sealing gaskets for food containers.
The agency did complete the third request – to revoke the use of potassium perchlorate. But it says it did so at the request of the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS – formerly SPI), following the trade group’s claim that use of the substance has been abandoned by industry.
This, says the FDA, rendered the petitioners’ third request "moot".
Regarding the first two asks, the agency says these were outside the scope of a FAP. And it says the data provided by the NGOs do not back up the conclusion that the existing TOR exemption is not supportable.‘Flawed interpretation’
In their objection to the FDA, the consumer advocacy groups say that the denial "is based on a flawed interpretation of the law and the science".
The decision and its underlying analysis "grossly underestimate" the extent to which perchlorate migrates from food packaging, they say. And the agency "shows a disturbing failure to account for the accumulating body of evidence that the substance poses a risk of irreversible harm to the foetal and infant brain".
With regard to the requests falling outside the scope of a FAP, the NGOs argue that the FDA accepted and then took public comment on these requests; it is "arbitrary and capricious for the agency to unilaterally reverse its position without explaining why its initial interpretation was flawed."
And they criticise as "poor public policy" the agency’s granting of an industry petition that was filed three months after they filed suit against the FDA for its failure to meet the statutory deadline for responding to their own petition.
"FDA’s job is to protect the public from toxic chemicals," says Cristina Stella, staff attorney at petitioning organisation the Center for Food Safety. "The agency’s denial of our petition is irresponsible, illegal and indefensible."
The NGOs have requested a public hearing before an administrative law judge, to challenge the decision.
Hearings of this kind are rare, say the groups – the most recent appear to have taken place in the 1970s.
https://chemicalwatch.com/56656/ngos-challenge-us-fda-decision-on-perchlorate-in-fcms
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State Attorneys General Challenge EPA's Reversal on Chlorpyrifos Ban
Jun 7, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A coalition of seven Democratic state attorneys general (AGs) is challenging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's reversal of an Obama-era plan to ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food, arguing that the decision violates federal law and also an appeals court order requiring the agency to take final action on a proposed ban.
In legal objections, filed with EPA in advance of a June 5 deadline for challenging Pruitt's March 29 order reversing the Obama EPA's proposed ban, the AGs argue that Pruitt's decision conflicts with agency science and violates a Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) requirement to ensure residues of a pesticide on food crops are safe.
“The order is not authorized by the FFDCA and is an improper exercise of the Administrator’s authority because EPA failed to make the safety finding required by law in order to leave pesticide tolerances in effect,” the AGs say. “Moreover, the Administrator’s order did not comply with two orders of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which directed EPA to take final action on the proposed tolerance revocation rule as well as” a petition from environmental groups seeking a ban of chlorpyrifos use on food.
The states urge EPA to respond by Aug. 5 to their objections and to ban food uses of chlorpyrifos. Citing an FFDCA requirement for EPA to rule on objections “as soon as practicable,” the states argue 60 days is sufficient. The AGs are from California, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, and Vermont, and New York.
The AGs' challenge adopts arguments from environmental groups' long-standing legal push for EPA to ban use of chlorpyrifos to protect against neurodevelopmental risks to children. In 2007, groups petitioned EPA to revoke residue tolerances for chlorpyrifos, essentially banning its use on food, and later won a legal deadline from a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, which deemed the Obama EPA's delays in responding to the petition “egregious."
In November 2015, under pressure from the court, the Obama EPA issued a proposed revocation rule, which the 9th Circuit panel later ordered the agency to take final action on by March 31.
EPA's Reversal
But in a March 29 order, Pruitt reversed course and denied the advocates' petition for a ban, citing uncertainty in scientific data on the substance's risks.
Pruitt said EPA would continue to assess risks of chlorpyrifos as part of its Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act registration review scheduled for completion by October 2022.
The state AGs in their challenge argue that Pruitt's lacks authority to allow continued use of chlorpyrifos on food given an FFDCA requirement of “reasonable certainty of no harm” from aggregate dietary exposure to pesticides. They note that the Obama EPA failed to find chlorpyrifos met that standard, and stated in a proposed revocation rule that “the consistency of finding neurodevelopmental effects is striking” in the scientific literature.
Additionally, the AGs argue that state efforts to reduce chlorpyrifos exposures would be inadequate given that food is shipped nationwide and internationally, and that the responsibility to protect against risks lies with EPA.
“Consumers nationwide ingest foods that are grown throughout the United States and the world, many of which contain chlorpyrifos residues that have not been found by EPA to be safe,” the objections say. “There is no authority given to the Administrator to leave a tolerance in effect in the absence of a finding of safety."
Since Pruitt's reversal environmental groups have renewed their push for a ban in the 9th Circuit, and congressional Democrats have questioned whether the move is appropriate.
In an April 27 letter to EPA Inspector General (IG) Arthur A. Elkins, Jr., Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sought a "prompt and thorough" review of EPA Administrator Pruitt's March 29 order denying advocates' petition for a ban.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/state-attorneys-general-challenge-epas-reversal-chlorpyrifos-ban
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The EPA’s Inspector General Is Probing Whether an Agency Staffer Colluded With Monsanto
Jun 6, 2017 | Huffington Post
By Paul D. Thacker
The inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a probe into possible collusion between a former high-ranking EPA official and Monsanto, the maker of the herbicide glyphosate, according to a letter the IG sent to a lawmaker last Friday that HuffPost has obtained.
The inspector general’s move comes in response to a request from Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) for an investigation into whether the EPA staffer colluded with the agricultural giant to bias research on glyphosate, a key component of the product Roundup. His request was based on media reports of documents released in the course of a lawsuit against Monsanto alleging glyphosate causes cancer, and that the company may have spun research and hired scientists to cover this up.
“As you are aware, there is considerable public interest regarding allegations of such collusion,” wrote Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. in his response to Lieu, dated May 31. “As a result, I have asked the EPA OIG Office of Investigations to conduct an inquiry into several agency review-related matters.”
The EPA and Lieu did not immediately return requests for comment for this story.
Documents released in the lawsuit reference internal Monsanto emails mentioning Jess Rowland, who was previously a manager in the EPA’s pesticide division, allegedly bragging to company officials in April 2015 that he could “kill” investigations into glyphosate. A Monsanto regulatory affairs manager sent an email to colleagues that said Rowland had told him, “If I can kill this I should get a medal.”
At the time of the email, Monsanto was apparently seeking Rowland’s help to shut down a review of glyphosate within the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Rowland retired from the EPA last year, and plaintiffs’ lawyers have been deposing him about allegations that Monsanto may have funneled money to him through third parties.
Rowland’s lawyer, William E. Lawler III, downplayed the IG’s letter in an email to HuffPost. “Jess Rowland is a well-respected former public servant who honorably served the EPA for 26 years and received commendations from the agency both during his service and on his retirement,” wrote Lawler. “He is a man of the highest integrity and ethics and he has done nothing wrong.”
Monsanto did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Inspectors general have wide-ranging authority to investigate matters of corruption at federal agencies, explains Michael Hubbard, a retired Special Agent in Charge for the EPA’s criminal investigations division.
With confirmation that the IG’s office is taking up a probe, it’s likely that IG investigators will begin interviewing Rowland’s former colleagues and bosses, pulling records and looking through his emails, Hubbard said. Another step could involve looping in investigators at the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, or obtaining subpoenas that would grant access to Rowland’s bank records.
“You want to start looking at money trails,” Hubbard said. “Has he benefited from Monsanto? Was the money changing hands with him or his significant other?”
The court cases against Monsanto have rippled across the Atlantic, sparking debate in Europe, where governments are considering whether to renew an application allowing glyphosate to stay on the market in the European Union, said Bart Staes, a Belgian member of parliament representing the Green Party.
“There has been a political and scientific debate for the last two years because the authorization to bring glyphosate to the market has expired and we need to make a decision by the end of the year,” said Staes.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization division focused on cancer, issued a conclusion in March 2015 that glyphosate is carcinogenic. But the European Food Safety Authority, an EU scientific body evaluating food-related concerns, issued its own finding in October 2015 that it was not. The two rely on different criteria to come to their decision, Staes said: While IARC relies on published studies, EFSA is also able to assess data that is proprietary to companies.
Last week, Christopher Portier, the former associate director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, sent a letter to the president of the European Commission stating that he had re-examined some raw data of animal studies EFSA used to conclude that glyphosate did not cause cancer, and found eight instances of tumors that EFSA had not included in its assessment. Portier recently retired after 40 years of employment in the United States government and is now a part-time adviser to the Environmental Defense Fund and a consultant to a law firm involved in glyphosate litigation.
Members of the EU Parliament had asked him to review a portion of the proprietary data EFSA released to them, though he is not allowed to make that data more widely available, he said. “The lawyers back in the States haven’t seen this,” Portier told HuffPost.
Portier, who added that he wasn’t compensated for this work, said he is going to write to the EPA administrator himself because “they also missed all the tumors.”
“They have had this information in their files for decades, but they never analyzed the data,” he told HuffPost.
The head of IARC recently told Politico that his organization has faced an onslaught of criticism regarding its conclusions on glyphosate similar to backlash IARC faced from tobacco companies in the early 2000s when it concluded that secondhand smoke causes cancer.
Staes said the glyphosate lawsuit in the U.S. has spurred further concern that Monsanto has colluded with purportedly independent scientists: “We are now getting some written proof of collusion between scientists and Monsanto, which has these scientists like puppets on a string.”
Following Portier’s letter, Staes and three other members of parliament filed a lawsuitdemanding that EFSA make all the data on glyphosate public.
“More and more, the debate is about corporations controlling the science, and then this science is used by the regulators,” said Staes. “This really goes beyond glyphosate.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/epa-inspector-general-probing-collusion-with-monsanto_us_59372108e4b0aba888b99dca
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U.S. Oil Exports Double, Reshaping Vast Global Markets
Jun 6, 2017 | Wall Street Journal
By Lynn Cook
American oil exports are emerging as a disruptive new force in global markets.
The U.S. exported 1 million barrels of oil a day during some months so far this year—double the pace of 2016—and is on track to average that amount for all of 2017, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Department and the International Trade Commission.
In another era, a domestic glut and low prices, currently hovering under $50 a barrel, might have caused companies to slow the pace of drilling. But since Congress lifted a ban on oil exports at the end of 2015, shipments out of Texas and Louisiana have skyrocketed, taking the fruits of the U.S. fracking revolution to new markets.
“The glut of crude around the world, coupled with extremely low prices to rent oil tankers, is upending petroleum flows,” said Kurt Barrow, vice president at consulting firm IHS Energy.
While U.S. exports make up just 1% of global oil volumes, they are a new factor helping to tamp down prices and keep them rangebound between $45 and $55 a barrel. Exports represent a relief valve for U.S. drillers, who are ramping up production at a pace to surpass 10 million barrels a day, a new record, by next year if not sooner.
The U.S., which shipped more than 110 million barrels to foreign buyers from January to April, according to ITC data, is benefiting in part from a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to temporarily reduce output.
A major reason why U.S. exports are rising is that American crude has been selling at a discount of roughly $2.50 a barrel to the international oil-price benchmark, Brent, for much of this year.
That spread makes it profitable to pay to transport U.S. oil to farther flung locales. If U.S. oil’s discount to Brent gets bigger, American shipments will ramp up. If it shrinks, less U.S. oil will flow overseas.
Another big reason for the increase in exports is so-called “back haul” economics, said Mason Hamilton, an analyst with the Energy Department. Tankers carrying crude from the Middle East to Texas used to unload and go home empty. Now U.S. oil can be loaded on those tankers and make a pit stop in Europe on their way back.
In late May, Occidental Petroleum Corp. successfully tested docking a supertanker that can hold more than 2 million barrels of crude. The test at its shipping terminal in the Port of Corpus Christi was part of a plan to eventually export bigger shipments from Texas to Asia and Europe.
The U.S. still ships out nine times more refined petroleum—like gasoline, diesel and propane—than it does raw crude oil. But that could start to change.
“It takes years to establish markets,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Refiners are protective of their refineries. They want a consistent quality stream—no mystery crudes—so they are testing it out.”
In 2013, 99% of the small trickle of oil that flowed out of the U.S. on special permits went to Canada. Since the lifting of the export ban, American oil has flowed to more than 30 countries, with China, Colombia and the U.K. emerging as big buyers.
So far this year, Asian buyers have taken 39% of U.S. shipments as Canada’s share has dropped to 30%, according to the latest federal data, which runs through April. European refiners have bought 22% and Latin America 9%.
China, the world’s largest oil importer, traditionally gets more than half of its crude from OPEC members like Saudi Arabia, Angola and Iran. But China, which imported a record 8.6 million barrels a day in December 2016, is stepping up imports of U.S. oil, as well as crude from Brazil, after its own production dropped significantly last year, according to the Energy Department.
“We believe that more U.S. oil production will be needed to meet future global demand and offset production declines in China and Mexico during 2017 and 2018,” said Rob Thummel, managing director for Tortoise Advisors, an energy investment adviser with $16.8 billion under management.
Since the start of this year, more oil routes have been forged between the U.S. and India, Hong Kong, Australia and Denmark. Even Georgia, sandwiched between big oil producers Russia and Azerbaijan on the Black Sea, took a shipment of U.S. crude in March. In some cases, experts believe, countries are taking U.S. shipments to make a statement to their current suppliers: We have options.
Italy and the Netherlands, where the pipeline-linked Port of Rotterdam serves as a major gateway to Europe, are also emerging as destinations for U.S. crude. Royal Dutch ShellPLC, which operates the largest refinery in Europe in Rotterdam, is among the companies that have shipped U.S. crude to the continent.
American crude’s place in Europe remains relatively small, at just shy of 25 million barrels in the first four months of the year. But the exports are a challenge to Russia, which toppled the U.K. and Norway as the top oil exporter into the Netherlands 12 years ago.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-oil-exports-double-reshaping-vast-global-markets-1496833200
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'Cancer Alley' Residents Say Industry is Hurting Town: 'We're Collateral Damage'
Jun 6, 2017 | The Guardian
By Lauren Zanolli
We’re sick of being sick, we’re tired of being tired,” said Pastor Harry Joseph of Mount Triumph Baptist Church, which serves this sleepy riverside town of about 1,000 residents, mostly poor and African American. Once a bucolic village of pasturelands and sugarcane fields on the banks of the Mississippi, St James, Louisiana, is now a densely packed industrial zone in the heart of Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor, commonly referred to as “Cancer Alley”.
It’s only anecdotal evidence of what life is like here, but Joseph says he has buried five residents in the last six months, all victims of cancer.
After a $1.9bn methanol plant recently broke ground and with another $1.3bn methanol plant and a controversial new oil pipeline planned for the area, Joseph’s one-room church has become a staging ground for an environmental justice fight – albeit one with tempered hopes under Donald Trump, even before he served notice on the Paris accord on climate change last week
Joseph has emerged as the de facto leader of a group of local residents demanding residential buyouts – for those who say they have had enough and struggle to sell their homes – and pressuring state and federal agencies to halt further development. With regulation that critics say is loose and incentives-rich, even by Louisiana standards, St James offers a glimpse into the type of unchecked development that Trump has hailed as a precondition for American jobs and economic growth.
The town’s location on the Mississippi river and accessibility to cheap oil and gas feedstock make St James what Louisiana Economic Development, a state agency, described to the Guardian as an “ideal” site for large industrial projects. About ten years ago, the town was rezoned from residential to industrial, paving the way for the highly concentrated development seen today. Fifteen large industrial sites – mainly oil storage facilities, pipelines and petrochemical plants – now fill the 13-mile stretch of road that defines the town of St James, also known as the fifth ward of St James parish.
Yet residents here say they’ve seen little economic benefit – either in jobs or tax revenues – from the industry that has taken over the town. Instead, they say, they’ve been saddled with a myriad of health issues, medical bills and environmental degradation.
“They put [the plants] here and the other parishes are the ones that get the jobs,” claimed Joseph. “We’re like the lamb that was sacrificed.”
The rise of the oil and petrochemical industry at their doorstep has thrust residents into a financial trap. They can’t afford to leave without selling their houses, but the predominance of industrial plants and pipelines has slashed home values and scared off buyers. Many here see only one ticket out: a residential buyout by industrial companies operating here.
“We’re going to make sure they get compensated right and they are able to move on with their life,” said Joseph of the significant population here that wants to leave, many of them elderly. “They have dedicated themselves to St James. And right now they are saying, ‘I can live in St. James, but I can’t die in St. James.’”
Industrial ailments
Geraldine Mayho is one of those residents determined not to die in St James. A large suitcase and stack of boxes fill one corner of her modest home, which is bordered on both sides by the huge cylindrical oil storage tanks that dominate the local landscape. She walks through the house to point out the crooked doorways and window frames and cracked walls – an effect of the near-constant industrial activity at nearby loading docks that has shifted the house foundation.
She says she can’t afford to rent an apartment on her monthly pension of about $700 from her days as a janitor at the local high school. Her best option is to move in with her grandchildren in Mobile, Alabama, until someone – local industry, she hopes –compensates her for her home.
“Whether or not they buy me out, I’ve got to get out of here,” said Mayho. “I’m so tired of being sick.”
She says that since moving here in 1965, when the area was still mostly agricultural, she has suffered a range of ailments, from headaches to stomachaches and heart problems, that doctors could never fully explain. But several years ago, she says one doctor gave her a letter stating her conditions were the result of exposure to “toxic substances”.
Her family’s health, too, has been shaped by the town’s air pollution. She rattles off a list of six female relatives, all residents, recently diagnosed with or deceased from breast cancer. One son has had a persistent cough; another is infertile. Her daughter died in her 30s, but she says doctors couldn’t identify the exact cause.
“She was sick like I was sick,” Mayho said. Asked if she thought her daughter’s death had been caused by industrial pollution, she fought back tears: “I know it was.”
The Louisiana Tumor Registry, a state cancer tracker, only releases data on a regional level, so localized cancer rates are hard to come by. But many residents who speak to the Guardian seem to have some ailment or an affected family member, from cancer to asthma to multiple sclerosis and skin conditions, and they all trace it back to the air pollution from the chemical plants that surround them.
However, according to the Louisiana department of environmental quality (LDEQ), the state regulator, emissions from the collection of plants that surround St James are compliant with state and federal regulations. LDEQ representatives point to improvements in air quality over the years as a sign of regulatory success.
“It’s very clear that air quality has greatly improved over time,” Bryan Johnston, who works in the air permits division of the LDEQ, said. “Over the last 20 years and even more recently, in just the last several years, there has been dramatic declines in air emissions in St James parish.”
Johnston said the LDEQ would release its long-term emissions data for St James with its forthcoming final permitting decision for the YCI plant. Publicly available EPA data is inconclusive and often averaged across the entire county. One data set from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory for “core chemicals” – which does not include chemicals added since 1988 – shows wide year-over-year fluctuations in total air emissions for St James Parish since the late 1980s. In 2015, total core chemicals emissions were 501,150 pounds, scarcely below the 516,088 reported in 1988.
But few here would agree with Johnston’s assessment. Some say they simply stopped reporting strong chemical smells that regularly waft across the town because, they say, local authorities don’t do anything.
“Back in the day, you knew when you smelled it,” said Brettaiene Celestin, 66, describing unusual emissions events. She grew up in the area and lives alone in a small trailer that borders an industrial railroad and oil storage terminals. “But now, it’s like a part of your life.”
Local people say wild lemon and orange trees have stopped bearing fruit, there are no more butterflies or crickets, and new flooding issues have plagued the town since their industrial neighbors began to use the agricultural ditches that once let rainwater flow through for plant drainage use.
“[We feel] totally unprotected, forgotten about,” added Eve Butler, 60, a resident and local advocate.
Despite the constant refrain from politicians and companies touting job opportunities, few here of working age are employed in the local oil and petrochemical plants. Any boom in construction jobs is brief and the far fewer permanent jobs tend to go to contractors outside the parish or the state. There are some local residents employed by the nearby plants, but, according to residents, many people work outside of the town or parish, mainly in professional services positions or at other industrial plants.
“Our quality of life has deteriorated and nobody takes responsibility for that. Because you’re told: it’s private industry, it’s going to be good for the community. But the community has not benefitted,” said Butler. “We are kind of, like, collateral damage.”
A state of deregulation
With two new methanol plants, plus the terminus of the Bayou Bridge pipeline – which would carry crude oil from the controversial Dakota Access pipeline – planned for the area, local and state activists see an opportunity to fight back. But Trump’s dual aims of handcuffing the EPA with budget cuts while also accelerating industrial deregulation have tempered hopes for change here.
In January, Yuhuang Chemical Inc (YCI), a subsidiary of China’s Shandong Yuhuang Chemical Co, broke ground on the first phase of its $1.9bn methanol plant. When the project was announced in 2014, it was the largest greenfield investment by a Chinese firm in the United States. The plant will eventually produce 3m metric tons of methanol per year, 40-60% of which could be shipped abroad, according to YCI’s general counsel, Jerry Jones.
South Louisiana Methanol’s (SLM) $1.3bn plant, to produce 5,300 metric tons per day, is planned nearby. The Bayou Bridge pipeline, another project drawing the ire of environmentalists, would, once built, cross 163 miles of delicate Louisiana wetlands, including eight watersheds, and terminate at oil storage terminals in St James. Both projects are expected to receive permits to move forward soon.
In this largely African American town that grew out of former slave plantations, people are concerned with a certain kind of environmental injustice. Two environmental groups have pushed the EPA to declare civil rights violations because the cumulative air pollution of existing and new plants disproportionately impacts a community of color.
“We felt it was a perfect example of environmental injustices happening at a community that has already got too much to be there,” said Darryl Malek-Wiley, environmental justice organizer at the Sierra Club, which, along with the local not-for-profit Louisiana Environmental Action Network, filed the EPA petitions against YCI and SLM.
The EPA did not respond to the SLM petition, but in August, the agency agreed with some parts of the group’s petition addressing the YCI plant and kicked the question of the air emissions permit back to LDEQ. The state agency floated a revised permit for public comment late last year; the same environmental groups again petitioned in March, saying the new version still failed to comply with Clean Air Act standards. But another EPA ruling in their favor is an unlikely prospect, the advocacy group fears, as the agency prepares for major cuts under Trump, including the elimination of its environmental justice program. The LDEQ says it expects to issue final approval for the new emissions permit this month.
For environmentalists in Louisiana, where the LDEQ is widely viewed as an accessory of industrial corporations, Trump’s attempts to unravel the EPA are especially worrying.
“[LDEQ] feels that it’s their goal to issue permits … not to protect citizens of Louisiana, not to protect the environment,” said Malek-Wiley. He says that while the EPA’s Region 6 office, which covers Louisiana, has been among the weakest on enforcement, the agency has still stepped in at times when the state has not. One of the first environmental justice cases tried by the EPA put a stop to a proposed PVC plant in 1998 in Convent, Louisiana, directly across the river from St James.
Johnston, of the LDEQ, strongly rejected claims the office served as a rubber stamp for industry, citing what he said were long-term air quality improvements in the state.
Louisiana has developed an outsized role in the country’s energy and petrochemical industry, thanks in part to generous tax breaks that are largely borne at the local level. The state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP), which dates back to the 1930s, offers a 10-year local property tax exemption for industrial developers. Between 2008 and 2015, the state estimates it lost nearly $10bn in revenue under the ITEP. It expects to forego an additional $7bn from 2016 to 2020.
St James has been one of the top parishes for the ITEP over the past decade, giving out an average of $36.5m in tax breaks every year. That’s compared to a total of $61.8m in taxes actually collected in the parish in 2015.
Crawfish broil
As the latest high-profile company to enter the town, in April, YCI hosted a crawfish boil with company representatives on hand to answer questions about the plant. The event turned contentious, as Joseph and a group of upset citizens peppered the company president and CEO, Charlie Yao, with questions, unsatisfied with his assertion that the plant would be built to the highest environmental and safety standards.
“No one can get 100% support of anything you do,” Yao told the Guardian. “That’s my mission, to work with people.” He said the meeting was the start of a community engagement process that would include job and vendor fairs this summer. The company plans to hire 90-100 people on a permanent basis once the first phase of the plant comes online, by October of 2019.
“We’re going to try to do the best we can to be a good community neighbor,” Jones, YCI’s general counsel, told the Guardian. When asked if the company would participate in any residential buyouts, Jones said: “I don’t feel it’s appropriate [for YCI] to bear the burden of solving that problem for the community. If the industrial complex wants to figure out a way to solve that problem, then we will be a part of that.”
Still, many here remain skeptical.
“What you are looking at is a dying community,” said Butler. “Not because of the residents, but because of the way industry is allowed to come in. And they call it progress.” Years ago, she encouraged her children, who grew up in St James, to move out of Louisiana because of the health risks. Within the next ten years or so, she expects the entire town will be nothing but plants and pipelines.
“We’ve got a president now that looks at money and not people,” said Joseph. “Our fight is just beginning, because if it’s not going to be this [plant], it’s going to be another one.” Nevertheless, he says his hope is that public pressure on YCI will force the company – and others looking at St James – to eventually pull out.
“We might not win all the battles,” he said. “But I think we are going to win the war.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/06/louisiana-cancer-alley-st-james-industry-environment
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Congress Cautiously Eyes Plan to Drain Petroleum Reserve
Jun 6, 2017 | E&E Daily
By George Cahlink and Geof Koss
Since the nation's massive Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created more than four decades ago, Congress has treated it as a homeowner treats her fire insurance policy: Lawmakers have maintained the safeguard but otherwise haven't thought much about it unless there was a crisis or a bill coming due.
The White House is hoping to change that view.
In an era of booming domestic oil production and soaring deficits, the Trump administration is questioning if it makes sense to keep valuable crude buried in deep salt caverns under the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. The administration is pushing in its fiscal 2018 budget to sell off half of those nearly 700 million barrels of oil over the next decade to raise more than $16.6 billion to help cut the deficit.
"It's no longer necessary," said White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney recently. "I don't need to take this much of your money to bury in the ground out in West Texas someplace for domestic security and national security reasons when we have domestic surpluses — supplies like we do."
Conservative and free-market groups, like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, have long called for draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but the idea has caught hold with the Trump White House. More than two dozen Heritage staffers worked on the White House transition team earlier this year and drafted a conservative budget blueprint that proposed selling the reserve.
"Global oil markets are very diverse, and we are not dependent on any one country by any means," said Nick Loris, a Heritage analyst who has published several papers arguing the free market, not the government, is best equipped to handle any disruptions in global energy supplies.
Loris demurs when asked directly about influencing the administration's SPR policy, but his former boss, Paul Winfree, now serves as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council for the White House. The Trump administration has said it wrote its own budget.
Capitol Hill is only starting to take notice of one of the more significant shifts in energy policy yet proposed by the Trump administration. But as lawmakers weigh their budget options in coming months, they will tune into a plan that could impact domestic energy production, the United States international energy commitments and global oil prices.
An uncertain Congress
Congress created the SPR after the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries waged a six-month oil embargo against the U.S. and other nations to protest their support for Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
Since then, Congress has not changed the fundamentals of the 1975 law that requires the nation to keep a 90-day supply of oil in government reserve. For many lawmakers, maintaining the oil supply is seen as part of the nation's national security strategy. But increasingly, members are open to the White House argument that the government may be able to ease its oil holdings.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said last month that she at first thought the budget proposal to sell half the reserve was "crazy." But she concedes she's not completely dismissing the administration's argument that draining some of the reserve could be a boon for domestic production.
"You know how I feel about the SPR, very possessive, because I do feel like it's the insurance policy," she told E&E News. "I think the direction the administration is taking, or as I'm reading the lines there, it's we don't necessarily need as robust a Strategic Petroleum Reserve because we're going to enhance energy production. I like that, but does that really happen?"
Indeed, House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) says the SPR should only be tapped if it's coupled with another White House budget proposal to open up 1 million acres in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.
"Stockpiling is not as good as having an ongoing development program for either reserves for oil or critical minerals. It would be a much wiser policy to have an ongoing development of those than trying to stockpile those," said Bishop.
He added, "If you don't do ANWR, then there is no reason for selling off the reserve. You have to do A to do B."
Murkowski has long championed opening up ANWR, a proposal decried by environmentalists.
Bishop's argument could carry weight with conservatives, particularly in the House, who have long been frustrated by limits for energy exploration on public lands.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said he's open to drawing down the reserve, although he would not eliminate it for national security purposes. He said increased domestic production and no sign of another Arab oil embargo make it a good time to reconsider the SPR's role.
Barton added he does not believe either political party has given much thought to the SPR in recent years as oil prices have been stable. He added that linking it to ANWR may be a way to build interest and support for selling the reserve.
Congressional Democrats, though, are signaling some opposition to a large-scale sale of the oil supply, citing national security.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of ENR, noted the SPR's past role in quelling markets disrupted by hurricanes. "You could have a Katrina, you could have a terrorist attack," Cantwell said. "The ways these guys are cyberattacking energy, you could have all sorts of things happen."
Smaller sell-offs, modernization
Congress already has a long history of using the SPR as a funding source; the administration argues that it provides precedent for selling the reserve to pay down the deficit.
The SPR been tapped more than 20 times with barrels valued at $68 billion sold or exchanged in the past 42 years. Most of the time, the money has not been for energy emergencies but for test sales and other funding needs. In the 1990s, Congress approved selling off barrels to help cut the deficit by $23.6 billion.
Moreover, a recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service shows the reserve is already due to be cut by 21 percent, or 149 million barrels, by 2025 under various laws that use it as a funding source for programs mostly unrelated to energy.
Murkowski has repeatedly criticized Congress for dipping into the SPR as a revenue source to pay for unrelated health care and transportation programs — a practice she likened to treating the reserve like a "piggy bank" (E&E News PM, July 7, 2015).
Despite Murkowski's complaints, the two-year budget deal agreed to in October 2015 raised spending caps in part by the sale of 58 million barrels of SPR crude between fiscal 2018 and 2025. Murkowski did win a concession in the budget agreement to set aside $2 billion from those sales for upgrades for SPR facilities (Greenwire, Oct. 27, 2015).
But the fiscal 2018 budget proposal calls for halving the modernization fund to $1 billion, while closing two of the four SPR facilities by 2027. The budget additionally calls for liquidating the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve — created administratively in 2014 by the Obama administration after Superstorm Sandy — and using an estimated $69 million in revenues from the sale for modernization.
Murkowski was underwhelmed by the proposal, saying modernization is necessary to keep the SPR as an "effective insurance policy."
Whether Congress accedes to selling off half the SPR remains to be seen, but given lawmakers' recent tendencies to tap the reserve as a pay-for, industry analyst ClearView Energy Partners LLC predicted that "future fundraising oil sales seem more likely than not at this juncture."
International, industry factors
Several nations, including the U.S., created the International Energy Agency in the mid-1970s to provide for a global response to any future embargoes. All nations in the group are required to have access to a 90-day supply of oil either from government or private reserves. The U.S. today exceeds that requirement with a 149-day supply of 688.5 million barrels.
Dan Brouillette, President Trump's nominee to be deputy Energy secretary, pledged last week during his confirmation hearing to "stand by federal law" when pressed on the SPR (Greenwire, May 25).
Jason Bordoff, a top energy adviser for the Obama White House, said the United States could still meet its international commitments with reserves currently held by the private sector if the drawdown went ahead. But he said he opposes an SPR draining, in part because it could give other nations with their own government reserves more say in global markets.
"The SPR has been an important national security asset for 40 years, and I think it's shortsighted to sell it off because our imports have done well as a result of the shale boom," he added.
Katie Bays, an energy analyst with Height Securities, said she doubts a drawdown would have a long-term impact on oil prices because it would be carefully coordinated over several years.
But Bays said she does not expect Congress to approve the plan this year, citing the concerns already raised by Murkowski and the modest savings it would generate when compared with a federal deficit that tops $300 billion.
American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Jack Gerard said the group hasn't taken a position on the SPR proposal but said it needs to be considered as part of the Trump administration's push to create jobs and make the U.S. market "energy self-sufficient."
"If you put a bunch of additional supply in the marketplace that's currently oversupplied, what does that do? And so we would just hope that everybody would step back and take a look and say, 'OK, does that make sense in the current equation to do that?'"
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/06/07/stories/1060055650
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Renewable Energy Push Is Strongest in the Reddest States
Jun 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Justin Ellis and Nadja Popovich
Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state.
Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year it generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first.
Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election.
The five states that get the largest percentage of their power from wind turbines — Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma and North Dakota — all voted for Mr. Trump. So did Texas, which produces the most wind power in absolute terms. In fact, 69 percent of the wind power produced in the country comes from states that Mr. Trump carried in November.
Renewable energy that produces no carbon dioxide emissions is not solely a coastal, blue-state phenomenon. From Georgia to the Dakotas, business and political leaders are embracing clean energy sources even as the Trump administration pushes for more exploitation of oil, gas and coal.Continue reading the main story
These red states are not motivated by a sudden desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nor are they joining solidly Democratic New York, Washington and California in defending the Paris climate agreement that President Trump walked away from last week. Instead, their leaders see tapping the wind, and to a lesser degree the sun, as an economic strategy.
The clean energy push allows their utilities to lock in low power prices for decades, creates manufacturing jobs, puts steady money in the hands of farmers who host wind turbines, and lures big employers who want renewable power.
“We export lots of things, and in our future, I want us to export a lot of wind power,” Kansas’ conservative Republican governor, Sam Brownback, declared in a speech in 2011. “We need more of it, and we need more of it now.”
Mr. Brownback got what he wanted: Since he spoke, wind power production in Kansas has nearly tripled, and the state is now an exporter of clean electricity.
Whatever the motives, the push in the red states does help to lower emissions, which means their goals tacitly align with those of blue states worried about global warming.
So a question is coming into focus: In an era when Washington no longer cares about emissions, could federalism — encouraging each state to pursue its own clean energy goals, for its own reasons — be the way forward for those trying to tackle the climate crisis?
“At the state level, you’re just much closer to democracy,” said Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a California group pushing clean energy.
In modern America, advocacy of states’ rights is often seen as a conservative stance, an aspect of the right’s general hostility to a large national government. But Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, pointed out that causes like giving women the right to vote and, more recently, gay marriage had often succeeded at the state level first.
“In the American system, the states have enormous powers, which sometimes are used for progressive causes,” Dr. Kazin said.
More than a decade ago, frustrated by federal inaction, climate change activists and clean energy enthusiasts joined forces to push state governments to adopt binding targets for renewable energy. Climate change was a less divisive issue then, and a majority of the states — including many of the windy Great Plains states — did so, often setting targets to be met by 2020 or 2025.
Analysts have found that most states are on track to meet their targets, usually well ahead of schedule. In recent years, the conservative advocacy organizations founded by the industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch have tried to get the targets repealed, but they have largely failed.
Kansas, where the Koch brothers have their headquarters, was an exception. Reluctantly, wind energy promoters agreed to a deal in 2015 in which the Legislature turned the state’s requirement into a voluntary goal; in exchange, the industry received promises that it would not be subjected to punitive taxes, as some state legislators had proposed. Mr. Brownback embraced that deal but made clear that he expected Kansas to keep building wind farms — as indeed it has done.
Nationally, solar power has made serious headway in a few states, like California, but wind energy is the bigger success story. Turbines now supply almost 6 percent of the nation’s electricity, and studies suggest they could eventually supply a third or more.
A looming threat to the growth of renewables is that the Trump administration may push for an early end to federal subsidies that improve the economics. But those are already scheduled to be phased out in coming years, and a proposal to scrap them early would probably encounter fierce resistance from members of both parties in Congress. They see the subsidies as an investment to drive renewable energy costs down by expanding the market and capturing economies of scale. The wind and solar industries are also creating jobs.
In reaction to Mr. Trump’s election and his abandonment of the Obama administration’s climate goals, Democratic states like New York and California are redoubling their own efforts. Both states have resolved to get 50 percent of their power from renewable energy, and California is debating whether to set a target of 100 percent by 2045.
Perhaps the big question now is whether the blue states, motivated by the urgency of climate change, can offer the red states anything that might induce them to move even faster on renewable energy.
One possibility is cash. California and other Western states are discussing linking their electricity markets more closely, which would allow more renewable energy generated in the red states to flow to California consumers — and move California money into the pockets of red-state landowners.
Republican-led Wyoming, the nation’s largest coal-producing state, could be a prime beneficiary, with a proposed wind farm that would be one of the biggest in the world. The governors of Wyoming and California are discussing a deal, though both are nervous about giving up some control of their electricity markets.
Another possibility is that red and blue states could join forces to get power lines built faster. Studies suggest that Kansas alone could, in theory, supply a majority of the nation’s electricity using wind turbines, if enough power lines were available to move it to market.
As renewable energy costs keep falling, the chances for such cooperation between blue and red states will only increase. So even as the Trump administration sits out the climate emergency, experts who spend time talking to governors see a way forward.
“I think the answer is that we don’t need these silly wars. Let’s not even try to agree on climate change,” said Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovation, a think tank in San Francisco. “Let’s just get the job done.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/climate/renewable-energy-push-is-strongest-in-the-reddest-states.html
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EIA STEO Highlights: US Oil Output Nears New Record
Jun 6, 2017 | Platts
By Brian Scheid
US crude oil production will, for the first time in nearly 50 years, climb to 10 million b/d by March 2018, the US Energy Information Administration said Tuesday.
Such a level would mark the highest daily US production rate since November 1970, when production climbed to nearly 10.05 million b/d and averaged about 9.64 million b/d for that year, according to government data. The November 1970 figure remains the all-time high.
"Increased drilling activity in US tight oil basins, especially those located in Texas, is the main contributor to oil production growth, as the total number of active rigs drilling for oil in the United States has more than doubled over the past 12 months," Howard Gruenspecht, the EIA's acting administrator, said in a statement.
In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA said it sees US crude output averaging 9.33 million b/d this year and 10.01 million b/d in 2018.
"Growth in US production has been the largest contributor to the 800,000 b/d of non-OPEC liquids supply growth from January through May 2017," the EIA said in its report."Continued increases in drilling activity in US shale basins, particularly a recent resumption in production growth from the Eagle Ford region in Texas, support production growth throughout the forecast," it said.
The number of US oil-directed active rigs fell as low as 316 in May 2016, but has since more than doubled to 733 rigs this month.PRICES
· EIA expects the increase in domestic production will lower WTI crude prices in Cushing, Oklahoma, compared with Brent, creating a wider Brent-WTI price spread, which could open additional opportunities for US producers to export light sweet crude, EIA said.
· The Brent premium to WTI was as high as $2.94/b on May 19, a 17-month high. That differential is expected to average $1.91/b this year and $2/b next year, EIA said.
· WTI and Brent spot prices are expected to average $50.78/b and $52.69/b, respectively, in 2017, up from $43.33/b and $43.74/b, respectively, in 2016. In April, EIA forecast WTI and Brent would each average about 10 cents/b less in 2017.
· The EIA forecasts WTI and Brent will average $53.61/b and $55.61/b in 2018, both down $1.49/b from last month's estimate.
· The decline in the 2018 forecast was due to the "possibility of a return to modest oversupply in global oil markets," EIA said. "However, some upward price pressures could emerge in the second half of 2018 if EIA's forecast that global inventories will decline during that period materializes and if the market expects global oil inventory withdrawals into 2019."
SUPPLY· Production in the Lower 48 states, which fell as low as 6.61 million b/d in September 2016, climbed to 7.01 million b/d in May and is now forecast to reach 7.8 million b/d by December 2018, according to EIA.
· Production in US Gulf of Mexico waters, which dipped to 1.51 million b/d in September 2016, climbed to 1.74 million b/d in May and is forecast to hit 1.98 million b/d by the end of 2018.
· Alaskan production, which averaged 460,000 b/d in May, is expected to hold relatively steady through 2018, falling as low as 430,000 b/d and climbing as high as 510,000 b/d, EIA said.
· OPEC production is forecast to average 32.30 million b/d in 2017 and 32.77 million b/d in 2018, compared with a 32.53 million b/d 2016 average, and down 160,000 b/d and 640,000 b/d, respectively, from EIA's forecast last month due to the extension of OPEC's supply cut agreement through March.
· Total OPEC crude production climbed as high as 33.28 million b/d in November 2016 and averaged 32.12 million b/d in May, compared with 31.73 million b/d in April.
· An S&P Global Platts survey released Tuesday also found that OPEC crude output in May averaged 32.12 million b/d.
· EIA forecasts OPEC supply will climb, albeit unsteadily, through 2018, climbing as high as 32.95 million b/d in July 2018 from 32.45 million b/d this month.
· Crude production in Saudi Arabia, which hit 10.63 million b/d in July 2016, averaged 10.03 million b/d in May, up from 9.98 million b/d in April, according to the EIA. Saudi output averaged 10.42 million b/d in 2016, up from 9.65 million b/d in 2013.
· Libyan crude production, which fell to 290,000 b/d in May 2016, climbed to 780,000 b/d last month, compared with 540,000 b/d in April.
DEMAND· EIA forecasts that in 2017 the world will produce 98.3 million b/d of global liquid fuels, 160,000 b/d less than it is expected to consume. This would be a reversal of a recent trend of supply outstripping demand amid a global crude glut.
· In 2016, production was 250,000 b/d higher than consumption and 1.34 million b/d above demand in 2015.
· The reversal in the supply/demand balance may be short-lived. In 2018, EIA projects the world will produce 110.16 million b/d of liquid fuels, 80,000 more than it is expected to consume.
· US motor gasoline consumption is forecast to climb from 9.34 million b/d in 2017 to 9.37 million b/d in 2018. US motor gasoline consumption averaged 9.33 million b/d in 2016.
https://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/washington/eia-steo-highlights-us-oil-output-nears-new-record-21952529
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Gas, Renewables Outpace Coal Expansions — FERC
Jun 6, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Hannah Northey
Natural gas, wind and solar continued to dominate additions to the U.S. energy system during the past four months, according to a new federal study.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's infrastructure update shows the nation added 4,055 megawatts of new natural gas capacity from January through April, as well as 3,216 MW of wind and almost 1,400 MW of solar power.
Missing during that period: new coal-fired capacity.
The FERC report also shows natural gas currently makes up the bulk of the nation's capacity at more than 43 percent, with coal contributing the second largest portion at a little more than 23 percent. Nuclear power makes up slightly more than 9 percent of overall capacity, while wind hovered around 7 percent and solar amounted to a bit more than 2 percent.
FERC's report comes as the Trump administration has been touting its efforts to bring back the coal industry (Climatewire, June 6).
But the FERC report shows only new gas plants in Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Texas. And requests for interstate natural gas pipelines and export terminals are continuing to be filed at the agency.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/06/06/stories/1060055627
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump's Infrastructure Push Could Soothe Chemical Makers’ Worry
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Jack Kaskey
President Donald Trump's plan to channel $1 trillion into improving the country's infrastructure couldn't come at a better time for chemical makers increasingly concerned that the country won't be able to handle exports from a record wave of new factories.
More than 300 new chemical plants valued at $180 billion are being built or are proposed and will have a “huge impact on the needs for enhanced infrastructure,” Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council , said at a June 6 industry conference. The industry will push Congress to pass an “aggressive and comprehensive” infrastructure bill by the end of next year, he said without commenting on whether the president's proposal goes far enough.
Trump's plan would allocate $200 billion in federal funding over the next decade, primarily to spur at least another $800 billion of local, state and private investment on roads, highways, bridges, water systems and transportation systems. The president's support for fewer regulations means cheap gas liquids such as ethane, a byproduct of fracking and a key chemical feedstock, will continue to drive industry growth, Dooley said.
Announced investments by chemical makers will put an additional 54 million metric tons of chemicals and plastics on U.S. roads, rails and waterways every year, according to the council. That breaks down to an estimated 723,000 more truckloads, 270,000 train cars and 800,000 barge shipments.
Chevron Plans
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. is so worried about transportation bottlenecks en route to the Port of Houston that it's made backup plans to export plastics from its new $6 billion Texas project through Charleston, South Carolina, and California. The company is a joint venture of Chevron Corp. and refiner Phillips 66.
“Infrastructure for this country to export: That is a source of concern for the industry and for our company because we are talking about a massive amount of investments,” Chevron Phillips Chief Executive Officer Peter Cella said at the industry meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo. “As a country we need to reinvest in roads, reinvest in our rail lines. Our ports are adequate today, but there is more expansion needed there as we grow.”
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $2 trillion in new spending is needed to fix the problems hampering U.S. infrastructure. Congressional Democrats have said they won't support any plan that relies on tax breaks for wealthy investors, arguing that much more direct spending by Washington is needed.
Chemical makers now account for almost half of all construction spending by U.S. manufacturers, said Kevin Swift, chief economist for the chemistry council. The industry's capital spending will rise 6 percent this year to $33.8 billion, led by new capacity for bulk petrochemicals, plastics and synthetic fertilizers, he said. Annual capital spending will climb to $46 billion by 2022, Swift said.
The council hasn't taken a position on the Paris climate accord, Dooley said. Still, the industry will continue to reduce its own greenhouse-gas emissions and will supply products such as lightweight plastics for autos that help fight global warming, he said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=113571521&vname=dennotallissues&wsn=499160500&searchid=30010648&doctypeid=1&type=date&mode=doc&split=0&scm=DELNWB&pg=0
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Infrastructure Projects Need More Open And Competitive Bidding
Jun 6, 2017 | RedState
By Dan Spencer
There is bi-partisan agreement in Washington, D.C. that America needs to shore up its creaky infrastructure. How to fix it is a different matter. As the nation’s chief cheerleader for more building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue might put it, there’s a yuge problem.
America is a geographically huge country, sure. But that’s not the problem.
The problem is that we are overpaying for many kinds of infrastructure. In fact, one cottage industry of economic study is dedicated to discovering not IF America is overpaying compared to roads, bridges, rail, waterways and electricity generation in other countries, but WHY in the world we are doing that.
Which brings us to a timely and relevant open letter to Congress, signed by more than a dozen free market groups and think tanks. They urge members of Congress who are putting together an infrastructure spending bill to “include language that clearly requires and open, competitive bidding process for materials that will be used in infrastructure projects.”
This is important because many states, countries, and other local governments have put up a gauntlet of limitations on what products may be used in infrastructure. These limitations are used to cut down on competitive bidding to favor certain firms that know how to game the system.
Incidentally, this is not about safety. The local restrictions may be in the name of that but they often also prohibit new materials that can keep safer from even being considered.
If Congress were to put its foot down and insist that, “No, we’re paying for this and so we shall have transparency of materials and costs, thank you,” it would save a lot of money. We’re talking sums that might even make Congress sit up and notice.
For instance, according to one recent study by the National Taxpayers Union, taxpayers could save over $371 billion of the projected total bill of $1.32 trillion to fix the nation’s aging water infrastructure if we simply had open competition for materials.
Think about that. Competition could drive costs in that one are alone down to under a trillion dollars.
Imagine those sorts of savings spread out over all the federal roadways, bridges and other kinds of infrastructure and you may begin to realize just how yuge a difference this change in how we do things could make. We ought to insist that Congress pass this common sense reform as part of any infrastructure package.
http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2017/06/06/infrastructure-projects-need-open-competitive-bidding/
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Norquist on Infrastructure: State and Local Governments Should Adopt Open Competition Laws Now
Jun 6, 2017 | Americans for Tax Reform
By Elizabeth McKee
Grover Norquist appeared as a panelist today at the 7th Annual Summit on the Economy, speaking on the topic of “Understanding Debt in the Context of Tax Reform and Economic Growth.” The panel included Maya MacGuineas and Richard Vague, and was moderated by the Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Ip.
Norquist urged governments to immediately adopt open competition laws. He pointed out that state and local regulations prohibit competition and drive up the cost of restoring American infrastructure. He explained:
“If you were to rebuild all the water pipes, both the sewage and clean water in the country, it’s about $1.3 trillion. There are laws that were passed over the last years in many cities and states that require, they say, ‘If you have pipes in our city, they have to be made of this material and they have to be this big.’ Other cities have open competition, they say, ‘Well, we’ll tell you what we need and how strong it has to be. We won’t tell you what to make it out of. We won’t tell you what company to buy it from. And we don’t tell you what industry is going to make a profit off of it.’
And when you look at cities that had open competition and compare them to ones with closed competition, to redo the whole country - the $1.3 trillion - you save about $380 billion by moving to open competition. So why would anybody consider spending a penny of federal money on infrastructure, on pipelines, when cities and states pass [these] laws . . . Laws which drive up the costs by 28% of fixing water pipes need to be repealed at the state and local level before anybody should ask the federal government for money.”
Norquist continued, “Let everybody compete. Don’t have these corporate welfare laws that are designed to advantage Fred over Mary . . . There’s a bunch of reform that needs to be done and there’s no reason not to do it. Why pay billions more for infrastructure than necessary?”
According to Norquist, both tax reform and deregulation are possible under the Trump administration. He asserted, “If you look at Trump’s picks for FCC, FDA, FERC, NLRB, there is a wave of deregulation that has been begun and will continue. That will be every bit as important to the economy as tax cuts.”
http://www.atr.org/norquist-infrastructure-state-and-local-governments-should-adopt-open-competition-laws-now
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Deadline for States to Meet Obama-Era Emissions Rule Is Extended
Jun 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Coral Davenport
The Trump administration will extend by one year a deadline for states to comply with a major Obama-era regulation on emissions of a smog-causing pollutant that spews from tailpipes and smokestacks.
In October 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency set a new national standard for ozone, a smog-causing gas that often forms on hot, sunny days when chemical emissions from power plants, factories and vehicles mix in the air. The standard tightened emissions to 70 parts per billion down from 75 parts per billion, as was set in 2008. Smog has been linked to asthma, heart and lung disease, and premature death.
In a letter sent Tuesday to governors, Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, delayed a requirement for states to submit measurements of their 2015 ozone levels by 2017. The move is the latest in a series of steps taken by Mr. Pruitt to relax or delay several major environmental regulations put forth by the Obama administration under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Mr. Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, had in his previous position taken a leading role in many multistate lawsuits against those regulations, calling them deeply burdensome to industry.
“We share the goal of clean air, a robust economy and stronger, healthier communities,” Mr. Pruitt said in a statement. “We are committed to working with states and local officials to effectively implement the ozone standard in a manner that is supportive of air quality improvement efforts without interfering with local decisions or impeding economic growth.”Continue reading the main storyThe Trump White HouseThe historic moments, head-spinning developments and inside-the-White House intrigue.Your Guide to All the Comey News Heading Into His TestimonyJUN 7Sessions Is Said to Have Offered to ResignJUN 6Comey Told Sessions: Don’t Leave Me Alone With TrumpJUN 6Without Obama as a Unifier, Republicans Are FragmentedJUN 6Two Paths Arise for Democrats in Race for Virginia’s GovernorJUN 6
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The oil-refining industry had led a multiyear lobbying campaign against the ozone rules, complaining that the regulations would require them to install costly equipment to remove the smog-causing chemicals from gasoline and other fuels. And Republican lawmakers who have long complained against President Barack Obama’s regulatory agenda cheered the delay.
But environmental groups assailed it as a move by allies of the fossil fuel industry granting favors to industry cronies.
“The delay is flagrantly illegal as well as a direct assault on our right to breathe safe, clean air,” said John Walke, the director of the clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/politics/ozone-trump-obama-climate-change.html
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Paris Climate Deal Needs New Rules and Clarity, Scientists Say
Jun 7, 2017 | Bloomberg BNA
By Jonathan Tirone
The Paris climate accord needs to be strengthened through new negotiations and national commitments to transparency, scientists argued in a report.
Uncertainty about the pledges made by almost 200 countries in the landmark climate deal means the world could fail to mitigate runaway global warming, according to the report by six scientists published June 6 in the journal Nature Communication.
“In many cases the actions described in these pledges are ambiguous or imprecise,” wrote Joeri Rojelj, the lead author of the paper titled “Understanding the Origin of Paris Agreement Emission Uncertainties.” The scientists urged countries to implement a “robust process that keeps track of where emissions are heading.”
While President Donald Trump expressed willingness to negotiate a new version of Paris the agreement, the steps urged in the study are unlikely to gain traction in Washington. Trump derided the agreement's framework of voluntary emission cuts as being unfair to American workers. The scientific study wants the accord strengthened by imposing even more accountability.
To keep temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the scientists argue that countries need to streamline and remove uncertainties from pledges called “nationally determined contributions.”
“Some pledges focus on improving ‘emissions intensity,’ meaning reducing the emissions per dollar of economic output, but assumptions about socioeconomic growth are often implicit or unknown,” said Rojelj, who advises the United Nations and researches at the International Institute for Applies Systems Analysis outside of Vienna.
“Other countries focus on absolute emissions reductions, which are simpler to understand, or propose renewable energy targets, which can be expressed in different ways,” he said. “Questions also remain about how much land-use-related climate mitigation will contribute, such as reducing deforestation or preserving forests.”
Countries will need to improve their reporting by 2030 or risk having to increase emission reduction targets by factors of four to 25 thereafter, according to the report.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=113571515&vname=dennotallissues&fn=113571515&jd=113571515
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Existing Climate Efforts Expected to Keep US Goals on Track
Jun 7, 2017 | AP (In The Wall Street Journal)
The momentum of climate change efforts and the affordability of cleaner fuels will keep the United States moving toward its goals of cutting emissions despite the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Paris global accord, business and government leaders in a growing alliance said.
New York, California and 11 other states representing nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy, mayors of about 200 cities, and leaders of business giants including Amazon, Apple and Target have signed pledges to keep reducing their fossil-fuel emissions after President Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord.
"Our coalition wants to let the world know that absent leadership from our federal government," the country will keep cutting its emissions from fossil fuels, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown told reporters Tuesday.
California, New York, Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Washington state, Vermont, Massachusetts, Delaware, Oregon and Washington, D.C., have signed pledges. The states, most led by Democrats, represent $7 trillion of the U.S. gross domestic product, or 38 percent.
Texas, the largest producer of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the U.S. and the biggest state economy after California, is a key figure absent from the list. More than two dozen other states, mostly in the country's middle, already had been fighting stepped-up federal emissions-cutting programs before Trump's announcement.
Top Texas leaders have had little public comment on the withdrawal from the global accord, although the state's attorney general praised the move.
New York and California are the only states in the country's top 10 list of carbon emitters to sign pledges.
Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupsi, who joined former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "We Are Still In" campaign, along with mayors of Houston, Atlanta and hundreds of other local leaders, cited the economics for her state: Utah has a $1 billion skiing industry threatened by climate change and marked 65 percent growth last year alone in solar power, as one of the country's sunniest states.
"Utah is warming at twice the global average, and our drinking water is at risk," said Biskupsi, saying she was acting "for the well-being of the planet I'm leaving to my sons and your children."
Undoing most existing U.S. programs that curb car pollution and other climate-changing emissions would probably take years and court battles if Trump tries, climate experts say. A few efforts, such as a reduction on methane emissions introduced by the Obama administration, could be overturned more easily.
The momentum of existing climate-change efforts and the availability natural gas, wind and solar power mean those loyal to the Paris accord in the U.S. will have an easier time, with emissions expected to fall overall for years, said Robert Perciasepe with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, who worked with Bloomberg's group on the climate pledge.
Some studies suggest the United States will cut emissions as much as 19 percent by 2025 if it simply moves forward as is, he said. That's not far from former President Barack Obama's goals for a reduction of 25 to 28 percent as part of the Paris accord, Perciasepe said.
Since Thursday, commitments from cities, universities and businesses were happening so fast that organizers had to set up a website where they could sign up automatically, Perciasepe said.
The support from local governments, public institutions and businesses show that climate change efforts are getting something they have long lacked in the U.S. — vocal and enthusiastic support, said William K. Reilly, a former chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who is not involved in the alliances.
"It does perhaps reflect an increasing activism on the part of the public at large" on climate change, Reilly said. "Trump can take some perverse credit for that."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/AP7a3f2c76deb84ab4860ddd055c0c88d3
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Poll: Most Want ‘Aggressive Action’ on Climate Change
Jun 6, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Mark Hensch
Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults think America should take “aggressive action” against global warming caused by climate change, according to a new poll.
Forty-six percent in the Reuters/Ipsos survey released Tuesday “strongly agree” the U.S. should take “aggressive action” on climate change, while 26 percent “somewhat agree.”
Eighteen percent disagree, with 8 percent “strongly” disagreeing and 10 percent “somewhat” disagreeing. Ten percent were unsure.
Pollsters found 47 percent disagree with President Trump’s recent decision to remove the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, while 39 percent agree with Trump’s decision. Fifteen percent were uncertain.
Tuesday’s results found that respondents believe the U.S. should lead the global fight against climate change, with 68 percent agreeing with that idea to some extent.
Trump last week fulfilled a campaign pledge and removed the U.S. from the 195-nation Paris climate accord.
“The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States,” Trump said at the White House Rose Garden.
“We are getting out, but we will start to negotiate and we will see if we can make a deal that is fair,” he added.
Reuters/Ipsos conducted its latest survey of 1,685 U.S. adults via online interviews from June 2-4. The poll has a 2.8 percent margin of error.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/336558-poll-most-want-aggressive-action-on-climate-change
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Will Pruitt Review GHG Endangerment Finding?
Jun 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
Recent statements from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt are renewing speculation that he might review the prior administration's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, a landmark document that forms the basis of all of the agency's climate regulations.
Pruitt alluded to the possibility in a June 5 interview on Breitbart Radio, where he was defending President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the United Nations Paris Agreement.
“What the American people deserve is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about [carbon dioxide (CO2)],” he said, according to a transcript.
He cited a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, where former Obama energy undersecretary Steve Koonin suggested a “Red Team/Blue Team” exercise where competing groups of scientists test the basis of climate science.
“Congress or the executive branch should convene a climate science Red/Blue exercise as a step toward resolving, or at least illuminating, differing perceptions of climate science,” Koonin wrote.
Pruitt endorsed this approach, telling Breitbart, “The American people need to have that type of honest, open discussion, and it's something that we hope to help provide as part of our leadership.”
But he again stopped short of explicitly calling for a reversal of the endangerment finding, an approach that has drawn criticism in the past from Breitbart and others that are pressing the Trump administration to end regulation of GHGs.
Nevertheless, EPA has several petitions asking it to reverse the GHG risk finding, which was the trigger for the Obama administration's GHG rules. If the Trump EPA does not reverse it, the agency is legally bound to have some level of GHG regulation.
Petitions filed since Trump took office in January include one from a coalition of California firms and free-market groups filed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, one from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a third from the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers' Council.
Pruitt also appeared on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on June 6 to discuss the Paris Agreement exit. EPA touted the appearance in a press release that included the administrator seeking to clarify his comments on several Sunday talk shows that “since the fourth quarter of last year to most recently [the country] added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.”
Pruitt told “Morning Joe: “The last seven months we've had a growing job market in the mining sector, including coal. We've had almost 50,000 jobs created since the fourth quarter of last year in the mining sector, including coal.”
However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' “mining” sector includes the oil and gas sector, where the vast majority of those jobs were created. Those numbers show only a small fraction of Pruitt's claimed job gains came from coal mining.
Natural gas is a direct competitor with coal, and has been responsible for coal's significant losses in market share in power generation.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/will-pruitt-review-ghg-endangerment-finding
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Trump Pitches Solar Panels for Border Wall After Paris Withdrawal
Jun 6, 2017 | Roll Call
By Lindsey McPherson
President Donald Trump may have found a place where he can embrace renewable energy: on his proposed border wall.
Less than a week after pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, Trump told congressional leaders he is exploring the idea of attaching solar panels to a wall he wants to build along the southern border, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise confirmed to reporters.
“He did talk about it,” McCarthy said Tuesday night.
Asked about reports Trump said the wall would be 50 feet tall, McCarthy said, “They said there was — that they’ve been studying it, they have different people coming in. So it could be at different heights.”
Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was a staple of Trump rallies throughout the 2016 campaign.
A congressional appropriation would still be needed to fund the initial construction, “but it also through authorizing and appropriation wouldn’t cost as much by producing energy at the same time,” McCarthy said.
Scalise said Trump has been looking at a lot of options on how to build the border wall and that the solar panels is among the options he’s reviewed.
“This is a new option that he’s been looking at that sounds like it’s got real promise,” he said. “I’m glad that he continues to explore more ways to make sure that the wall can get done and help secure our border.”
The idea is “still in the early stages of development,” Scalise said when asked how it would impact the congressional appropriations process. On height of the wall, he said, “That’s all going to be worked out.”
http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/trump-pitches-solar-panels-for-border-wall-after-paris-withdrawal#sthash.YiovkZy2.dpuf
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