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ACC AM 22/06
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(ACC Mentioned) Growth Drives US Chemical Manufacturers
Jun 21, 2017 | Breakbulk
Growth in U.S. chemical manufacturing may drive an increase in exports and breakbulk demand from the sector, reports from the American Chemistry Council in Petrochemical Update suggest. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Accelerates Purge Of Scientists
Jun 21, 2017 | ThinkProgress
By Natasha Geiling
Dozens of Environmental Protection Agency scientists were recently informed that their contracts would not be renewed this August, leaving a key EPA office without important scientific guidance. -
Trump Relying on Courts to Halt Obama EPA Rules, Lawyers Say
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The Trump administration is placing a greater reliance on courts to block environmental regulations than any of its predecessors, according to lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg BNA. -
As EPA Issues TSCA's Framework Rules, Bipartisan Law Faces Challenges
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
As EPA prepares to issue a trio of framework rules to implement the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), observers say the bipartisan law still faces a host of legal, budgetary, political, technological and other challenges that will test its durability and future success. -
EPA Opens Comment Period on Risk Evaluations for First Ten Chemicals Under Revised TSCA
Jun 21, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On June 19, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency posted a memo authorizing the opening of comment periods for the public to comment on the risk evaluation process for the first ten chemicals it is evaluating under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to determine whether they “present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” -
EPA Faces Ongoing Cleanup Burdens In Midst Of Budget Cuts
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Even as EPA faces the threat of significant budget cuts in fiscal year 2018, two reports highlight both new and ongoing cleanup burdens the agency faces. -
EPA Must Do More to Combat Weedkiller Resistance: Watchdog
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
The EPA must do more to combat weed resistance to common herbicides, the agency's watchdog said in a new report. -
Boeing Asbestos Exposure Case Stays Federal
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
A worker's asbestos exposure claims against Boeing stemming from his work on military planes decades ago will stay in federal court, the Northern District of California ruled June 20 (Thrash v. Cirrus Enters., LLC, 2017 BL 211334, N.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-01501, remand denied 6/20/17). -
New York Assembly Passes Bill On Lead In Decorative Lights
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
New York state’s Assembly has passed a bill that would require labelling of seasonal and decorative lights containing lead. -
Endocrine Societies Speak Out Against Proposed EDC Criteria
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Three endocrine societies have spoken out against the European Commission's proposed criteria on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). -
EU To Discuss EDC Criteria In July
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Another discussion, and possible vote, on the latest proposed criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) will be held at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) on 4 July, the European Commission's health directorate (DG Sante) has announced. -
Industry Must Avoid Stigmatising Preservatives, Says EU Commission
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The ongoing regulatory scrutiny of preservatives is of "great concern", Martin Seychell, deputy general of the European Commission’s health directorate (DG Sante), has said. -
Onshore Natural Gas, Oil Supply Pushing Gulf Coast LNG, Petchem Expansions, Says LSU
Jun 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Upstream technological advancements have fundamentally altered the outlook for natural gas and oil, with the Gulf Coast ready and able to expand gas export capability and petrochemical growth, according to a new study. -
Lawyer: ‘No Timeframe’ For New Dakota Access Environmental Review
Jun 21, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A government lawyer said Wednesday that officials don’t know how long it will take them to redo an environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline as ordered by a federal judge last week. -
Subcommittee To Vote On Infrastructure Bills
Jun 22, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy will advance five bills relating to hydropower and pipeline infrastructure today. -
DuPont Joins New US Cracker Expansion Wave
Jun 21, 2017 | ICIS
By Al Greenwood
US-based DuPont became the latest company to announce a project that will take advantage of growing US supplies of natural-gas liquids (NGLs), with its plans to expand a cracker by 200m lb/year (91,000 tonnes/year). -
US Energy Department - Trump Administration Supports LNG Exports
Jun 22, 2017 | ICIS
By Adam Yanelli
The US government under the administration of President Donald Trump strongly supports exporting US natural gas in the form of LNG, a government official said on 21 June at the CWC World LNG Summit in Houston. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA Memo Reveals Staff Concerns About Chemical Safety Rules
Jun 21, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Annie Snider And Alex Guillén
The Trump EPA is poised to roll out new rules to implement a landmark chemical safety law that were heavily shaped by a former top official from the chemical industry lobby. -
(ACC Mentioned) Labor Seeks To Support Suit Challenging RMP Rule Delay
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Labor groups are seeking to intervene in support of environmentalists' challenge to the Trump administration's lengthy delay of an Obama-era facility safety rule, arguing that the delay irreparably harms workers and that environmentalists may not fully represent workers, who have a “distinct perspective” on the facilities where they work. -
Trump Seeks Game Plan For Grid Threats
Jun 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Blake Sobczak
President Trump sat down with energy-sector representatives and cybersecurity experts at the White House today to discuss evolving threats to the power grid. -
Giuliani Gathers Energy Executives To Brief Trump On Cyberthreats
Jun 21, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Geller
President Donald Trump met today with energy sector executives to discuss cyber threats to the nation’s power grid. -
PHMSA Pauses Stricter Natural Gas Storage Rules for Clarification
Jun 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Responding to requests from the oil and natural gas industry, the Trump administration has served notice that it will delay some of the Obama administration's stepped up safety rules for underground natural gas storage. -
EPA's Methane Calculations Get Inspector General Scrutiny
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The EPA's methods for calculating methane emissions for oil and gas wells will undergo new scrutiny from the Inspector General even as the agency seeks to roll back regulations for that industry. -
Environmentalists Say EPA 'Conflates' Separate Powers To Stay Methane NSPS
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
Environmentalists in a new court filing argue EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt unlawfully paused several portions of Obama-era methane oil and gas standards by conflating the agency's narrow power to “reconsider” aspects of a rule and pause those provisions with its broader authority to revise rules that remain in effect. -
Dems Ramp Up Post-Paris Messaging, Action Plans
Jun 22, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
Democrats are on a messaging blitz today, highlighting the response at the federal, state and local level to President Trump's bombshell announcement about U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
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Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) Growth Drives US Chemical Manufacturers
Jun 21, 2017 | Breakbulk
Growth in U.S. chemical manufacturing may drive an increase in exports and breakbulk demand from the sector, reports from the American Chemistry Council in Petrochemical Update suggest.
The recent surge in hydraulic fracturing and natural gas has driven a wave of new investments, with ACC estimating there are 310 projects under construction or planned. This equates to US$185 billion in potential capital investment as of June 2017, and the majority of these projects have significant breakbulk requirements.
“I have heard people say that we should not be talking about a second wave of investment, because it is not just going to be a second wave. It is going to be a continuous flow of investment in chemical manufacturing in the U.S. for a significant period of time,” said Cal Dooley, ACC president.
One of the largest proposed projects at present is a storage hub for the Appalachian Basin with facilities to convert the regions natural gas assets into a petrochemical production center. The hub would handle 100 million barrels of natural gas products and include about 3,000 miles of underground pipelines at an estimated cost of US$10 billion
http://www.breakbulk.com/nws-u-s-chemical-manufacture-set-solid-growth/
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Accelerates Purge Of Scientists
Jun 21, 2017 | ThinkProgress
By Natasha Geiling
Dozens of Environmental Protection Agency scientists were recently informed that their contracts would not be renewed this August, leaving a key EPA office without important scientific guidance.
According to an email sent to EPA scientists and obtained by the Washington Post, the EPA has decided not to renew the posts of any scientists working for the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC). The BOSC functions as an advisory board for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, and helps the office make sure that it is using sufficiently rigorous science in its research and development programs.
“The Board of Scientific Counselors was formed to make sure the EPA does the best possible scientific work with limited taxpayer dollars,” Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “This independent advice is needed now more than ever. By sacking dozens of scientific counselors, Pruitt is showing that he doesn’t value scientific input and the benefits it offers the public.”
Board members are chosen by the EPA administrator, and serve three-year terms. It is customary for first-term members to receive a second three-year appointment, though reappointment is granted at the discretion of the administrator.
In May, Pruitt notified nine BOSC members to tell them that they would not be receiving a second-term when their tenure ended in August. At the time, the New York Times reported that Pruitt wanted to make space for representatives from industries — like the chemical industry, or oil and gas industry — which the EPA is charged with regulating. In an email to the Washington Post, Scott Openshaw, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, said that the dismissals would help address industry concerns that “EPA advisory boards did not include a diversity of views and therefore frequently presented a biased perspective on issues before them.”
The new wave of dismissals brings the total number of BOSC members who will be out of a job in August to 47, which will leave just 11 members serving on the BOSC and its five subcommittees. None of the subcommittees will have a chair or vice chair, and all committee meetings scheduled for late summer and fall have been cancelled.
“Pruitt has pulled off a devious process here: he’s signaled that he intends to dismiss experienced advisors whose terms are expiring over the next year — and he’s using the fact that he’s dismissing them to immediately block them from doing any more work,” UCS’s Kimmell said.
The Trump administration has a notably antagonistic relationship with science, from top administration officials blatantly contradicting the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change on national television to deep proposed cuts to science programs across the federal government. Under Pruitt’s leadership, the EPA has scrubbed climate science from the agency’s website, and has rejected scientific advice from its own agency scientists while issuing regulatory decisions. Pruitt is also currently being reviewed by the EPA’s Scientific Integrity Officer for his false comments about climate change made on CNBC in March.“The decision to suspend the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors and dismiss numerous scientists from its ranks is another brazen act of disregard for science by Scott Pruitt.”
“The decision to suspend the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors and dismiss numerous scientists from its ranks is another brazen act of disregard for science by Scott Pruitt. I’m concerned that he may continue to replace scientists with industry insiders or simply leave the Board in limbo,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), told ThinkProgress via email. “Pruitt’s longstanding antipathy to the agency he leads, and its mission of protecting clean air and water, will become a greater menace to public health as he cedes more and more influence to industry at the expense of sound scientific advice.”
According to an administration official, who spoke anonymously with the Washington Post, the dismissal of BOSC scientists could just be the beginning of a larger scientific shakeup within the agency. According to the official, the administration is also looking into replacing members of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, a body of scientific counselors meant to provide scientific advice to the administrator.
The news of the most recent round of dismissals broke the same day as news that the EPA is planning whittle its overall workforce by more than 1,000 employees, through buyouts and early retirement.
https://thinkprogress.org/epa-dismisses-more-scientists-pruitt-trump-7530dc37dcf
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Trump Relying on Courts to Halt Obama EPA Rules, Lawyers Say
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The Trump administration is placing a greater reliance on courts to block environmental regulations than any of its predecessors, according to lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg BNA.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department have turned to the courts to endorse their actions to prevent the regulations from taking effect and freeze legal challenges. The Trump administration has used the strategy to halt several Obama-era regulations, including limits on toxic pollution from power plants, methane emissions standards for oil and gas wells, and requirements that chemical companies update their risk management programs.
These moves allow the Trump administration to quickly do away with regulatory requirements without having to engage in a full administrative rulemaking process, which buys the new administration time to revisit regulations and rewrite them as they see fit.
Specifically, the EPA has delayed compliance with the rules administratively. The Justice Department has then followed these administrative moves by asking the courts to stay the underlying legal challenges to these rules on the basis of its decision to reconsider the rules. That strategy extends to lawsuits filed by environmental advocates over the administration's move to freeze compliance obligations, which the Justice Department has asked courts to hold off on considering until the reconsideration process is complete.
“The Trump Administration is relying to an unusual degree on seeking courts to stay proceedings while they reengage the regulatory process,” Justin Pidot, environmental law professor with University of Denver's Strum School of Law, told Bloomberg BNA. Pidot formerly worked as an attorney in the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources division.
Reconsideration Not Unusual
It is not unusual for a newly elected administration to take steps to undo existing regulations that don't fit with its agenda. Since his election, President Donald Trump has taken steps to undo several major Obama-era environmental regulations, including carbon dioxide standards for power plants and a rule governing which waters are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.
“Of course, it's not unusual for a new administration to review pending rules initiated by a prior administration,” Andrew Stewart, an environmental attorney with Vinson & Elkins LLP in Washington, D.C. “This is particularly true when the new administration is from a different political party, and we saw this at the beginning of the Obama administration.”
What most lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg BNA find “unique” about the Trump administration is the number of environmental regulations that it is seeking to undo, the speed with which they are being undone and the way it is going about it.
Hope Babock, an environmental law professor with the Georgetown Law School, described the strategy of reliance on the courts as “clever” because it avoids the prolonged process of withdrawing a rule under the Administrative Procedure Act that requires public notice and comment.
The administrative stay causes the rule in question to enter a “regulatory black hole” until the agencies decide how they will rewrite portions they find objectionable.
For instance, compliance dates for the 2015 power plant effluent limits rule (RIN: 2040-AF76) were to take effect in 2018, but the EPA issued an administrative stay on April 12, postponing compliance indefinitely. That rule required more than 1,000 power plants to use the best available technology that is economically achievable to regulate waste streams that are generated by the use of air pollution controls and coal gasification techniques.
Delays Draw Lawsuits
A coalition of environmental groups represented by Earthjustice challenged the delay in effluent limits, saying the EPA didn't follow the Administrative Procedure Act in giving the public an opportunity to comment on the delay on its proposed rewrite.
The Justice Department in turn asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to either dismiss the environmental groups’ challenge or transfer the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which already froze litigation against the effluent regulation pending EPA's review of the rule.
Stewart, who served in the Justice Department until late 2015, noted that the EPA did publish June 6 a public notice (82 Fed. Reg. 26,017) seeking comment on the postponed compliance deadlines.
Thomas Cmar, an Earthjustice attorney representing the environmental advocates, told Bloomberg BNA that the challenge, as outlined in their legal response, is over the administrative stay that EPA issued in April. At that time, the EPA failed to give prior notice or accept public comment on the stay before issuing it, a “move that is illegal” under the Administrative Procedure Act, according to Cmar.
The EPA's subsequent move to seek comment on the delayed compliance deadlines is equally flawed, Cmar said, because the notice was issued under the Clean Water Act, not the Administrative Procedure Act. The Clean Water Act doesn't make any provision to reconsider or postpone compliance deadlines for effluent limits once they are established, Cmar said.
Similar Treatment for Methane Rules
The EPA followed the same strategy when it came to undoing air pollution regulations (RIN:2060-AT59) on oil and gas wells that aim to limit emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
In that instance, the agency delayed implementation of the methane standards by 90 days, but again didn't seek public comment. At that time, the DOJ followed the administrative freeze by successfully seeking a stay from the court on underlying legal challenges to the rule.
The EPA's initial move to halt the methane regulation came days ahead of a deadline for oil and gas drillers to comply with emissions control and gas leak monitoring requirements.
The EPA published another notice June 15, where it is seeking comment to further delay compliance by an additional two years.
And Another One
Earlier in June, the EPA again gave chemical companies more time to comply with the rule that requires them to update their risk management programs (RIN: 2040-AG91). It issued a temporary stay in mid-March without seeking notice, before launching a rulemaking to delay compliance until February 2019.
The Justice Department to date has been successful in getting courts to hold cases until the underlying rules are reconsidered, but John Cruden, former assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division under Obama, cautioned that changing any portion of the rule, including the effective dates, “inspires litigation.”
“My own experience has been that very short time extensions often works,” Cruden told Bloomberg BNA. “However, I believe DOJ will have an uphill battle trying to defend longer extensions unless the agency fully meets the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114711781&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114711781&jd=114711781
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As EPA Issues TSCA's Framework Rules, Bipartisan Law Faces Challenges
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
As EPA prepares to issue a trio of framework rules to implement the new Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), observers say the bipartisan law still faces a host of legal, budgetary, political, technological and other challenges that will test its durability and future success.
Some environmentalists are already pointing to potential challenges, including the Trump administration's deregulatory stance, its proposed fiscal year 2018 budget, which seeks to cut EPA's budget by $2.4 billion or 31 percent and industry influence in a friendly administration.
Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who was involved in the law's drafting, said in a recent blog post that while he is confident that the law is “strong” and will deliver on its promises, he is concerned about the Trump administration's regulatory approach.
The law's “effective implementation in the near term is threatened on numerous fronts, unfolding as it is in one of the most anti-environmental and anti-regulatory climates this nation has faced in a long time,” he wrote.
He warned that if the law's implementation is not effective, it will drive increased regulation by states and deselection by retailers -- steps that industry sought to end when it threw its weight behind the new law.
Others, like former EPA General Counsel Don Elliott, are questioning whether the new law provides EPA with adequate authority to restrict existing chemicals, a key shortfall in the original 1976 law, as well as how the agency will incorporate computational toxicology and other emerging scientific methods into the new program.
While he identified several potential shortfalls, in a June 21 interview Elliott called the law “quite durable” and especially welcomed provisions allowing EPA to charge industry fees. And he also downplayed concerns the Trump administration's deregulatory stances may undermine the law's implementation. “We haven't seen any indicators from the Trump administration that they're targeting it in any way,” he said.
EPA has already faced some challenges implementing the new law, which is named for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). For example, the toxics office has been slow to approve premanufacture notices (PMN) for hundreds of new chemicals that were submitted to EPA for approval shortly before and since the June 22, 2016 enactment of the new law, resulting in a backlog.
Part of the delay was caused by the reform law's focus on EPA's consideration of chemicals' uses and reasonably foreseen uses, both of which EPA is considering as it now views PMN notices.
EPA is now seeking to end the backlog by the end of July and is taking steps to prevent future delays.
Framework Rules
Such concerns come on the eve of the law's one-year anniversary, which is also the deadline for EPA to issue a set of framework rules that will guide the new program's future path for “existing” chemicals. Those were in commerce before the 1976 law was enacted and their regulation is likely to be more complicated than agency oversight of “new” substances.
The framework rules include an inventory reset to determine the universe of existing chemicals that will be subject to the new law's requirements; a prioritization rule, which will describe how EPA will determine which of the thousands of existing chemicals will undergo risk evaluations and when; and another measure describing how EPA will evaluate the risks of existing chemicals.
The three rules are intended to create a new framework for assessing and managing the risks of existing industrial chemicals -- those that were on the market when TSCA was first enacted in 1976 -- which were largely grandfathered under the original TSCA.
What was widely seen as the original law's failure in managing these chemicals was an important driver for reforming it.
The framework rules, which were proposed by the Obama administration, could provide an early indication of how the Trump administration may approach the new law's implementation.
But Herbert Estreicher, an attorney and chemist with the firm Keller and Heckman, says he expects few changes between the draft framework rules EPA released last winter and the final rules due June 22. “I'm not expecting the final rules to be very different,” he said in a June 20 interview. “I don't think EPA had a lot of time to respond to comments.”
Nevertheless, Denison and others express concerns about the Trump administration. For example, he cites the administration's plan to slash EPA's budget, which others have noted could shortchange EPA's computational toxicology program that is at the heart of the new law's implementation.
The cut is "short-sighted. It will have significant medium to long-term consequences to [EPA's ability to] meet the requirements of the law," EPA's former toxics chief Jim Jones told Inside EPA recently.
Denison also cited a series of executive orders that raise significant hurdles for agencies seeking to issue new rules as potential roadblocks to the new law, a point also acknowledged by Elliott.
And he raised significant concerns about “undue industry influence over implementation,” citing “industry efforts to roll back” three early TSCA section 6(a) rules that the agency proposed in the final days of the Obama administration as well as the selection of Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry representative, as the new EPA toxics deputy chief.
“Each of these factors, which will heavily influence the early implementation of the Lautenberg Act, put at great risk the careful balance struck by the new law. If that balance is lost to short-term priorities of the new Administration and the chemical industry, the common ground so many of us fought for and found to support last year’s historic passage of the Lautenberg Act will quickly dissipate, and the conditions that led the industry to want reform in the first place -- retail regulation and state and local action in response to an ineffective federal system -- will pick up even greater steam.”
In fact, states' interest in regulating chemicals has not abated since the passage of TSCA reform. “The hope was this would slow down the large number of state actions,” Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, executive director and general counsel of the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS), told a recent American Legal Institute Continuing Legal Education (ALI-CLE) webinar.
“Surprisingly, we saw in this first legislative session since [the law] passed there were extensive amounts of states with legislative activity,” she said.
While ECOS is compiling a report on these activities, she provided a brief snapshot, though at the time some states' legislatures were still in session. She said that 14 states were considering laws requiring the identification of certain chemicals in certain types of products, another 16 state legislatures were looking at some type of flame retardant law, and more disparate efforts on food packaging, green chemicals procurement, green chemistry, particular contaminants. Still, of these, only two had so far been enacted, she said.
“I think the take away there is you can expect many state activities regardless of the Lautenberg Act,” Dunn said.
'Practical To Implement'
Elliott, the former EPA general counsel now senior of counsel at Covington & Burling, during the ALI-CLE webinar, identified half a dozen “key implementation issues I think we'll see over the next couple of years” -- well after the first year's deadlines for EPA have passed.
Elliott, like Denison, highlighted issues such as how Trump's Executive Order (EO) 13771, which requires agencies to repeal two rules for every new measure issued, “will affect the TSCA rulemakings required by the statute.” He noted that the EO “does not specifically exempt TSCA,” and there are not many TSCA rules to do such trading with.
EPA “will not be able to cancel TSCA rules to accommodate new TSCA rules. There will probably be trading across programs. And the EO does contemplate trading across agencies.”
Elliott also questioned “whether the changes to TSCA will actually make it practical for EPA to regulate existing chemicals.” He noted that the historic concern with using TSCA section 6 authority to ban or restrict chemicals was rooted in the rationale of the 5th Circuit, which struck down EPA's attempt to use the original TSCA section 6 authority to ban asbestos in 1991 because the agency failed to choose the least stringent approach to regulating asbestos as the 1976 law required.
But Elliott views the approach taken to address this issue as “a rather minimalist approach, which removed the prior language of 'least burdensome'.”
He says that was “one of the problems but I think there were others. One of the things that remains to be seen … is whether or not [EPA can] be successful to regulate under section 6.”
Elliott also pointed to the new law's requirement that EPA use the best available science and its codifying the term weight of evidence. “Will [those changes] radically change the way in which courts review agency assessments of scientific evidence?” he said. While court reviews of agency science have always been very deferential, “it remains to be seen whether the courts will view it that way,” he added.
Elliott also raised a longer-term concern over EPA's ability to comply with statutory requirements to begin utilizing non-animal toxicity testing methodologies. “The challenge is how to integrate this new science,” he said. He noted that Congress, in trying to deal with a scientific challenge, mandated a “reduction of dependence in animal testing, but [also] mandates [the use of] best available science. And left it up to EPA and the courts to” determine that balance.
Elliott described this technological evolution of toxicity testing as “one of the big issues to watch is how the new science is integrated into TSCA.”
Others, particularly EPA officials, have said that the sheer number of chemicals EPA must screen with its new TSCA authority and prioritize for risk assessment makes it necessary for agency staff to determine how to use the faster, cheaper non-animal toxicity testing methods.
Another speaker on the ALI-CLE webinar, Lynn Bergeson, managing partner of the firm Bergeson & Campbell, suggested some concern in EPA's ability to advance use of these new technologies. She too, noted Lautenberg's requirements regarding non-animal testing, including its direction that EPA craft a plan to mange the transition by June 22, 2018.
“We find it very important and terrific that section 4(h) requires that EPA to the extent practicable reduce and replace animal testing,” she said. “It's just unclear how EPA will develop the strategic plan... There are a whole host of other issues, [such as] what will screening and testing look like? What will mutually acceptable data look like? These are all fascinating issues to look for in the months and years ahead.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/epa-issues-tscas-framework-rules-bipartisan-law-faces-challenges
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EPA Opens Comment Period on Risk Evaluations for First Ten Chemicals Under Revised TSCA
Jun 21, 2017 | The National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson
On June 19, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency posted a memo authorizing the opening of comment periods for the public to comment on the risk evaluation process for the first ten chemicals it is evaluating under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to determine whether they “present an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment.” Specifically, EPA states it is interested in “information from the public that could be useful to the Agency in conducting problem formulation,” which is the “next step in the process of conducting the required risk evaluations for these chemicals.” Comments are due September 19, 2017.
EPA’s 2017 Annual Report on Risk Evaluations issued in February stated that it expected to issue a scoping document on each of the individual chemicals by June 19, 2017, which must include “the hazard(s), exposure(s), condition(s) of use, and the potentially exposed or susceptible subpopulation(s) the Administrator expects to consider in the evaluation.” EPA has not yet issued the scoping documents, but is expected to do so soon. After the scoping documents have been published, EPA stated that it would “continue with the risk evaluation process as described in the statute and the associated Risk Evaluation Rule [to be issued in final on June 22, 2017], with the expectation to complete the risk evaluation in the 3-3.5 year timeframe required by law.”
The list of ten chemicals and their corresponding docket ID numbers are:
1, 4 Dioxane, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0723;
Methylene Chloride, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0742;
1-Bromopropane, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0741;
N-Methylpyrolidone (NMP), EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0743;
Asbestos, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0736;
Pigment Violet 29, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0725;
Carbon Tetrachloride, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0733;
Trichloroethylene, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0737;
Cyclic Aliphatic Bromide Cluster (HBCD), EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0735; and
Tetrachloroethylene, EPA-HQ-OPPT-2016-0732.
Revised TSCA requires that the three framework rules, which include the procedures for evaluating existing chemical risks rule (Risk Evaluation Rule), the procedures to prioritize chemicals for risk evaluation rule, and the requirements for TSCA Inventory notification (active-inactive) rule, be issued in final by June 22, 2017.
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-opens-comment-period-risk-evaluations-first-ten-chemicals-under-revised-tsca
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EPA Faces Ongoing Cleanup Burdens In Midst Of Budget Cuts
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Even as EPA faces the threat of significant budget cuts in fiscal year 2018, two reports highlight both new and ongoing cleanup burdens the agency faces.
In the Great Lakes, a joint report released by EPA and its Canadian counterpart finds that “toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes have dropped but invasive species and algal blooms threaten the lakes' ecosystems and keep them from being truly great,” according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Reporting on the agencies' new study, "State of the Great Lakes 2017 Highlights Report" finds that of the lakes, “Lake Erie is in the worst condition.” describing it as "deteriorating," with algal blooms caused by agricultural runoff contaminating drinking water in its western end, and beach fouling and habitat loss plaguing its eastern end.
While the report finds some positive trends in Lake Erie, such as increased fish and native plant stocks, its findings are nevertheless raising concerns from environmentalists, who point to Trump administration plans to eliminate EPA's Great Lakes cleanup program.
"As the report makes clear, progress is being made--but serious threats remain, " said a statement from National Wildlife Federation scientist Michael Murray. "Lake Erie's deteriorating health serves as a warning that public officials on both sides of the border cannot let their guards down. The millions of people who rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water, health, jobs and way of life are counting on public officials to continue to make Great Lakes restoration and protection a top priority."
Meanwhile in North Carolina, Chemours, the DuPont spinoff, announced that it will stop discharging GenX, an alternative to some perfluorinated chemicals, into the Cape Fear River, though EPA officials say the agency plans to investigate the releases to determine if they were lawful, according to the Wilmington Star-News.
The paper reports that the company announced June 20 that it will begin taking steps to capture all wastewater containing the GenX chemical, remove the substance and dispose of it.
“We are capturing the byproduct GenX from the waste streams of the fluoromonomer production and disposing of it,” Gary Cambre, a Chemours spokesman, wrote in an email.
But the paper reports those steps may not be enough to stave off an EPA investigation into Chemours’ activities at the Fayetteville Works site about 100 miles up the Cape Fear River from Wilmington.
“This investigation will allow EPA to determine whether Chemours is in compliance with requirements of the order to control releases to the environment at the Fayetteville, N.C., facility,” an EPA spokeswoman said in an email.
These cases come as Congress has begun to consider the Trump administration's budget request for FY18, which proposes to slash EPA's budget by $2.4 billion or 31 percent, including eliminating the Great Lakes cleanup program and others.
Many, including Republican appropriators, have raised concerns that such deep cuts will make it impossible for EPA to carry out its most basic functions, such as cleanup and enforcement actions.
But at a House panel hearing last week, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt offered only a muted defense of the request, leaving it up to lawmakers to rewrite the plan.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/epa-faces-ongoing-cleanup-burdens-midst-budget-cuts
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EPA Must Do More to Combat Weedkiller Resistance: Watchdog
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
The EPA must do more to combat weed resistance to common herbicides, the agency's watchdog said in a new report.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General released the report June 21 to review the agency's handling of a growing problem among U.S. farmers.
Many crop growers in the Midwest and the South are struggling with weeds like palmer amaranth and pigweed that don't die when sprayed with Monsanto's glyphosate, the most commonly-used herbicide in the world. Decades of spraying the popular weedkiller alongside corn, soybeans, cotton, and other crops genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate has facilitated the evolution of invasive weeds.
Although the EPA uses the pesticide registration process to collect information on health and environmental risks from pesticides used on herbicide-resistant weeds, the agency collects little to no information on the synergy—the increased potency of chemicals that are mixed—of pesticides, the report said.
The Inspector General also found that herbicide labels don't always include information on the chemical mechanism that explains how the herbicide kills the plant, which can result in improper spraying of weedkillers.
The EPA also has failed to provide adequate information on tracking resistance, the report said.
“There is a lack of communication and collaboration between the EPA and its public and private stakeholders regarding herbicide resistance management,” according to the report's summary. “This limits the reach of actions proposed and taken by the EPA, the development of meaningful alternatives, and the agency's ability to proactively respond to herbicide resistance in the field.”
In a March 23 response to the report, Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, acting assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said the agency would complete draft plans to improve data collection and communication with scientists, government agencies, and industry by March 2018.
However, Cleland-Hamnett said the EPA would not develop performance measures to assess the agency's success in slowing the spread of herbicide resistance because it would be “beyond the scope” of the agency's regulatory authority.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114711787&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114711787&jd=114711787
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Boeing Asbestos Exposure Case Stays Federal
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Steven M. Sellers
A worker's asbestos exposure claims against Boeing stemming from his work on military planes decades ago will stay in federal court, the Northern District of California ruled June 20 (Thrash v. Cirrus Enters., LLC, 2017 BL 211334, N.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-01501, remand denied 6/20/17).
The ruling denied Joseph Thrash's bid to return his negligence claims against The Boeing Co. and other manufacturers to California state courts.
Boeing and other companies sued by Thrash—United Technologies Corp., Lockheed Martin Co., and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.—demonstrated their manufacture of the military aircraft was at the direction of the federal government, entitling them to a federal forum under the Federal Officer Removal Statute.
The statute generally authorizes federal courts to hear cases like Thrash's when a defendant's alleged conduct was taken under the direction of a federal officer.
Thrash claims he was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2016, and that it was caused by exposures to asbestos-containing products in B-52, C-141, and C-5 airplanes in the 1970s and ‘80s, according to the complaint.
Boeing transferred the case to federal court in April, but Thrash asked that it be sent back to California Superior Court, Alameda County.
Here, the companies demonstrated they were under the “direct and detailed control” of the military, had to comply with federal specifications, and couldn't alter warnings about product dangers, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said.
The companies also showed “they did not have any information regarding the dangers of asbestos exposure that the United States military did not already have,” the court said.
U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar wrote the opinion.
The law offices of Weitz & Luxenberg represented Thrash.
Manion Gaynor & Manning represented Boeing.
Glazier Yee represented Lockheed Martin.
Tucker Ellis represented United Technologies.
Gordon Rees represented Goodyear.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114711806&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114711806&jd=114711806
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New York Assembly Passes Bill On Lead In Decorative Lights
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
New York state’s Assembly has passed a bill that would require labelling of seasonal and decorative lights containing lead.
The measure (A 4345) would mean that covered lights containing an electrical cord casing made with polyvinyl chloride, in which lead is used as a fire retardant and stabiliser, had to bear the following label:
"Warning: Handling the coated electrical wire of this product may expose you to lead. Wash hands thoroughly after use."
It would extend to portable, plug-connected lights – including wired holiday string lights, pre-lit artificial Christmas trees and wreaths, stockings, candles and light sculptures – manufactured, sold or distributed in the state.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57133/new-york-assembly-passes-bill-on-lead-in-decorative-lights
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Endocrine Societies Speak Out Against Proposed EDC Criteria
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Three endocrine societies have spoken out against the European Commission's proposed criteria on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).
The Endocrine Society, the European Society for Endocrinology and the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology sent a joint letter in which they object to loopholes they say can potentially allow dangerous chemicals to escape identification as EDCs.
They urged member states to work towards improving the criteria, by incorporating the following recommendations:
remove the exemption for biocides and pesticides designed to act on endocrine systems;
adhere to a science-based definition that includes categories for known EDCs and chemicals for which more information is needed to make a determination; and
maintain a hazard-based identification system without derogations based on risk.
The Commission postponed a vote on the proposed criteria in May.
The Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) is scheduled to discuss, and possibly vote on, the criteria on 4 July.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57004/endocrine-societies-speak-out-against-proposed-edc-criteria
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EU To Discuss EDC Criteria In July
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
Another discussion, and possible vote, on the latest proposed criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) will be held at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (SCoPAFF) on 4 July, the European Commission's health directorate (DG Sante) has announced.
The SCoPAFF was expected to vote on the criteria several times before, most recently at its meeting on 30 May. But the European Commission has repeatedly postponed a formal vote because of continuing disagreements among EU member states.
Earlier this month, three endocrine societies sent a joint letter to the Commission stating their objections to loopholes they say can potentially allow dangerous chemicals to escape identification as EDCs.
https://chemicalwatch.com/57141/eu-to-discuss-edc-criteria-in-july
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Industry Must Avoid Stigmatising Preservatives, Says EU Commission
Jun 22, 2017 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The ongoing regulatory scrutiny of preservatives is of "great concern", Martin Seychell, deputy general of the European Commission’s health directorate (DG Sante), has said.
Speaking at trade body Cosmetics Europe's annual conference in Brussels last week, he told delegates: "Excessively reducing the palette of preservatives available to formulators creates real public health problems. It means that consumers are exposed to higher levels of the remaining ones."
Bans and restrictions on widely used substances have come into force over the last two years, including for several parabens and the mixture of methylchloroisothiazolinone and methylisothiazolinone (MCI/MI).
In the EU, preservatives are part of a 'positive list' and only ingredients endorsed by the competent authorities of all member states - and listed in the cosmetics Regulation - are permitted for use. Assessments are carried out by the European Commission’s Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety (SCCS).
There are currently 132 preservatives on the list, but sometimes these need to be used in combination to reach the correct efficacy.
Mr Seychell said risk managers, "must fulfil their responsibilities with great care" and do what they can to avoid losing substances from the list unnecessarily.
But he added that industry needed to avoid "stigmatising the use of preservatives". Claims of products being preservative free or paraben free, when the science committee has concluded that they are not of concern, could "undermine the risk assessment process", he said.
Mr Seychell also highlighted the risk of product contamination if preservatives were not used, which he said could have "a great impact on human health".Industry survey
The shrinking pool of preservatives available on the market in Europe has prompted action from Cosmetics Europe.
As part of its strategy, the trade body is surveying members about their use of the substances in personal care products.
Cosmetics Europe director general, John Chave, told Chemical Watch that the reduced pool put "more pressure on those that remain".
He said some people in the industry saw the situation with product preservation as "a crisis" and it was incumbent on the trade body to "ensure that the regulatory environment and communication is supportive of a wide palette of preservation ingredients".
The survey intends to create a picture of use across the spectrum of cosmetic products, by asking members which they use in products, how they use them, in what combination and in what kind of formulation.
Mr Chave said the results would be "a platform for evolving our strategy for going forward which is partly about communication, partly about risk assessment and risk management and partly about regulation as well."
https://chemicalwatch.com/57083/industry-must-avoid-stigmatising-preservatives-says-eu-commission
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Onshore Natural Gas, Oil Supply Pushing Gulf Coast LNG, Petchem Expansions, Says LSU
Jun 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
Upstream technological advancements have fundamentally altered the outlook for natural gas and oil, with the Gulf Coast ready and able to expand gas export capability and petrochemical growth, according to a new study.
The inaugural “Gulf Coast Energy Outlook” by Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies and E.J. Ourso College of Business, offers a broad overview of global and national energy market trends, with an emphasis on its implications for the two main states, Texas and Louisiana.
“Our research shows that the Gulf Coast has seen large increases in oil and gas production, with these increases concentrated in the state of Texas,” said co-author Gregory B. Upton Jr., assistant professor in the LSU Center for Energy Studies. “The growth of federal offshore production observed in the 1990s has been offset by U.S. onshore shale producers over this past decade. We are truly experiencing the next era of oil and gas production spearheaded by technological advancements made right here in our own Gulf Coast region.”
A plethora of expansions are underway along the Gulf Coast.
The new production has created significant investment opportunities in refining, petrochemicals and hydrocarbon transport.
“We expect that these investments will continue in upcoming years,” Upton said.
The past 15 years or so have been phenomenal for the energy industry, but it’s also fallen victim to its own success, as increased supply has contributed to swiftly falling prices, first of natural gas starting in 2008, and then for crude oil starting in 2015.
“These sudden price changes have had economy-wide implications,” the LSU researchers said.
U.S. oil prices are expected to remain around $5-65/bbl until the end of 2018, with the high estimates for 2018 at $75/bbl, the researchers said. Natural gas prices should continue to be $3.00-3.50/ MMBtu, with a high estimate in 2018 of $3.73.
While prices are expected to stay relatively flat, price volatility also should remain low, boding well for coastal expansions and greenfield projects -- particularly geared to booming gas supply.
“In Louisiana alone, over $46 billion of capital expansions have already been completed since 2011, with another $96 billion in remaining announced projects,” said the researchers. “While all of these projects will likely not come to fruition, this represents a significant opportunity for the energy manufacturing sector in coming years.”
The refining sector along the Gulf Coast also should see resilient crude production, while net exports climb.
“Employment in both the upstream oil and gas extraction sectors and downstream refining and petrochemical sectors is expected to increase steadily in coming years…If natural gas prices continue to remain affordable and volatility remains subdued, this will provide the atmosphere necessary for continued petrochemical expansions.”
Moderate, stable oil and gas prices also should provide the opportunity for producers to keep drilling, while improving efficiency overall in the “still historically young” unconventional formations.
By 2020, total domestic crude production is forecast to increase by more than 10 million b/d, with an increased concentration in the Gulf Coast region, according to LSU. And while more natural gas production is underway in Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale, the Gulf Coast remains a “significant” contributor.
“U.S. natural gas production continues to be resilient and shows continued strong growth through 2020 and beyond,” said the LSU team. “The Gulf Coast region makes a significant contribution to the 80 Bcf/d U.S. market, but the Marcellus accounts for the largest relative share.”
Although Appalachia is vying for more gas-related investments, the Gulf Coast remains the go-to site for petrochemical expansions, with most of North America’s processing and refinery capacity concentrated in Texas and Louisiana.
“In recent years, the most important aspect has been construction boom in the sector, driven to a large extent by new natural gas production,” the LSU team said. “New extraction technology has produced lower and more stable prices of natural gas, the key input into the Gulf Coast’s chemical manufacturing sector.”
Gas production is the backbone for feedstock in the chemical manufacturing sector, and “low and stable prices have created a renaissance in industrial development in the Gulf Coast region.”
The feedstock is key in helping produce ammonia, methanol, and ethylene, and these industries in the Gulf Coast region have access to “consistent supplies of inexpensive natural gas,” which is likely to continue for decades.
“This presents a unique opportunity for significant expansion,” said the authors, who also included LSU’s Christopher K. Coombs, an energy adviser in the Economics & Policy Research Group; David E. Dismukes, executive director and professor of the Center for Energy Studies; and Dek Terrell, director and professor, Economics & Policy Research Group.
LSU’s Center for Energy Studies has tracked Gulf Coast industrial expansions for several years, estimating that a total of $240 billion “of either already completed or announced capital expenditures” are heavily concentrated in Texas and Louisiana.
Most of the expenditures in the two states are in three categories -- liquefied natural gas export, methanol/ammonia, and cracker/polymer.
“The continued low natural gas price outlook has facilitated over $142 billion in announced capital expenditures, with $46 billion already completed and $96 billion remaining.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/110858-onshore-natural-gas-oil-supply-pushing-gulf-coast-lng-petchem-expansions-says-lsu
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Lawyer: ‘No Timeframe’ For New Dakota Access Environmental Review
Jun 21, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A government lawyer said Wednesday that officials don’t know how long it will take them to redo an environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline as ordered by a federal judge last week.
Matthew Marinelli, an Army Corps of Engineers lawyer, said he had “no timeframe” for completing that review, and that he would have an updated schedule when he files more paperwork with the court on July 17.
Asked by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg if he could estimate what the timeline might be, Marinelli said, “I’m very hesitant to do that.”
“The Corps is just starting to grapple with the issues the court has identified,” he said.
Boasberg ruled last week that parts of the government’s environmental assessment of the 1,170-mile Dakota Access pipeline were inadequate. He ordered the Army Corps to reconsider the project’s impact on local tribes and their hunting and fishing rights and whether permitting decisions around the pipeline were fair to tribe members.
He did not order oil to stop flowing through the pipeline, which came online earlier this month after a lengthy legal battle and amid public protests from environmentalists and tribal rights activists.
Instead, he asked the government, Dakota Access developers and local tribes to plead their case on that question in a series of legal briefs due to the court this summer, starting next month.
Jan Hasselman, an Earthjustice lawyer representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the case, said he expects there will be a decision on the question of the pipeline’s operations by September.
Lawyers for the tribes opposed to the project said Wednesday they worry the government and Dakota Access developers will quickly complete the required environmental reviews of the project without allowing them to comment on the matter.
“We want to be involved in the process,” Hasselman said. “We want to be consulted.”
Hasselman and other tribes’ lawyers said they would consider a more extensive legal fight if the process didn’t involve public comments on the project.
Marinelli said the Army Corps’ legal brief due in July would outline how the government intends to complete its review, and Boasberg said he expects opponents will get to have a say.
“I expect the Corps to follow the law and follow the procedures that apply,” he said.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/338828-lawyer-no-timeframe-for-new-dakota-access-environmental-review
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Subcommittee To Vote On Infrastructure Bills
Jun 22, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sam Mintz
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy will advance five bills relating to hydropower and pipeline infrastructure today.
The legislation is aimed at easing requirements for both kinds of projects, which has been a major goal for the Republican majority.
Several of the bills, which the committee discussed at a hearing in May, are left over from recent years' failed efforts to produce a comprehensive energy package (E&E Daily, May 1).
"Hydropower is responsible for providing almost 7 percent of the nation's total energy needs and is one of the cleanest forms of energy," subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement.
"The regulatory environment for hydropower has become increasingly complex and mired in bureaucratic red tape and unfortunately the same can be said as it relates to the permitting process for natural gas pipelines and cross-border energy infrastructure."
The "Hydropower Policy Modernization Act," which has not yet been introduced and is being marked up as a discussion draft, would modify the definition of renewable energy to include hydro and give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission more flexibility to extend preliminary permits and construction deadlines. It also would set up new licensing procedures, with FERC as the lead agency.
H.R. 2883, from Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), would change the process for permitting cross-border natural gas and transmission infrastructure.
It would remove the requirement for a presidential permit, transferring the authority to FERC for pipelines and the secretary of Energy for electric transmission facilities.
The other bills are:H.R. 2786, from Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), to promote the development of small conduit hydropower facilities.H.R. 2910, from Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), to reinforce FERC's role as the lead agency for permitting gas pipelines, directing it to impose deadlines on other agencies involved.Another bill would help states secure energy infrastructure and plan for energy disruptions. It had also not been introduced in the House as of yesterday.
Schedule: The markup is Thursday, June 22, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/06/22/stories/1060056402
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DuPont Joins New US Cracker Expansion Wave
Jun 21, 2017 | ICIS
By Al Greenwood
HOUSTON (ICIS)--US-based DuPont became the latest company to announce a project that will take advantage of growing US supplies of natural-gas liquids (NGLs), with its plans to expand a cracker by 200m lb/year (91,000 tonnes/year).
Contractor CB&I announced the project earlier on Wednesday. It won a $40m contract for work on an ethane cracking furnace expansion at DuPont's ethylene plant in Orange, Texas.
DuPont’s Orange plant currently has an ethylene capacity of 680,000 tonnes/year, according to ICIS plants and projects.
CB&I did not say when it would start the expansion project or when it should complete it. Nor did the contractor explain why DuPont is expanding the plant or how DuPont will use the extra feedstock.
DuPont said the installation of the heater should be completed in Q4 2018, and the expanded cracker should be online in early 2019.
DuPont's cracker in Orange is the company's only ethylene plant in the US, according to ICIS. It is small when compared with the new crackers being built, many of which have capacities of 1.5m tonnes/year.
However, DuPont's announcement comes as the US continues to increase oil production, raising the supply outlook for ethane and other natural gas liquids (NGLs).
The increase has led to a surge of midstream projects that will process the associated gas from these oil wells to extract the NGLs and then ship them to the Gulf Coast.
Many of these midstream projects serve oil production the Permian and Delaware basins in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
However, but some companies have also announced plans for Oklahoma. The state is home to the STACK (Sooner Trend Anadarko Canadian Kingfisher and SCOOP (South Central Oklahoma Oil Province) plays.
ONEOK plans to expand the capacity of its Sterling III pipeline, which ships NGLs from western Oklahoma to Mont Belvieu, Texas.
The project will increase Sterling III's capacity to 250,000 bbl/day from 190,000 bbl/day, ONEOK said. The company should complete the expansion by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, Canyon Midstream is planning a cryogenic unit to process 200m standard cubic feet/day of natural gas at its Redcliff Midstream gas processing facility in Woodward county, Oklahoma.
Pinnacle Midstream has begun engineering and construction on the Sierra Grande Gas Processing Plant, a 60m cubic feet/day cryogenic gas plant in the Delaware Basin of west Texas.
DCP Midstream is planning an additional large-scale expansion of the Sand Hills NGL pipeline.
Targa Resources plans to build a new NGL pipeline from the Permian Basin to Mont Belvieu.
Enterprise Products plans to build a pipeline to transport NGL from the Permian Basin to Mont Belvieu.
A group of former executives from Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) has launched Aspen Midstream, having secured a $200m commitment from EnCap Flatrock Midstream and the management team of the new company.
EnCap has since made another equity commitment to create Cardinal Midstream III.
EnLink and Natural Gas Partners created a joint venture to build a processing plant in the Delaware basin.
Enterprise announced several projects back in June 2016.
All of these midstream projects are important to the petrochemical industry because they will provide additional feedstock for new projects.
Because the US can now export ethane and propane, some of the country's feedstock will be used for expansions in Europe.
INEOS plans to build a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) in Europe that will use feedstock shipped from the US.
US ethane will supply the expansion projects that INEOS is building at its crackers in Grangemouth in the UK and Rafnes in Norway.
Before the announcement by INEOS, Dow Chemical said it would increase the capacity of its new cracker in Freeport, Texas, to 2m tonnes/year.
ExxonMobil and SABIC picked a site in Corpus Christi, Texas, where it may build a cracker and other downstream units.
NOVA Chemicals is creating a joint venture with Borealis and Total to build a 1m tonne/year cracker in Port Arthur, Texas.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/06/21/10117759/dupont-joins-new-us-cracker-expansion-wave/
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US Energy Department - Trump Administration Supports LNG Exports
Jun 22, 2017 | ICIS
By Adam Yanelli
The US government under the administration of President Donald Trump strongly supports exporting US natural gas in the form of LNG, a government official said on 21 June at the CWC World LNG Summit in Houston.
Robert J. Smith, acting assistant deputy secretary at the Department of Energy (DOE), in an update on permitting of US LNG projects, said US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has highlighted his full support for LNG exports.
Smith talked up the role of the US as the global leader in gas production.
With US natural gas still abundant and relatively cheap – prices in hubs like the Algonquin and mid-Atlantic are significantly lower than the US benchmark Henry Hub – the prospects for increased exports make financial sense.
At the same time, while the DOE has approved export permits for more than 21 billion cubic feet (bcf) of LNG per day, only 10bcf/day of projects have made final investment decisions and are under construction.
Smith said he does not foresee the DOE revoking any project authorisations because it recognizes that these LNG projects require investments of $10s of billions, and all participants must act in good faith.
“DOE has never revoked authorisation; nor has it contemplated,” he said. “DOE does not view export authorisations as a price maintenance mechanism, and any changes in export licences would only be taken for extraordinary measures.”
In the following panel discussion, the conversation touched on the US regulatory process.
Fred Hutchinson, executive director of LNG Allies, which represents US LNG sellers particularly for prospective European buyers, said the US regulatory system works fairly well for the approvals that have already been made.
“We have a good situation here in the US. We have a sound, legally defensible transparent process,” he said.
Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for LNG, said that the association was advocating for an expedited DOE non-free trade agreement approval process and currently was being considered in an energy package proposed by Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/06/22/10117876/us-energy-department-trump-administration-supports-lng-exports/
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(ACC Mentioned) EPA Memo Reveals Staff Concerns About Chemical Safety Rules
Jun 21, 2017 | Politico Pro
By Annie Snider And Alex Guillén
The Trump EPA is poised to roll out new rules to implement a landmark chemical safety law that were heavily shaped by a former top official from the chemical industry lobby.
The rules will also embrace some key industry priorities by limiting the scope of the agency's review of thousands of substances.
An internal EPA memo reviewed by POLITICO showed that EPA staff experts raised concerns about changes made to the implementation plan for the Toxic Substances Control Act in the weeks since Nancy Beck was appointed by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to a top post in the office, overseeing the bipartisan chemical safety law that Congress passed last year. Beck joined EPA in mid-April after working as the American Chemistry Council’s senior director of regulatory science policy, where she led the industry effort to influence EPA on the law.
The May 23 memo points to several changes made to one rule in particular after Beck’s arrival at EPA that closely align with positions long advocated by chemical makers.
According to the memo, EPA plans to allow its initial analysis on the safety of a chemical to be limited only to some of its uses, rather than the full array of current and likely future uses. EPA’s top chemicals enforcement official argues in the memo that the narrower scope may lead the agency to miss potential uses “that present an unreasonable risk to health or the environment.”
EPA officials told POLITICO that the issues raised in the memo from the agency's enforcement office, dubbed OECA, were part of a typical intra-agency consultation process. But they declined to specify whether the agency's proposals, now under review at the White House, take those concerns into account.
Jeff Morris, director of EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics — the division charged with writing the rules implementing TSCA — said chemical safety officials met with the enforcement office “and talked through their comments, and based on that discussion, we moved forward with the rule. At the end of the day, OECA concurred on our approach.”
That doesn’t mean the final rule incorporates OECA’s suggestions, he added, but in the end it produced a rule “that we could all support.”
Thursday marks the anniversary of the 2016 revamp of the 40-year-old TSCA, which regulates the tens of thousands of chemicals in use in the U.S. — a major bipartisan achievement in a deeply divided Congress. Neither political party disputed that the law needed an update, since the original version didn't even allow EPA to ban asbestos — a known carcinogen — and some states had begun to step in and create their own patchwork of regulations for chemicals.
Congress took two years to hash out the TSCA compromise, ultimately winning support from chemical makers and some environmental groups for the legislation that beefed up EPA’s power to regulate harmful chemicals. And rather than relying on EPA to prove that a substance was dangerous, the law shifted some of the burden to industry to show a chemical's safety.
But TSCA also gave EPA latitude to determine how to go about examining thousands of chemicals — effectively setting the scope of the review for substances ranging from corrosive chemicals used in refining to the paints and plastics inchildren’s toys.
EPA's plans to implement TSCA are due out as early as Thursday in the form of three final regulations known as the "framework rules." One rule lays out how EPA will prioritize its assessments of chemicals, dividing them into high- and low-risk categories. Another rule details methods for studying the health and environmental risks of each chemical, And the third will cull from EPA's list any substances not used commercially since 2006 — a change that Jim Cooper, a senior petrochemical adviser at American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, estimates will shrink the number on the list to be reviewed from 85,000 chemicals to around 30,000, prohibiting those removed from future use until reviewed by the agency.
Pruitt has made TSCA a top priority under his "back to basics" strategy that has been marked by the rollback of several Obama-era environmental regulations. Funding for TSCA implementation would be increased under the Trump administration's 2018 budget proposal, while other chemical safety programs and nearly every aspect of EPA would be cut sharply.
EPA's political leaders have pressed the agency's staff to meet the aggressive deadlines laid out under the law for new rules and individual chemical evaluations, but environmentalists say they are more concerned with the substance of the implementation rules. Congressional Democrats and green activists were already worried about the approach an anti-regulatory administration might take to toxic substances, especially with President Donald Trump’s support for asbestos, which he once complained got a “bad rap.”
Those fears rose with the arrival of Beck, who worked as an OMB analyst for a decade before joining the American Chemistry Council, which she represented at a March Senate hearing to criticize the Obama administration’s proposed TSCA implementation.
Melanie Benesh of the Environmental Working Group called Beck the "scariest Trump appointee you’ve never heard of," and pointed to a 2009 Democratic congressional report that alleged that Beck, during her tenure at OMB, worked to delay and undermine EPA's chemical studies.
In a letter to Pruitt on Wednesday, Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argued that Beck’s appointment “has the potential to undermine the scientific integrity of EPA’s TSCA implementation and the consumer confidence we sought to build with a reformed TSCA.” Pallone is seeking information about Beck’s involvement with the chemicals rules and the issues she is ethically allowed to work on.
Beck told POLITICO that she has been “very involved” with the rulemaking for the past two months at EPA.
A statement from EPA's senior ethics counsel said Beck did not need to recuse herself from working on the TSCA rules because they are "matters of general applicability." The counsel added that Beck was cleared to talk with her former employer about the rules and to consider the comments it submitted.
The internal staff memo raising concerns about the changes in TSCA rules,reviewed by POLITICO, was sent by the head of EPA’s Waste and Chemical Enforcement Division to Wendy Cleland-Hamnett, the acting assistant administrator for EPA’s chemical office, the same day part of the final rules package was sent to the White House for review. It lays out a number of concerns about changes the Trump administration made to the Obama EPA's January proposal to a section governing which chemicals warrant the most thorough safetyevaluation.
Among the concerns was that EPA would only consider a limited set of uses for a chemical when deciding whether it warrants further scrutiny, rather than examining all of the different ways that people could be exposed to it.
In an interview, Cleland-Hamnett declined to describe how the final rule treats the issue, but said EPA is aiming to prioritize the chemical uses that present the greatest risk, and that it wasn't prohibiting a broader analysis.
“Not that those are the only uses we would evaluate, but we do want to make sure that we’re evaluating those uses,” she said. “So I think we’ve addressed the concern that we might not evaluate the uses that could prevent unreasonable risk.”
That issue has been a sticking point among environmentalists, public health advocates and the industry. Chemical manufacturers may produce a substance for a specific use, said Richard Denison, lead senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, but once it’s put on the market, it can end up being used in a wide variety of ways.
“That chemical that the company may intend to use solely in industrial settings may very well be bought by another company that decides to put it in a consumer product that is sold at your local hardware store,” he said, arguing EPA should consider both.
But Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, said the process should differentiate between different uses of each chemical to determine specific restrictions for each.
“Risks can be managed along a spectrum of measures, running from a ban at its most extreme, to things like labeling or warning requirements,” he said. “So that risk evaluation process is really critical.”
Another concern raised by the EPA enforcement office is whether EPA focusessolely on chemicals that are being actively manufactured when it weighs threats to human health, or whether it also considers other ways that people might be exposed to the substance. For instance, a class of fire retardant known by the acronym PBDEs are no longer in production, but were used for decades in furniture that is still in homes across the country. As the chemicals break down, they settle on dust that people breathe in, so public health advocates have pressed to include that when evaluating health risks. But the chemical industry asserts that little can be done now to tamp down on such exposures, and they're outside the purview of the law.
EPA is also due to release a decision soon on the scope of its first 10 chemical reviews, which include asbestos, several dry cleaning chemicals and a purple dye thought to hurt fish and other aquatic life. Industry groups are closely watching whether EPA decides to review those chemicals for all possible exposures, or whether it will limit its review to narrow, specific uses.
The agency said it plans to release those scoping decisions at the same time as the framework rules. Further study of those chemicals will take years.
But even as greens have raised alarms about the efficacy of the new chemicals law under the Trump administration, both sides say that industry has an interest in making sure that it works. After all, it was lack of public trust in the old system that brought everyone to the table a year ago to fix it, said Dimitri Karakitsos, who negotiated the chemicals overhaul measure as a staffer for Senate Republicans.
"Industry and Republicans care very much about a credible system that works, and so does EPA," said Karakitsos, now a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight LLP. "If implementation isn't happening, states ramp up activity again, and that can result in an inconsistent patchwork of regulations and significant impediments to interstate commerce."
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/story/2017/06/epa-memo-reveals-staff-concerns-about-upcoming-chemical-safety-rules-158656
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(ACC Mentioned) Labor Seeks To Support Suit Challenging RMP Rule Delay
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
Labor groups are seeking to intervene in support of environmentalists' challenge to the Trump administration's lengthy delay of an Obama-era facility safety rule, arguing that the delay irreparably harms workers and that environmentalists may not fully represent workers, who have a “distinct perspective” on the facilities where they work.
In a June 20 motion to intervene, the United Steelworkers (USW) and AFL-CIO urge the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate a Trump administration rule that delayed by an additional 20 months revisions to the Obama EPA's final rule updating the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility accident prevention program.
“USW members who work in chemical and petrochemical facilities and their families who often are fence-line community members are amongst the most vulnerable to death, injury, and other harm caused by releases of RMP regulated substances,” the labor groups say. “The record for the [RMP rule] establishes that implementation of the Rule will reduce the likelihood of accidental releases and the harm caused by such releases.”
Roughly a dozen environmental and public interest groups, including Sierra Club, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, and the Union of Concerned Scientists June 15 petitioned the D.C. Circuit to reverse EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's June 14 rule delaying the RMP update 20 months -- from June 19 to Feb. 19, 2019 -- to allow for a process to revise the RMP update.
The Obama EPA's Jan. 13 final RMP rule includes new auditing and hazard analysis requirements, as well as provisions bolstering release of facility data to emergency planners and the public, which have drawn strong opposition from industry groups as well as GOP state attorneys general, including Pruitt prior to his selection to lead EPA.
Pruitt's delay responds to criticism from chemical manufacturers and other industry sectors, and some Republican lawmakers, that the Obama administration's rule is unnecessary, brings significant new costs without improving safety and that provisions for disclosing facility data will worsen terror risks.
Industry groups, including the American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have challenged (/node/200404) the Obama RMP update in a separate D.C. Circuit case, though that litigation is on hold as the Trump EPA pursues potential revisions to the controversial rule.
Pruitt suggested when he delayed the rule that he would seek to make significant changes to the Obama-era rule, arguing that the rule is based on “policy preferences” that could vary between administrations, and that the agency intends to raise concerns with the rule not cited in industry petitions.
But some are suggesting that the administration may go further and target some of the program's prior requirements. Bruce Pasfield and Phil Sandick, lawyers at Alston & Bird, wrote recently that “there is a fair chance that any new Pruitt RMP amendment not only drops the additional requirements in the now-delayed rule, but also carves back requirements in the underlying RMP Rule.”
In their request to intervene, the labor groups argue that the Obama-EPA RMP update resulted from a multi-year rulemaking process that included opportunities for public input, and that the Trump administration's delay postpones long-awaited protections for workers and their families who live near facilities.
The groups argue that EPA data shows that more than 225 accidental releases occurred annually between 2004 and 2013, and say that their members are at risk from and have been harmed by facility disasters. They also argue that workers at facilities covered by the RMP rule bring a “distinct perspective” that may be of assistance to the court.
Additionally, the groups cite a 2013 USW report, “A Risk Too Great, Hydrofluoric Acid in U.S. Refineries,” which argued that 50 U.S. refineries use the substance, putting more than 26 million people at risk from an accidental release.
“USW members and their families experience on-going harms due to exposure to regulated substances and concerns about potential health impacts resulting from accidental releases at RMP covered facilities,” the motion says. “The ever-present threat of accidents and consequent health and safety implications for USW members and their families impair their ability to engage in and diminish their enjoyment of, activities important to USW members’ and their families’ quality of life.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/labor-seeks-support-suit-challenging-rmp-rule-delay
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Trump Seeks Game Plan For Grid Threats
Jun 21, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Blake Sobczak
President Trump sat down with energy-sector representatives and cybersecurity experts at the White House today to discuss evolving threats to the power grid.
The unidentified "energy sector leaders" brought up potential strategies "to address the evolution of malicious cyber activity" in the energy sphere, said a readout of the gathering.
The White House added that Trump "stated his continued commitment to enhancing electric grid security and resilience," pointing to his May 11 executive order on the subject.
Today's meeting included retired Gen. Keith Alexander, a former National Security Agency director and founder of IronNet Cybersecurity, and Tom Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Former New York Mayor and longtime Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani was also present, according to the readout. Earlier this year, Trump tasked Giuliani with finding new public-private approaches to the cybersecurity problems plaguing the nation, though Giuliani has kept a low profile since then (Energywire, Jan. 13).
"We must work with private sector — the private sector is way ahead of government in this case — to ensure that owners and operators of critical infrastructure have the support they need from the federal government to defend against cyberthreats," Trump said at a Jan. 31 White House meeting with cybersecurity advisers and experts.
So far, the president has doubled down on his predecessor's approach to cybersecurity by playing up the need for government and industry cooperation, especially in the energy sector, where the majority of infrastructure is owned and operated by private utilities.
Today, the White House said Trump "underscored the importance of a continuing public and private partnership to effectively combat threats against the energy sector, particularly the power grid," after thanking participants for their efforts.
While a White House spokesman did not respond to request for more details on the meeting, it's likely officials addressed recent high-profile cyberthreats such as WannaCry and CrashOverride.
Cybersecurity researchers first uncovered the CrashOverride threat early last week, and its ability to target power grids worldwide triggered a series of alerts from both the Department of Homeland Security and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (Energywire, June 13). Nobody from NERC was at the meeting, said a spokeswoman.
It's not yet clear how these changing threats to U.S. infrastructure will shape Trump's cybersecurity policies. Last month's executive order called for state and federal authorities to review "the potential scope and duration of a prolonged power outage associated with a significant cyber incident" and single out any gaps in U.S. readiness. Their report is due in August and could offer ideas for charting a new approach.
The order also sought input on how the government can offer "support to critical infrastructure at greatest risk," a category that includes major electricity generation and transmission companies.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/06/21/stories/1060056387
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Giuliani Gathers Energy Executives To Brief Trump On Cyberthreats
Jun 21, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Eric Geller
President Donald Trump met today with energy sector executives to discuss cyber threats to the nation’s power grid.
The meeting was the first public gathering of an outside cyber advisory group led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Tom Bossert, the president’s homeland security adviser, and Keith Alexander, the former NSA director, also attended.
“President Trump thanked the participants in the meeting for their efforts and underscored the importance of a continuing public and private partnership to effectively combat threats against the energy sector, particularly the power grid,” the White House said in a statement.
The meeting focused on the “unique challenges the sector faces and strategic initiatives, both underway and proposed, to address the evolution of malicious cyber activity,” the statement said.
Joining Giuliani were American Gas Association CEO David McCurdy, Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning, ConEd CEO John McAvoy, Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn and Kevin Mandia, CEO of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, a White House spokesman told POLITICO.
Trump signed a cyber executive order in May that called for agencies to assess the energy sector’s cyber resilience.
The meeting follows the disclosure of a sophisticated malware toolkit designed for sabotaging power grids. Russian hackers are believed to have used the malware to take down part of Ukraine’s grid last December.
“The President made clear that his Administration is committed to working closely with infrastructure providers, improving the existing public and private partnership framework, and fostering collaborative relationships for effective risk management,” the White House said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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PHMSA Pauses Stricter Natural Gas Storage Rules for Clarification
Jun 21, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Richard Nemec
Responding to requests from the oil and natural gas industry, the Trump administration has served notice that it will delay some of the Obama administration's stepped up safety rules for underground natural gas storage.
The rules were forged last year in the aftermath of the massive storage well leak at Aliso Canyon, California's largest gas storage facility. The move is a pause -- not a rejection -- of the tougher standards, according to industry sources.
Environmental groups reacted with alarm, but industry representatives said the federal agency was trying to correct and clarify some the proposed changes.
"The entire rule on natural gas storage is in place and moving forward," said a Washington, DC-based spokesperson for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA). "It continues to be in place and will be in place” when the final rule is issued, as scheduled in January.
The Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has intended to issue a final rule by Jan. 18. The interim rule inadvertently indicated all of the new storage requirements had to be in place within a year's time, which apparently was not the agency’s intent. Industry asked for and PHMSA agreed to provide revisions and clarification.
“They're holding back the section that they made a mistake on,” the INGAA spokesperson told NGI.
The spokesperson said there is no basis for the contention that the Trump administration was not going to enforce natural gas storage safety.
"It is ridiculous to say that; for years, the industry has been trying to get federal gas storage regulations, and we have been completely involved in the development of these regulations."
According to the notice regarding the delay, PHMSA said it “plans on using the final rule to address the comments and the petition for reconsideration and revise the requirements in the interim rule.” It would not enforce any new rules for one year, which would be after Jan. 18, 2019 at the earliest.
At issue is the Obama administration's interim final rule that would convert voluntary requirements under the American Petroleum Institute (API) recommended practices to being mandatory provisions. Industry subsequently asked the Trump administration to reconsider these provisions in the final rule.
Initially asking for reconsideration were the American Gas Association, API, American Public Gas Association and the INGAA, which later withdrew from the petition.
PHMSA's notice said it "reserves the right to exercise its other authorities, if necessary, to address any emergencies that present an imminent hazard or specific conditions that are or would be hazardous to life, property, or the environment."
California Oil and Gas Supervisor Ken Harris said the state's ongoing efforts to strengthen its rules for gas storage would not be affected by the PHMSA action. "PHMSA's regulation sets a regulatory floor for state regulation of intrastate underground storage facilities," Harris said.
The state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources proposed gas storage regulations are stricter and more comprehensive than the minimum standards in the PHMSA regulations, Harris said.
"California continues to enforce the strict monitoring, inspection, and testing regimen for all natural gas storage facilities instituted following the Aliso Canyon leak.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/110856-phmsa-pauses-stricter-natural-gas-storage-rules-for-clarification
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EPA's Methane Calculations Get Inspector General Scrutiny
Jun 22, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Andrew Childers
The EPA's methods for calculating methane emissions for oil and gas wells will undergo new scrutiny from the Inspector General even as the agency seeks to roll back regulations for that industry.
As part of its investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's methods for calculating methane emissions, the EPA's Office of Inspector General also said it will probe how the agency used data from a series of methane emissions studies by the Environmental Defense Fund and University of Texas at Austin and whether there were any “technical or other problems” with that research.
Representatives of the Environmental Defense Fund and the university could not be reached for comment, but they partnered for a series of studies on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry that included emissions measurements from 190 oil and gas sites nationwide. The studies found that the tools were available to reduce methane emissions from hydraulically fractured wells by 99 percent.
The EPA subsequently issued the first-ever methane emissions limits for new and modified oil and gas wells in 2016. Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted in 2016 that the agency “substantially” underestimated methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector.
The Trump administration, however, has proposed to halt that rule for two years while it reconsiders the standards.
Methane is a short-lived pollutant that is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide on a 100-year scale, according to the EPA, and it accounted for 9.5 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2013.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=114711786&vname=dennotallissues&fn=114711786&jd=114711786
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Environmentalists Say EPA 'Conflates' Separate Powers To Stay Methane NSPS
Jun 21, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Abby Smith
Environmentalists in a new court filing argue EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt unlawfully paused several portions of Obama-era methane oil and gas standards by conflating the agency's narrow power to “reconsider” aspects of a rule and pause those provisions with its broader authority to revise rules that remain in effect.
Their latest filing in their suit over the methane new source performance standards (NSPS) suggests that the litigation could have a broader impact by testing how much leeway courts give EPA to reconsider its rules.
“Flouting clear textual limits on his authority, Administrator Pruitt's principal argument is that he can grant reconsideration, and corresponding stays, whenever he chooses. That is not what the statute says,” a coalition of environmental groups writes in a June 20 reply brief defending their call for an appellate court to block EPA's move.
They add that the Clean Air Act “prescribes a carefully circumscribed scope for a narrow proceeding for 'reconsideration' (with authority to impose a limited stay), which the Administrator conflates with EPA's broad rule 'revision' authority (without authority to impose a stay).”
At issue in the litigation -- Clean Air Council, et al. v. EPA, et al., pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit -- is Pruitt's 90-day stay of several requirements of the NSPS. Issued by EPA in June 2016, the rule sets first-time limits on emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from new oil and gas facilities.
Pruitt initiated reconsideration proceedings of the methane NSPS' fugitive emissions monitoring requirements in an April letter to several industry groups. In a subsequent June 5 Federal Register notice, Pruitt announced reconsideration of additional provisions and stayed all provisions under reconsideration for 90 days.
Environmentalists argue, however, that EPA's stay is unlawful because the provisions Pruitt has chosen for reconsideration proceedings do not meet a two-part test under Clean Air Act section 307(d)(7)(B) -- a test they argue the agency must meet to formally “reconsider” rules.
That test requires EPA to prove: that objections to the provision were “impracticable” to raise during the comment period, and the provision is of “central relevance to the outcome of the rule.” They argue the methane NSPS provisions at issue fail both parts of the test.
Environmentalists have asked the D.C. Circuit to put a judicial stay on EPA's administrative pause of the methane NSPS provisions, or in the alternative, “grant the motion for summary disposition on the merits, and vacate EPA's unlawful administrative stay.”
Court Deference
EPA, however, argues in its June 15 brief that the statute only outlines the requirements for when it is obligated to begin reconsideration proceedings, and that the law does not limit its authority to begin such proceedings “regardless of whether the statutory criteria for when EPA is mandated to reconsider its rules are met.”
The agency argues it should receive deference from the courts regarding its reconsideration of the methane NSPS.
But environmentalists in their recent reply brief say EPA's authority to reconsider rules under air act section 307(d)(7)(B) is narrower than the agency purports. Citing prior case law, the environmental groups argue deference to EPA in this area is “limited.”
For example, environmentalists note a 2011 D.C. Circuit case Portland Cement Association v. EPA, where “after extensively examining the facts relevant to notice without a hint of deference to EPA, and despite finding it 'a very close question,' this Court rejected EPA's conclusion that the party could have reasonably anticipated the final rule.” They also cite a 1983 D.C. Circuit case, Small Refiner Lead Phase-Down Task Force v. EPA, also focused on whether EPA gave proper notice of a provision in a final rule, where they say the court made its decision “without any indication” that EPA's position was “an important factor.”
“Limited deference on these notice questions makes sense. EPA has no greater expertise than this Court in determining whether a certain issue was 'impracticable to raise' during the comment period,” environmentalists write. “To the contrary, this Court has a fully-developed body of case law for determining when a final rule is a 'logical outgrowth' of the proposal, and thus whether a party had a practicable opportunity to raise concerns.”
The filing comes as a coalition of 13 states and local governments asked to intervene on behalf of environmental groups in the case. The group includes Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia and Chicago.
'Bootstrap His Way'
More broadly, the groups claim Pruitt “conflates” his narrower reconsideration authority with the agency's broader power to “revise” a regulation.
“'Reconsideration,' as used in section 307(d)(7)(B), is a much narrower term. It is the term for the exhaustion procedure Congress made available when -- and only when -- a party demonstrates that it was unable to comment on an issue of central relevance during the normal comment period,” environmentalists write.
They say Pruitt is “mischaracterizing a revision as a reconsideration” to “bootstrap his way to stay authority.” Because EPA's ability to issue a 90-day administrative stay of rule requirements is limited to reconsideration proceedings, the agency cannot issue one in this case, the environmentalists add.
The environmentalists in their initial brief in the case argued Pruitt is trying to use the reconsideration process to dismantle the entire methane NSPS. The rule is targeted for review under President Donald Trump's energy executive order, and EPA initiated a review of the rule consistent with that directive April 3.
And EPA, since issuing the 90-day pause, has unveiled a proposal seeking to extend the stay of the NSPS requirements. In a June 16 Register notice, EPA proposed to further stay the provisions by two years, a move it says will ensure portions of the rule “do not take effect while the agency works through the reconsideration process.”
EPA is also proposing in a separate June 16 Register notice a three-month stay of the requirements, which it says will “ensure there is no gap in the stay between the 90-day stay and the proposed two-year stay if finalized.” The agency will take comment on both of those proposed stays for 30 days.
Other Arguments
Environmentalists in their June 20 brief dispute several other arguments from EPA and several oil and gas industry groups that intervened to support the agency. Industry argued in its June 15 brief that the D.C. Circuit does not have jurisdiction to review EPA's pause of the methane NSPS requirements because EPA's initiation of reconsideration -- which resulted in the stay -- is not a final action.
But the environmental groups argue the stay “marks the consummation of EPA's decision-making process and has immediate legal consequences.” And they argue that neither industry nor EPA cite a case where the court found a final agency action is “unreviewable because it was taken in the course of an ongoing proceeding.”
Environmentalists also dismiss arguments from EPA and industry that the administrative pause would not cause “irreparable” harm. EPA and industry critiques “do not withstand even minimal scrutiny,” in part because “EPA itself has conceded that delaying these provisions disproportionately harms children,” environmentalists write, citing a sentence from EPA's Register notice proposing the two-year delay.
In addition, environmentalists charge Pruitt and industry, in arguing oil and gas firms would face “millions of dollars in compliance costs” without the stay, omit that those costs would represent “just a fraction of a percent of industry revenues and do not outweigh the severe health harms to Petitioners' members and other Americans.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/environmentalists-say-epa-conflates-separate-powers-stay-methane-nsps
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Dems Ramp Up Post-Paris Messaging, Action Plans
Jun 22, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Hannah Hess
Democrats are on a messaging blitz today, highlighting the response at the federal, state and local level to President Trump's bombshell announcement about U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
The NewDEAL, a national network of progressive state and local leaders, and the New Democrat Coalition, which includes 61 members of Congress, will host a call this morning on how they can be most effective and involved in climate action moving forward.
Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) will talk about the view from Washington, D.C. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Environment Committee, will speak about efforts by cities.
As of yesterday, 100 mayors have pledged to promote renewable energy in their cities in coordination with the Mayors for 100% Clean Energy initiative (Greenwire, April 26). Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is the latest to pledge his support.
"Since the White House has opted to step away from its obligations to this issue, all cities — including Philadelphia — must step up," Kenney said yesterday.
The call comes ahead of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting at the end of the month. City leaders will convene in Miami Beach, Fla., with climate leadership among the items on their agenda.
This afternoon, Democrats will roll out new legislation aimed at boosting job growth in the clean energy sector.
Two lawmakers from Connecticut — Rep. Elizabeth Esty and Sen. Chris Murphy — join Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Rep. Paul Tonko of New York to preview new bicameral legislation on a press call with officials from the Connecticut Green Bank, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Center for Market Innovation, the Coalition for Green Capital and a Connecticut-based sustainable packaging company called Curtis Packaging Corp.
Separately, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) reintroduced his "Climate Solutions Act" this week. The bill, H.R. 2958, expresses the sense of Congress that the U.S. should uphold its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris framework.
Lieu's bill would also expand California's cap-and-trade program to the rest of the United States. It would require the U.S. to achieve a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and 80 percent by 2050, both based on 1990 levels, with U.S. EPA handed the authority to develop and enforce emissions targets.
Additionally, the bill would set a 33 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2025 and direct the Department of Energy to issue energy efficiency regulations. The legislation currently has nine co-sponsors, all Democrats.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2017/06/22/stories/1060056406
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