Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 7/6/2017
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(ACC Mentioned) Citizens Must Stand Against Environmental Assaults
Jul 5, 2017 | Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Marty Nathan
On Saturday, June 24, 98-year-old Frances Crowe sat in her wheelchair as it was rolled into the path of construction of Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion Pipeline in the Otis State Forest in Sandisfield. -
Petroleum Institute Lawyer Picked for EPA Legal Counsel
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Douglas Moran
A lawyer picked to be one of the EPA's senior attorneys says he is learning about areas of the agency that he “did not touch” during his lobbying experience for an oil and natural gas trade association. -
Ex-NASA Official, Pipeline Lobbyist Joins EPA's Water Office
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A former NASA official and veteran lobbyist whose environmental issues included the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects is now the top political appointee in the EPA's water office. -
Trump Appears Closer to Nominating CEQ Chief
Jul 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Trump administration appears to be getting closer to nominating Kathleen Hartnett White, a prominent climate skeptic and supporter of domestic energy production, to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). -
EPA Finalizes TSCA Inventory "Reset" Rule
Jul 5, 2017 | National Law Review
By Thomas C. Berger and Herbert Estreicher
On June 22, 2017, the first anniversary of the Lautenberg TSCA amendments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final rule to “reset” the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. -
Wood Product Makers Seek More Changes to EPA Formaldehyde Air Rule
Jul 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Wood product trade groups are seeking additional phase-in periods and other provisions of EPA's plan for extending compliance dates in an Obama-era Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule setting formaldehyde emissions limits on wood products... -
Rethinking Chemical and Pesticide Regulation
Jul 6, 2017 | Regulatory Review
By Bryan C. Williamson
One of the primary objectives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to safeguard human health. But when it comes to chemicals and pesticides, do federal environmental laws—and the regulations designed to implement them... -
Busting Cosmetic Safety Myths
Jul 5, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
Chemicals in cosmetics are largely unregulated, so it’s no surprise that some irresponsible companies and their hired-gun lobbyists are fighting the Personal Care Products Safety Act, bipartisan legislation that would finally regulate cosmetics. -
EU Food Agency Re-Opens Risk Review of Bisphenol A
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
European food regulators are taking the unusual step of calling for input ahead of a 2018 toxicity evaluation of the widely used chemical bisphenol A, which may lead to restrictions on food packaging such as can linings. -
(ACC Mentioned) Trump Plans to Make America Dominant Energy Player
Jul 6, 2017 | Epoch Times
By Stephen Gregory
Abundance and dominance are key words for the Trump administration’s new energy policy. -
(ACC Mentioned) Editorial: Even the Secondary Effects of the Shale Revolution are Staggering
Jul 5, 2017 | Tyler Morning Telegraph
By Editorial Board
Even the secondary effects of the shale revolution are staggering, a new report from the Wall Street Journal finds. It’s not just oil and gas prices, it’s also other petroleum products that play a big role in our daily lives. -
U.S. Gas Exporters Brushing Aside Qatar’s Grab for Market Share
Jul 6, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Naureen S. Malik
America’s gas exporters are, at least for now, brushing aside Qatar’s bid to claim a bigger share of the global market. -
Oil Exports, Illegal for Decades, Now Fuel a Texas Port Boom
Jul 5, 2017 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
In a twist that would have been unthinkable only two years ago, the oil tanker that arrives in China today may be carrying crude that left the South Texas port of Corpus Christi instead of Saudi Arabia. -
The Energy 202: The Two Problems with Trump's Offshore Drilling Push
Jul 6, 2017 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
President Trump is moving forward with a campaign promise to reopen federal waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans for oil and gas drilling. -
Methane Leak Rule in Effect Can't Be Halted, Lawsuit Says
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Interior Department can't halt measures to reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells on public lands six months after they took effect, the attorneys general of California and New Mexico said in a lawsuit. -
PHMSA Adjusting to New Political Landscape
Jul 6, 2017 | Bulk Transporter
DR Rachel A Meidl, deputy associate administrator in the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), doesn’t know the exact nature of the budget that Congress will ultimately pass. -
Auditors Say Fixes Made on Rail Safety, But More Work Needed
Jul 5, 2017 | Great Falls Tribune
By Phil Drake
Two state agencies have become more active in monitoring rail safety in Montana following a 2015 audit that noted several lapses and hazards, a legislative committee was told recently. -
SAB Panel Members Question Agency Method for Air Toxics Rule Reviews
Jul 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel members are questioning many of the agency's assumptions in its method for reviewing health risks from air toxics emitted by a host of industries, saying the approach might be too conservative by capturing too many emissions -
G-20 Ire On Paris Withdrawal Unlikely to Affect Trump Plans
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bryce Baschuk
Leaders of Group of 20 nations, outspoken in their opposition to President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, won't be able to do much about it at this week's summit in Hamburg, Germany, business representatives and an academic... -
Trump May Find Some Allies on Climate Change at G-20 Meeting
Jul 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Western European efforts to isolate President Trump for rejecting the Paris climate change agreement appear to be faltering as leaders gather for a summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, at the end of the week. -
Jerry Brown to Announce a Climate Summit Meeting in California
Jul 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Even before President Trump took office, Gov. Jerry Brown of California let it be known he was ready to do battle over climate change, vowing in December that California would launch its own satellite if Mr. Trump cut funding for federal space missions.
Industry and Association News
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(ACC Mentioned) Citizens Must Stand Against Environmental Assaults
Jul 5, 2017 | Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Marty Nathan
On Saturday, June 24, 98-year-old Frances Crowe sat in her wheelchair as it was rolled into the path of construction of Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion Pipeline in the Otis State Forest in Sandisfield. There she stayed, with eight others, temporarily blocking work, until she was rolled away and arrested with the others on a trespassing charge.
Frances had joined the Sugar Shack Alliance, a grassroots group of folks originally motivated to stop the North East Direct Pipeline that Kinder Morgan had proposed to carry gas from fracking operations from New York to Dracut for shipping overseas. For the last year the Alliance has turned its attention to preventing the building of the 3.8-mile pipeline loop also owned by Kinder Morgan and affiliate Tennessee Gas Pipeline. It is being routed onto 17 acres of Otis State Forest land that contains biologically important wetlands and sacred Native American sites. This project is a flagrant violation of Article 47 of the Massachusetts Constitution prohibiting such development on preserved land, but was nonetheless permitted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Frances’ arrest was by no means the first in the campaign, nor will it be the last. The struggle in Sandisfield is stirred, as with almost all environmental fights these days, by three powerful stimuli:
Opposition to local pollution and despoliation of precious air and waterways. Old trees are being felled and the pipeline almost certainly will leak methane and fellow-traveler toxic chemicals into the air and the previously protected lakes and streams nearby.Climate justice. Building the pipeline violates rights to their traditional religious sites by the Narragansett Tribe. Moreover, it wrecks the state’s compact with all its citizens to protect, not to destroy, our common resources.Resistance to the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure enabling more carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas burning and more methane blow-off from leaks. Over twenty years, methane is eighty times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas in warming our planet.
The need to say No to burning and emitting fossil fuels just became more urgent. The Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change last week led scores of world leaders and scientists in a declaration published in the prestigious journal Nature that humanity has but three years, to 2020, to begin to decrease global emissions or face the catastrophic consequences of uncontrollable global warming.
Sandisfield, therefore, is part of the epic struggle of our times to save our planet from the devastation that is already claiming coral reefs destroyed by bleaching, agricultural fields in the West devastated first by drought and now by floods, and coastal communities in Haiti and Eastern North Carolina wiped out by hurricanes. The Sugar Shack Alliance is spurred on by the always-relevant maxim, “Think globally and act locally.” They are blockading a path to the ruin of the biosphere.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the opposition… As the New York Times reported, Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Scott Pruitt is one of the few effective members in the Trump Cabinet. Effective, that is, at destroying the agency he was appointed to lead. In mapping his agenda, he has consulted not his own EPA scientists — some of the best in the world — but rather fossil fuel industry lobbyists: the board of the industry lobbying group American Petroleum Institute (with whom he met at Trump Tower), representatives from American Chemical Council and the Republican Attorneys General Association (which he formerly headed). The attorney generals group has taken $4.2 million from fossil-fuel related companies like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries since 2013, and has filed fourteen lawsuits against the EPA.
Pruitt is their man and they are getting what they pay for. Environmental experts are amazed at what he has achieved in the corporate thrall. He relieved chemical companies of the unbearable burden of preventing explosions and spills at their plants. He reversed a ban on the use of a pesticide that the EPA’s own scientists have said is linked to damage of children’s nervous systems. Despite saying that he is taking the lead in cleaning up toxic sites, he supports a 25 percent budget cut in the Superfund program, which always has been vastly under-resourced.
He has taken a wrecking ball to programs to control greenhouse gas emissions. He was a leading proponent of abandoning the Paris Climate Agreement and will create the legal path to exit it. He has filed to undo or weaken the Clean Power Plan which would limit emissions from coal-fired power plants. He has delayed a rule requiring oil and gas companies to control methane emissions at wells, and eliminated a requirement that they even report on how much is leaking.
This is what the folks of Sugar Shack are up against. A lopsided struggle? It could be seen that way. But increasingly everyday Americans are seeing that the conflict has at its heart our very lives and future. It will take commitment and organization to channel that awakening and fight for a conservation and renewable energy agenda instead of further investment in polluting fossil fuels. To sit on the sidelines grants victory to those, like Pruitt, with the power.
Choose your side and join the fray.
Dr. Marty Nathan lives in Northampton and is a physician at Baystate Brightwood Health Center in Springfield. She is on the steering committee of Climate Action NOW.
http://www.gazettenet.com/Citizens-must-unite-to-fight-environmental-degradation-11113538
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Petroleum Institute Lawyer Picked for EPA Legal Counsel
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Catherine Douglas Moran
A lawyer picked to be one of the EPA's senior attorneys says he is learning about areas of the agency that he “did not touch” during his lobbying experience for an oil and natural gas trade association.
“The litigation and lobbying efforts I worked on revolved around fuel issues,” Erik Baptist, former senior counsel at the American Petroleum Institute and the Trump's administration's pick for the Environmental Protection Agency's senior deputy general counsel, told Bloomberg BNA. “Those were in small particular areas relating to what EPA does overall.”
Baptist's selection was among almost four dozen political appointees hired to fill various positions under Administrator Scott Pruitt, according to a June 27 memo sent by EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson. These political aides do not require Senate confirmation.
Baptist was a registered lobbyist from 2012 to 2016 during his six years as the counsel and then senior counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, the national trade association for oil and natural gas producers. While at the institute, he lobbied on issues such as the Keystone XL pipeline, the renewable fuel standard, and transportation of crude oil.
As senior deputy general counsel, Baptist will provide legal advice to the agency's policymakers for implementing environmental laws. Baptist said that his game plan is to “work hard, learn a lot, and listen to those who have the internal knowledge here at EPA about the regulations and laws that affect the nation's environment in addition to providing legal advice to the EPA policy staff.”
Baptist is the latest EPA appointee with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Pruitt has been criticized by environmental groups for his close ties to the energy sector. Several other agency officials who have worked in or represented fossil fuel companies include:
• Troy Lyons from the congressional relations office who previously worked at BP and Hess Corp.;
• Patrick Traylor, the deputy assistant administrator for enforcement who represented several fossil fuel companies while at Hogan Lovells; and
• Lee Forsgren, a new addition to the EPA water office who is a former NASA official and ex-lobbyist who advocated for the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines.
Government, Private Sector Experience
Prior to his work at the American Petroleum Institute, Baptist was an attorney focused on investigations at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's enforcement office for two years. Before that, he was an associate at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, where he worked primarily on commercial litigation.
“Erik is a very accomplished lawyer and we wish him all the best in his new role at EPA,” API spokesman Michael Tadeo wrote in an email.
Baptist brings expertise in energy law and years of legal experience in the private and government sector that have shown his ability to master new subject areas quickly, colleagues say.
“He takes his work extremely seriously without taking himself too seriously,” Jeremy Medovoy, a longtime friend and colleague of Baptist, told Bloomberg BNA. “He works very hard to master a subject.”
Medovoy, an attorney-adviser at FERC, said that he's been “joined at the hip” with Baptist since they met on their first day of law school in 2001 and stayed close friends when they both worked at McDermott Will & Emery and then FERC. Medovoy said that Baptist will bring a fair and balanced approach to the agency.
Joshua Rogaczewski, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery, told Bloomberg BNA that he has known Baptist for 13 years since he started as a summer associate at the law firm. He said that while Baptist was a generalist at the firm, he has honed skills in energy and resource law at FERC and the American Petroleum Institute.
“I'd say Erik's expertise is identifying issues and coming up with creative solutions,” Rogaczewski said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115700163&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115700163&jd=115700163
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Ex-NASA Official, Pipeline Lobbyist Joins EPA's Water Office
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
A former NASA official and veteran lobbyist whose environmental issues included the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects is now the top political appointee in the EPA's water office.
Lee Forsgren, the agency's new deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Water, was among 45 new EPA hires identified in a June 27 internal email sent to agency staff. The water office guides the implementation of two key water laws: the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.
Forsgren's position, one of two deputy spots in the EPA's Office of Water, does not require Senate confirmation. The Trump administration has not yet named a nominee to serve as assistant administrator for water, a role that is currently filled on an acting basis by Michael Shapiro, a career EPA staffer.
In his new position, Forsgren will oversee the Office of Water, which is attempting to rewrite the 2015 Clean Water Rule with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That regulation will outline which waters and wetlands are subject to federal discharge and dredge-and-fill permits, among other protections. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, under Trump's order, has already started the process of rolling back the Obama-era regulation.
The other major rule revision that Forsgren will oversee is the lead and copper drinking water rule, a task that the EPA has been struggling to complete for the last six years.
Forsgren served as an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm HBW Resources LLC, where he counseled corporations—notably General Electric Co. and Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises Inc.—as well as industry trade groups and tribal organizations on issues pertaining to water, endangered species, energy and water appropriations for the corps, transportation, and unmanned electric vehicles.
Tribal Advocacy
As a registered lobbyist for HBW Resources, Forsgren also advocated to protect the quality and quantity of water assets for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida during the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017, according to Senate lobbying records. He also represented GE as a lobbyist for Adam & Reese LLP.
Forsgren previously served as the assistant administrator for legislative affairs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under President George W. Bush. Prior to his NASA appointment, he served as the majority counsel to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.
‘Thoughtful Policy Maker’
Former EPA water officials who served under President George W. Bush said they support Forsgren's appointment.
“I know him to be a great guy and thoughtful policy maker,” Brent Fewell, founder of Earth & Water Group LLC, told Bloomberg BNA in an email. Fewell served as EPA's deputy assistant administrator for water from 2004 to 2007.
G. Tracy Mehan, who served as the top EPA water official from 2001 to 2003, told Bloomberg BNA in an email that he was pleased that the appointment to the Office of Water would provide “leadership and support to the excellent staff there.”
“Mr. Forsgren is a knowledgeable and accessible person with whom the American Water Works Association looks forward to working,” said Mehan, who is currently the executive director of the association's legislative affairs division.
The last political nomination made to the Office of Water was Ken Kopocis, whom President Barack Obama had originally put forward to be the assistant administrator but the Republican-controlled Senate never took up his nomination.
Water Resources Work
Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), who chaired the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from 1995 to 2001, singled out the committee staff, which included Kopocis, Forsgren, and Benjamin Grumbles—the EPA assistant administrator for water from 2003 to 2009—for helping with the passage of the Water Resources Development Act of 1996 through Congress.
The Natural Resources Defense Council criticized the appointment of Forsgren, terming him a fossil fuel lobbyist who advocated for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
“A pipeline guy in charge of water safety? Sure, what could go wrong,” the environmental advocacy group wrote in a blog post.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115700167&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115700167&jd=115700167
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Trump Appears Closer to Nominating CEQ Chief
Jul 6, 2017 | Inside EPA
The Trump administration appears to be getting closer to nominating Kathleen Hartnett White, a prominent climate skeptic and supporter of domestic energy production, to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
E&E News, citing sources familiar with the hiring decision, says that White, the former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is the “presumptive nominee” to lead CEQ.
The news report quoted one source as saying the nomination was a “done deal,” while also quoting others as saying it might have hit a snag because it hasn't yet been made official.
White's name had been floated in March for the job, and she re-interviewed in April. She was also a contender for EPA administrator before that position ultimately went to former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt.
Whoever gets nominated for the CEQ slot, will be joining an agency that faces significant new responsibilities. The administration has named the office to lead its permit streamlining effort and recently announced plans to plans to create a new structure within CEQ that will oversee the effort as part of a major push across several agencies for upcoming infrastructure projects.
After serving for six years on Texas' environment commission, she is now a senior fellow and director of the Armstrong Center for Energy & the Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Along with Stephen Moore, a prominent conservative economist and former Trump campaign adviser, White co-authored a recently published book, “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy,” which makes the case for a significant increase in fossil fuel production -- a Trump administration priority.
In several venues, she has also cast doubt on mainstream scientific conclusions that human-released carbon dioxide is the primary driver of climate change.
For example, White told the Washington Examiner in November that the Trump EPA would focus strictly on “genuine pollutants” that pose harm to public health, not CO2. “He's very much for clean air and clean water,” she said. “But the better home for considering this discussion about carbon dioxide and climate is in the Department of Energy.”
Also, in a June 2016 op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, White says the United Nations' most recent climate change report “suggests that the models assumed too much climate sensitivity to man-made CO2. While a modest correlation between CO2 and temperature has been observed throughout history, it appears that rising CO2 follows rising temperatures, suggesting that CO2 may not be the cause of warming but instead a symptom of it.”
She also questions the sun's role in global warming, and charges that the “current state of the U.N. science is not validated and [is] politically corrupt.”
Even though CEQ does not yet have a confirmed political chairman, the office scrapped an Obama-era guidancefor how agencies should address greenhouse gases in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews of major federal projects.
However, sources have said that agencies must still address GHGs in some way in NEPA reviews, and CEQ will play a key role in drafting those reviews, in addition to its broader role in coordinating environmental policy across the federal government.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/trump-appears-closer-nominating-ceq-chief
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EPA Finalizes TSCA Inventory "Reset" Rule
Jul 5, 2017 | National Law Review
By Thomas C. Berger and Herbert Estreicher
On June 22, 2017, the first anniversary of the Lautenberg TSCA amendments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final rule to “reset” the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. The goal of this new rule is to subdivide the Inventory into separate lists of “active” and “inactive” substances. EPA will include these active and inactive designations on the TSCA Inventory as part of its regular publications of the Inventory.
Significantly, the rule gives industry 180 days to report chemicals manufactured (including imported) for non-exempt commercial purposes in a ten-year period (“lookback period”) that ended on June 21, 2016. This rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register, but when it is, the 180-day clock starts. For the prepublication copy of the rule, click here.
Important changes occurred between the final rule and the rule as proposed on January 13, 2017 (82 Fed Reg. 4,255, see our summary of the proposal [here]). Below we highlight the changes and analyze the final requirements under the new rule and their practical implications.
Changes from the Proposal
Based on the numerous comments that EPA received during the proposal’s notice and comment period, EPA made many significant changes to the rule:
· EPA eliminated the requirement to indicate in “retrospective” notifications made under the rule the first and last day of manufacture and import during the 10-year “lookback” period. The proposed requirement to specify information about the type commercial activity has also been deleted.
· EPA will not require retrospective reporting for chemicals where the Agency already has equivalent notice of active status. This means that no notification will be required for non-confidential chemicals reported for the 2012 or 2016 Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) requirement, and no notification is required for confidential 2012 or 2016 CDR chemicals if the manufacturer or importer no longer claims the chemical identity as confidential business information (CBI). Also, all “new” chemicals added to the Inventory on or after June 22, 2016 are exempt from the retrospective notification requirement.
· Chemicals added to the Inventory during the 10-year “lookback” period do not require notification.
· Under what could be called a “one-and-done” approach, a manufacturer does not have to submit a retrospective notice if it obtains a central data exchange (CDX) receipt from another company that notified the same substance.
· Processors can voluntarily report to EPA no later than 420 days after the final rule is published. This timeframe was increased from the 360 days in the proposal.
· With respect to “forward looking” reporting for inactive substances, the rule will require manufacturers, importers, and processors to notify EPA with their intent to reactivate an inactive substance not more than 90 days before the “anticipated date” of manufacturing or processing. This was increased from 30 days in the proposed rule.
· A substance is not formally designated as “inactive” until 90 days after EPA has identified the substance for inactive designation.
· The validity of a Form B notice to activate an “inactive” substance can be achieved with documented intent to manufacture or process, and does not depend on whether the intended manufacturing or processing occurs by the anticipated date.
Practical Requirements Under Final Rule
· EPA will require notifiers to use newly developed “Notice of Activity” (NOA) reporting forms. NOA “Form A” would be used by manufacturers, importers, and processors for retrospective reporting. NOA “Form B” would be used by manufacturers, importers, and processors for forward-looking reporting. The proposed forms are based on the well-known TSCA Notice of Commencement (NOC) form, as the proposed information requirements are substantially similar.
· Form A reporting will be required for manufacturers and importers who produced a chemical substance subject to commercial activity designation (a substance that was added to the TSCA Inventory before 6/21/06, is not interim active, is not “naturally occurring,” and has not yet been designated as active or inactive by EPA) for a non-exempt purpose at any time during the “lookback” period. The only exceptions to this are if a person has a CDX receipt documenting EPA receipt of a Form A for the same substance, or if the prior manufacture of the substance is not known or reasonably ascertainable.
· Form B reporting is required for any person who intends to manufacture, import, or process an inactive substance for a non-exempt purpose after the effective date of EPA designating that substance as inactive. As noted above, these forms need to be submitted before actual manufacturing or processing but not more than 90 days prior to the anticipated date of manufacturing or processing.
· Processors are not required, but may voluntarily report via Form A during the retrospective reporting period.
· If no notifier makes a CBI claim for a substance, EPA will move the substance from the confidential to the public portion of the Inventory.
· Exemptions to the reset rule reporting include: non-“chemical substances” (e.g., foods, pesticides), R&D and test marketing substances, substances in “articles” that are processed or imported, byproducts and impurities, labeled export-only substances (unless a 12(a)(2) finding is made), and “naturally occurring” substances (unless produced synthetically).
Manufacturers and importers of a substance under a LVE/LOREX/Polymer exemption will need to notify if the substance is on the public version of the Inventory, or if it is “reasonably ascertainable” by the manufacturer or importer that the substance is on the confidential
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-finalizes-tsca-inventory-reset-rule
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Wood Product Makers Seek More Changes to EPA Formaldehyde Air Rule
Jul 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Wood product trade groups are seeking additional phase-in periods and other provisions of EPA's plan for extending compliance dates in an Obama-era Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule setting formaldehyde emissions limits on wood products, prompting the agency to withdraw a direct final rule implementing the changes.
EPA is slated to publish in the July 6 Federal Register its formal withdrawal of the direct final rule. Instead, it will assess recent comments that wood product makers filed on the direct final rule and then craft a formal final rule making changes to the formaldehyde regulation that responds to the comments.
Most of the groups in their comments appeared to support EPA's effort to delay by several months the effective dates of select provisions of the final formaldehyde air rule, in order to give industry more time to comply. But they took issue with some aspects of the direct final rule announced in the May 24 Federal Register.
EPA also included a proposed version of the rule in the May 24 Federal Register and said that if the agency received adverse comments on the direct final rule, it would withdraw the direct final rule and respond to comments on the proposed rule. As a result of the adverse comments, the agency is publishing its withdrawal of that rule.
Some of the groups in their comments said that regardless of the compliance extensions, the rule's compliance time line is impossible to meet. Some of the groups also seek further changes to the substance of the rule, such as its provisions for dealing with products that do not meet the emissions standards, or the need for third-party certifying entities.
"The lead time, added up between various suppliers in the chain of supplying overseas furniture for import into the USA, is way longer than recognized and allowed by the EPA in this Formaldehyde Rule," writes a representative of Furniture Values International in June 7 comments which EPA released later that month.
The company adds that "[i]n order for importers to have any chance to comply with the March 22, 2018 date, panel producers already would have needed to be producing TSCA Title VI compliant panels in order to supply the finished goods fabricators. In addition, many importers maintain overseas warehouses and will be stuck with unsellable non-TSCA Title VI inventory without any sellthrough provisions or phase-in approach if the implementation dates shown above remains unchanged."
A major concern is that the existing rule bars certifiers from marking products as compliant with the rule before the implementation date, as Jackson Morrill, president of the Composite Panel Association (CPA), told Inside EPArecently. Morrill said he hoped EPA either fixes the issue or finalizes the existing rule and issues another direct final rule to address it.
Industry's Comments
Morrill's group submitted comments June 8 supporting the extension to correct time line issues caused by the Trump adminisration's earlier delays in enforcing the rule while it reviewed it. "CPA supports this practical solution to what would have been a serious bottleneck for many [third-party certifiers], panel producers and the entire supply chain. CPA does not, however, support any extension beyond that which is proposed in this notice of a direct final rule."
Another trade group representing North American wood products manufacturing, the American Wood Council, provided comments similar to CPA's, stating that it is "prudent" to extend the compliance deadlines but not seeking any other changes to the rule.
Furniture Values International, however, in its comments called for substantive changes to the formaldehyde rule -- marking a split with groups representing domestic manufacturers and retailers.
"The import certification requirement is unnecessary and imposes costs that exceed benefits," the company argues. "The Formaldehyde Rule marks the first time EPA has applied TSCA import certification requirements to articles."
The company also argues that "The requirements for handling of non-complying lots are ineffective and infeasible. . . . This section of the Formaldehyde Rule places a heavy burden on an importer to coordinate a potential recall if a non-compliant lot (or lots) is discovered weeks or months after original panel fabrication. Furthermore, the original rule proposed by the EPA did not contain this notification requirement."
The International Wood Products Association in its comments also urged EPA to address the non-compliant lot and import certification requirements, while praising the extension rule.
EPA's direct final rule would have delayed the Dec. 12 compliance date for emissions standards, recordkeeping, and labeling provisions until March 22, 2018; extended the Dec. 12, 2018, import certification provisions deadline until March 22, 2019; and extended the Dec. 12, 2023, date for provisions applicable to producers of laminated products until March 22, 2024.
The rule would have also extended from Dec. 12, 2018, until March 22, 2019, the "transitional" period during which third parties certified by the California Air Resources Board can assess whether composite wood products are in compliance with TSCA requirements without an EPA accreditation.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wood-product-makers-seek-more-changes-epa-formaldehyde-air-rule
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Rethinking Chemical and Pesticide Regulation
Jul 6, 2017 | Regulatory Review
By Bryan C. Williamson
One of the primary objectives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to safeguard human health. But when it comes to chemicals and pesticides, do federal environmental laws—and the regulations designed to implement them—adequately protect against repeated exposure to toxins over long periods of time?
At least one scholar believes that they do not. In a recent paper, Sanne Knudsen, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Law, argues that the government’s approach to protecting human health largely ignores a significant issue: the cumulative risk posed by chemicals and pesticides. According to Knudsen, cumulative risk represents the combined impact on human health from exposure to hundreds of toxins through various pathways.
Some federal environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, attempt to regulate the cumulative risks arising from exposure to air and water pollutants. However, Knudsen notes that the laws designed to regulate chemicals and pesticides—the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), respectively—do not address the cumulative impacts of exposure. Although both statutes include information-forcing measures requiring manufacturers to disclose details about their production of chemicals and pesticides, they do not mandate risk assessments.
In addition, recent efforts to reform environmental laws have failed to explicitly address cumulative risk. For example, in June 2016, President Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (Chemical Safety Act) into law as an amendment to TSCA. The Chemical Safety Act requires EPA to evaluate existing chemicals and establishes new risk-based safety standards, but it does not mandate that EPA, states, or regulated entities perform cumulative risk assessments.
Knudsen contends that the problem is exacerbated by a common, but false, belief that individuals can control their own toxic risk profiles. Instead, Knudsen says that individuals lack the basic information required to understand the risks posed by long-term exposure to chemicals and pesticides, and they do not have the expertise to evaluate risks from exposure to numerous toxins that interact with one another.
Because of the complex nature of interactions among the many chemicals and pesticides that proliferate in the United States, Knudsen emphasizes the potential for so-called “synergistic” harm, where the presence of contemporaneous poisonous substances amplifies their combined danger. For instance, Knudsen points to an EPA study of disinfectant chemicals in chlorinated drinking water in which researchers reportedly found a correlation between exposure to a combination of toxins and various maladies—including reproductive and developmental damage, as well as cancer.
These concerns over the dangers posed by the interaction of multiple toxins lead Knudsen to conclude that current regulatory measures aimed at promoting consumer choice, such as chemical labeling and information disclosure requirements, are inadequate to mitigate the hazards of chemicals and pesticides.
On the other hand, some scholars embrace information disclosure as an effective policy option for managing the risks from toxic substances. For example, Vanderbilt University researcher W. Kip Viscusi and economist Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institution argue that regulators should adopt a cost-effectiveness approach that respects the varying risk tolerances among individuals. Such an approach requires manufacturers and employers to provide hazard warnings to individuals, who can then determine for themselves whether to accept the risks associated with exposure to chemicals and pesticides.
For an example of one such labeling scheme, regulatory reformers might look to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which requires labeling of hazardous chemicals under its Hazard Communication Standard. OSHA claims that, by providing greater access to information, workers will be able to avoid illnesses from exposure to hazardous substances, such as asbestos.
According to Viscusi and Gayer, this is a preferable approach to regulation of chemicals and pesticides. By empowering individuals to make decisions on their own, they argue, regulators foster improved market performance without imposing additional regulatory burdens.
Despite acknowledging the potential benefits of information disclosure requirements, Knudsen warns that the lack of regulatory measures targeting the cumulative effects of exposure to chemicals and pesticides means that tens of thousands of substances circulate within the United States, even as regulators and the public have only limited knowledge of their long-term health effects.
Specifically, EPA data reveals that, in any given year in the United States, over 85,000 chemicals are manufactured and distributed, and about 675 active pesticide ingredients are sprayed.
In one study of the cumulative effects from pesticides, for example, researchers found traces of eight common pesticides known as organophosphates in food, drinking water, and residential housing. Low-level exposure to these widespread pesticides can reportedly increase the risk of neurological disorders over time, including the well-known attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
With few assurances of safety and little consideration of the overall effect of these substances, Knudsen argues that we face a “daunting collective action problem” that requires a heightened regulatory response. The risk is further elevated, according to Knudsen, by the persistent nature of some chemicals like PCB and other dioxin-like substances whose harmful effects do not dissipate with time.
To properly address this issue, Knudsen proposes that EPA incorporate cumulative risk assessments into its process for making initial determinations of whether chemicals and pesticides meet applicable safety standards. Also, Knudsen explains, the regulatory framework necessary to incorporate cumulative risk analysis into EPA regulations already exists, since EPA has the authority to protect against “unreasonable risk” under the Chemical Safety Act and “unreasonable adverse effects” under FIFRA.
Despite urging consideration of cumulative risk in chemicals and pesticides regulation, Knudsen acknowledges the difficulty of gathering large-scale toxicity and exposure data. In addition, she recognizes numerous potential policy hurdles that a regulator would face after performing a cumulative risk analysis, including deciding which risks to target and implementing appropriate regulation.
Nevertheless, Knudsen argues that, by incorporating cumulative risk assessments in the regulation of chemicals and pesticides, regulators can address an important—but neglected— dimension of their mission to protect human health.
https://www.theregreview.org/2017/07/06/williamson-rethinking-chemical-pesticide-regulation/
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Jul 5, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Scott Faber
Chemicals in cosmetics are largely unregulated, so it’s no surprise that some irresponsible companies and their hired-gun lobbyists are fighting the Personal Care Products Safety Act, bipartisan legislation that would finally regulate cosmetics.
Here are the top myths being spread about the Personal Care Products Safety Act:
1. We don’t need reform because the industry regulates itself.
Some opponents of regulation say the industry regulates itself through the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR), established in 1976 by the industry’s trade association. But, CIR lacks the tools to fully assess the safety of cosmetic chemicals and has no power to enforce its recommendations. Ongoing sales of formaldehyde-laced keratin hair-smoothing products, most commonly known by the brand name Brazilian Blowout, illustrate the failure.
2. A tough safety standard will tie industry’s hands.
The safety standard in the Personal Care Products Safety Act is the same standard used to review pesticides. But, application of the “reasonable certainty of no harm” safety standard has not robbed farmers of the ability to use chemicals to combat pests and weeds. Shouldn’t cosmetics chemicals be as safe as pesticides?
3. The bill discriminates against small businesses.
The Personal Care Products Safety Act actually creates an advantage for small businesses. First, companies with annual sales below $500,000, or home-based businesses below $1 million, would not have to register with the Food and Drug Administration. Second, companies with annual sales below $2 million will not have to pay fees. Third, companies with annual sales below $5 million will only have to pay $250 annually. Finally, smaller companies will have more time to meet new standards and get extra help from government experts.
4. The bill would increase FDA regulation of soap.
The bill does not expand the existing legal definition of “soap.” Old-fashioned “soap” – soap that does not make cosmetic claims and is composed mainly of the “alkali salts of fatty acids” – would not be regulated by FDA. Only soap products currently classified by FDA as cosmetics would be subject to the bill.
The good news is that responsible companies like Revlon and Johnson & Johnson are supporting the bill. Why? Polls show that 87 percent of Americans want stricter regulation of cosmetics.
http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/05/busting-cosmetic-safety-myths
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EU Food Agency Re-Opens Risk Review of Bisphenol A
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Stephen Gardner
European food regulators are taking the unusual step of calling for input ahead of a 2018 toxicity evaluation of the widely used chemical bisphenol A, which may lead to restrictions on food packaging such as can linings.
The European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) senior toxicologist Anna Castoldi said in a statement June 30 the authority was staging a public consultation on the structure of the evaluation because bisphenol A had been “an issue of public interest for a very long time.” It is the first time EFSA has carried out such a pre-evaluation consultation seeking comments on the parameters for its review.
Bisphenol A is produced in high volumes and used in applications including the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and tin can linings. However, there has been a long-running dispute about its hazards, in particular whether or not it has hormone- or endocrine-disrupting properties.
Jasmin Bird, communications manager of the Polycarbonate/BPA Group within industry federation PlasticsEurope, told Bloomberg BNA July 4 that industry experts were “in the process of reading and digesting” the consultation's technical documentation, and declined to comment.
Evaluated in 2015
In an evaluation of bisphenol A finalized in 2015, EFSA found that uses of the substance—including in food packaging—posed no risk to consumers. However, EFSA still reduced the safe daily exposure level to bisphenol A from 50 micrograms per kilogram (mg/kg) of body weight to 4 mg/kg, and said it would carry out a new evaluation when new information on the risks of bisphenol A became available.
Castoldi said the 2018 evaluation could lead to a revised safe daily exposure level for bisphenol A. A lower daily exposure level could ultimately lead to restrictions of the use of bisphenol A in, for example, food contact materials. The EU has already limited bisphenol A in thermal paper used in cash register receipts.
In the EU bisphenol A is permitted in the manufacture of food contact materials, such as food storage containers, though it is prohibited in polycarbonate infant feeding bottles. The substance is manufactured in or imported into the EU in annual volumes of up to 10 million metric tons, according to European Chemicals Agency data.
Since the 2015 EFSA evaluation, bisphenol A has been classified as a “substance of very high concern” under the European Union's REACH chemicals law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation and authorization of chemicals), on the basis of its reprotoxic and endocrine disrupting effects. Its classification as an endocrine disruptor means that it is assumed there is no safe level of exposure to the substance.
EFSA said its previous evaluation only considered studies of bisphenol A that were published up to December 2012. Among the new evidence that EFSA was waiting for before re-evaluating bisphenol A is a study being carried out by the U.S. National Toxicology Program, which should be finalized in late 2017.
EFSA said responses to the pre-evaluation consultation should cover the scope of the evaluation, the methodology to be used, and the information sources to be included.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115700168&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115700168&jd=115700168
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(ACC Mentioned) Trump Plans to Make America Dominant Energy Player
Jul 6, 2017 | Epoch Times
By Stephen Gregory
Abundance and dominance are key words for the Trump administration’s new energy policy.
Speaking on June 29 at an event at the Department of Energy, “Unleashing American Energy,” President Donald Trump recalled how in the past 40 years, Americans have heard “constant claims that the world was running out of oil and natural gas.” Americans, Trump said, have been told the energy crisis could only be solved through “Draconian restrictions.”
In place of a policy and psychology of scarcity, Trump has proposed to unleash America’s “extraordinary energy abundance.” America will seek “energy dominance.”
Certainly, the United States has extraordinary energy resources. According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States leads the world in petroleum and natural gas production.
The United States also leads the world in recoverable coal reserves, with 28 percent of the world’s total, and 50 percent more reserves than the next country, Russia.
Robert L. Bradley, CEO and founder of the Institute for Energy Research, believes America’s energy abundance is a result of the innovation and efficiency of a free-market system.
The United States gets more resources from its potential than any other place in the world, Bradley says. “This is because we have private property rights and private companies, rather than state-owned oil companies, where it is in the self interest of these individual entrepreneurs and these firms to find new ways to extract energy for consumers,” he said.
Illustrating Bradley’s point has been the development of technologies that release previously inaccessible petroleum and natural gas deposits from shale formations. Fracking, which began to grow in prominence in 2000, now accounts for two-thirds of U.S. natural gas production and one-half of U.S. oil production.
By developing America’s energy resources, Trump said he will help produce jobs and wealth for the United States, and energy security for the United States and its allies.
Meanwhile, he will be building on the achievements of the shale revolution, which, by increasing the stock of petroleum and natural gas, has already dropped energy prices. This has led to developments that anticipate some of the results he hopes for from an aggressive development of U.S. energy resources.
Low Prices
Americans celebrated July 4 with average gasoline prices of $2.33 a gallon, the lowest prices since 2005.
In 2014, gasoline prices in July averaged $3.68 a gallon. They fell in July 2015 to $2.88 a gallon, inspiring media coverage about the effects on working families of cheap fuel prices.
A New York Times article in January 2015 reported that if prices remained low, the typical American household would save an estimated $750 on gasoline that year, compared to 2014 costs. In addition, the average U.S. family that heated their homes with propane or heating oil would save another $750. In the cold-weather state of Maine, a family would save an estimated $3,000 in heating costs.
For working families, savings of this magnitude are a significant bonus. The Times points out that the money freed up tends to be spent on employee-heavy industries like retail, dining, and travel.
Those extra purchases stiffen employment in those sectors. In addition, as gasoline prices fall, the transportation costs for everything become cheaper—inflation for essentials like food is beaten back, further benefiting the average family’s budget.
Manufacturing
Cheap energy is also already bringing manufacturing jobs to the United States.
Petroleum is the feedstock for chemical plants. U.K. newspaper Evening Standard reported on June 14 that the difference between petroleum costs in the United States and Europe has grown so great that chemical plants in Europe can no longer compete.
The Standard reports that while there has been little petrochemical investment in Europe over the past decade, since 2010 around $80 billion in petrochemical projects in the United States have been completed or under construction.
The American Chemistry Council estimates that $179 billion in spending on 294 chemical plants will create 821,399 direct, indirect, and payroll-induced jobs, adding $293.6 billion in economic output.
Catrina Rorke, a senior fellow with the free market think tank R Street, said cheap, reliable, and abundant energy may bring more manufacturing to the United States of not just chemical products, but also energy intensive and heavy products, as it will be more cost effective to manufacture these domestically and save on transportation costs.
Rorke pointed out that BMW announced on June 26 that it will expand its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, making it BMW’s largest production facility in the world. The expansion will cost $600 million and add 1,000 jobs.
On July 3, the Institute for Supply Management released its June report—the standard for gauging manufacturing activity—showing a broad-based, strong increase in manufacturing activity.
The SelectUSA summit in Washington seeks to facilitate job-creating business investment in the United States. An Epoch Times business reporter attending the event on June 19 to 21 reported that interest in investing in the United States is booming, with companies from Europe especially but also from Asia and Latin America wanting to come to the United States to do business.
In addition to manufacturing jobs, Trump expects that developing America’s energy resources will create large numbers of jobs in the energy sector itself.
A December 2015 study by Louisiana State University and the Institute for Economic Research on opening federal lands to oil, gas, and coal leasing estimates this will produce 2.7 million jobs annually over the next 30 years.
Such jobs will make the most dramatic difference in a number of Indian reservations in the western states.
Jobs on the Reservation
On June 28, Trump hosted a gathering of tribal leaders at the White House. Trump commented on how many of the tribal lands have rich natural resources, but “the federal government has put up restrictions and regulations that put this energy wealth out of reach.”
The president promised to put energy development back in the tribes’ hands.
If Trump succeeds in doing this, his administration will reverse some of the effects of almost two centuries of U.S. policy that have viewed the Native Americans as wards of the federal government. As such, they have been treated as incompetent to manage their own affairs and have suffered under gross federal mismanagement.
Native Americans have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the United States. Associated with this deprivation are high rates of crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, gang membership, and sexual abuse.
The Indian Country Media Network lists 15 tribes with unemployment rates of 80 percent or higher.
If the tribes that have mineral wealth are successful in developing it, this will immediately provide high-paying jobs on the reservation and royalties from energy will provide income for the tribe as a whole.
Consistent Policies
The policy Trump called “energy dominance” in his remarks at the June 29 Energy Department event is the latest iteration of a consistent set of policies that have been developed since the first day of his administration.
On Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, the White House website began hosting the webpage “An America First Energy Plan,” which calls for eliminating burdensome regulations, embracing the “shale oil and gas revolution,” developing energy on federal lands, and reviving the coal industry, as well as achieving energy independence and strengthening America’s national security.
Since then, the Trump administration has taken a number of steps to put into action his vision of a robust development of U.S. energy resources.
In February, the Bureau of Land Management conducted its largest sale of leases for oil development on federal lands in four years.
On Feb. 7, the Dakota Access pipeline, which delivers oil from North Dakota to a pipeline in Illinois and had been blocked in a months-long controversy, was approved. On March 24, the Keystone XL pipeline, which will deliver oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf coast and which was first proposed in 2008, was approved.
On March 28, Trump signed an executive order to create energy independence. A principal effect of this order is to attempt to roll back most of the rules and guidance regulating energy production put in place by the Obama administration.
This includes a review of the Clean Power Plan, the first step to replacing it. This rule is often identified as an attempt by the Obama administration to put coal production in the United States out of business and is currently blocked by a stay issued by the Supreme Court while a suit against it is heard.
Also in the March 28 executive order, Trump ended the moratorium on leasing coal on federal lands.
On April 28, Trump signed an executive order implementing an offshore energy plan that directs the Department of Interior to revise the schedule for oil and gas leases to include the outer continental shelf.
On May 31, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke signed an order “to jump-start Alaskan energy production in the National Petroleum Reserve.”
On June 1, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, citing the economic damage it would do to the United States and the possible threat it would pose to national sovereignty.
In his statement withdrawing from the accord, Trump refers to the United States as the “world’s leader in environmental protection.” In his various statements and speeches on energy, Trump repeatedly states that his policy is to ensure clean air and water in the United States. In these statements, he doesn’t mention carbon dioxide, suggesting he doesn’t see it as a significant pollutant.
Dominance
Rorke of R Street said Trump’s goal of dominance is about changing the game not just domestically, but worldwide.
Trump’s remarks about Unleashing American Energy feature six new initiatives, including revising nuclear power, but what is new in his remarks is an international focus.
He announced a new pipeline to Mexico, which will allow the United States to increase petroleum exports.
He also announced the approval of new facilities for the export of liquid natural gas (LNG) and a deal signed by an American company to export more LNG to South Korea.
Trump mentioned that the leaders of South Korea were visiting the White House that afternoon and suggested some lobbying for American energy would be on the agenda: “We will also be talking about them buying energy from the United States of America, and I’m sure they’ll like to do it.”
While Trump uses his office to promote American energy, the United States is rapidly ramping up its ability to export LNG. It has one terminal capable of exporting the gas and five under construction.
This is the first wave of LNG terminals, with more to come. These six terminals are expected to provide 50,000 permanent jobs, according to a study by the American Petroleum Institute.
This expansion of U.S. exports provides U.S. allies with a fuel source that they know will not be used to blackmail them. According to the Hill, nearly every member of the Polish government turned out to greet the first shipment of U.S. LNG. If Ukraine gets new coal plants, it will also have an energy source less liable to manipulation by a hostile neighbor.
Limitations
Trump’s call for expanding production of U.S. natural gas, oil, and coal will run into market limitations. The worldwide glut of natural gas and oil has prices low enough to challenge the ability of American producers to make a profit.
At the same time, the low prices of natural gas make “the future of coal grim,” according to Adele Morris, policy director of energy and economics at the Brookings Institute. Without subsidizing coal, Morris said, it can’t compete with the price of natural gas.
Moreover, the next administration may share the Obama administration’s concern with coal’s greater production of carbon dioxide. This uncertainty means that electric utilities are not going to invest in new coal plants, Morris said.
These basic facts mean that the Trump administration may have difficulty translating America’s energy abundance into a literally dominant position in a competitive world energy market.
The conclusion of Trump’s remarks at the June 29 event recalls the end of his speech to the joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. Calling for a renewal of the American spirit, Trump asked “all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold, and daring things for our country.”
Near the end of the Unleashing remarks, he said, “The golden era of American energy is now underway. And I’ll go a step further: The golden era of America is now underway.”
That golden era is one, Trump goes on to say, in which “what we dream, and what we build, will truly be second to none.”
For Trump, the unleashing of American energy turns out not just to be about jobs and wealth, but about the power to dream.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2264934-trump-plans-to-make-america-dominant-energy-player/
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(ACC Mentioned) Editorial: Even the Secondary Effects of the Shale Revolution are Staggering
Jul 5, 2017 | Tyler Morning Telegraph
By Editorial Board
Even the secondary effects of the shale revolution are staggering, a new report from the Wall Street Journal finds. It’s not just oil and gas prices, it’s also other petroleum products that play a big role in our daily lives.
The Journal sums it up in one word: Plastics.
“When new parents in Rio de Janeiro buy baby food in plastic containers, they are bringing home a little piece of the U.S. shale revolution,” the Journal reports. “That boom in drilling has expanded the output of oil and gas in the U.S. more than 57 percent in the past decade, lowering prices for the primary ingredients Dow Chemical Co. uses to make tiny plastic pellets. Some of the pellets are exported to Brazil, where they are reshaped into the plastic pouches filled with puréed fruits and vegetables.”
The kinds of plastic we used to import are now going to be exported.
“Tons … will be shipping soon as Dow completes $8 billion in new and expanded U.S. petrochemical facilities mostly along the Gulf of Mexico over the next year, part of the industry’s largest transformation in a generation,” the Journal explains. “The scale of the sector’s investment is staggering: $185 billion in new U.S. petrochemical projects are in construction or planning, according to the American Chemistry Council. Last year, expenditures on chemical plants alone accounted for half of all capital investment in U.S. manufacturing, up from less than 20 percent in 2009, according to the Census Bureau.”
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group for chemical companies, says this will eventually add $294 billion to U.S. economic output, and 462,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2025.
“For energy companies, the build-out creates a new market for byproducts they previously had little use for,” the Journal adds. “Drillers have been flush for years with the raw materials but have left them in the gas stream to be burned off, because no one wanted them. A spike in demand in coming years could make drilling more profitable. Petrochemical companies are betting the price of the feedstocks - their most costly expense - will remain low for years due to shale drilling. As a result, net U.S. petrochemical exports, which include plastic as well as products such as fertilizer, adhesives and solvents, will grow to $110 billion a year by 2027 from $17 billion last year, according to IHS Markit. That would come close to the value of Saudi Arabia’s current annual oil exports.”
It’s clear now why the Saudis attempted to strangle the shale revolution in its crib, by artificially depressing the price of oil so that many shale drillers couldn’t operate profitably. But drillers, with American ingenuity, responded by finding ways to lower the break-even costs, and stymied the Saudi effort.
That’s not good news for the Saudis.
As the American Enterprise Institute notes, “This big win for America has also produced a number of losers, namely Middle Eastern petrostates… Once again, shale is lifting the U.S. up even as it puts petrostates in peril.”
http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-Opinion/291322/editorial-even-the-secondary-effects-of-the-sale-revolution-are-staggering
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U.S. Gas Exporters Brushing Aside Qatar’s Grab for Market Share
Jul 6, 2017 | Bloomberg
By Naureen S. Malik
America’s gas exporters are, at least for now, brushing aside Qatar’s bid to claim a bigger share of the global market.
Qatar’s plan to dramatically boost gas output signaled to rivals including Australia and the U.S. that the race is on to find buyers and lock them into long-term contracts. American LNG exporters have already spent years pursuing such agreements, with President Donald Trump promoting their product in recent meetings with Chinese and Japanese leaders. Last week, South Korea said it would consider buying into three U.S. LNG projects.
The reaction from Meg Gentle, chief executive officer of U.S. LNG exporter Tellurian Inc., to Qatar’s ramp-up: The world needs more LNG capacity to meet growing demand, and “we welcome all potential supply sources.” Zdenek Gerych, a spokesman for U.S. LNG terminal developer Freeport LNG, said Wednesday, “My only comment on the Qatar issue: ‘They have to sell the volumes first.”’
Indeed, the impact of Qatar’s gas plans -- announced just as Arab nations that severed ties with the country gathered in Egypt to discuss a path forward -- will hinge largely on whether the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas supplier can secure even more long-term supply agreements with buyers in Europe and Asia. These contracts, typically lasting 15 to 20 years, have been crucial to keeping LNG projects around the globe moving forward. Without them, proposals have fallen apart amid a worldwide supply glut.
“Qatar will need to find off-take agreements to increase their supply that significantly,” said Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, a Washington-based industry group. U.S. projects, meanwhile, remain “well-positioned to respond to increasing demand” for LNG going into the next decade, he said.
U.S. exporters already have contracts to supply more than 80 million metric tons of LNG a year, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Developers are vying for more in an effort to secure financing to build terminals over the next decade.
Since the first cargo of shale gas set sail last year, America’s gas has reached about two dozen countries, reshaping how LNG is traded and setting the U.S. on a course to becoming a net-exporter of the fuel for the first time in decades. Some industry executives including Enbridge Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Monaco have suggested the U.S. may even jump ahead of Qatar and Australia to become the world’s biggest LNG supplier by 2035 -- a threat Qatar may be looking to quash with its latest move.
Qatar Petroleum plans to boost gas output by 30 percent to 100 million tons a year within seven years through a new project in the country’s North Field, the state-owned producer said Tuesday. Prior to this announcement, analysts including Energy Aspects Ltd. forecast that the country would lose its title as the world’s biggest LNG supplier to Australia.
Qatar still stands to make life more difficult for U.S. LNG suppliers. The North Field will allow the country to sell more of some of the cheapest gas in the world, Victoria Zaretskaya, a Washington-based analyst for the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said by email. That’ll have “major implications” for LNG export terminals that companies are proposing to build in the U.S. in the next decade, she said.
Boosting output in Qatar may end up jeopardizing one the country’s own projects. Zaretskaya said more supplies from the North Field could put the Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas, being developed by a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips, at risk. Other projects that may be affected are Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd.’s Magnolia LNG terminal and the Lake Charles project being proposed by Energy Transfer and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, both in Louisiana, she said. Altogether, they’ve gained approval to liquefy 5.2 billion cubic feet of U.S. gas a day.
These projects “won’t go forward without a clear understanding” of which customers and what markets will take their supplies, Zaretskaya said.
“We are entering an interesting period of ‘courtships’ between prospective sellers and buyers,” she said. “And there may be some other factors to play in who gets the contracts and what other concessions were made to ‘sweeten the deal.”’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-05/qatar-s-surging-gas-supplies-aren-t-worrying-u-s-gas-exporters
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Oil Exports, Illegal for Decades, Now Fuel a Texas Port Boom
Jul 5, 2017 | New York Times
By Clifford Krauss
In a twist that would have been unthinkable only two years ago, the oil tanker that arrives in China today may be carrying crude that left the South Texas port of Corpus Christi instead of Saudi Arabia.
Chinese drivers most certainly don’t care where their fuel comes from, but the export of American crude oil to dozens of countries over the last year is the latest chapter in a remarkable turnaround for the American oil and gas industry, about the only good news in three years of plummeting commodity prices, bankruptcies and layoffs.
For 40 years it was virtually impossible to sell American oil to any country except Canada because of an export ban that was a bedrock of United States energy policy. The Obama administration slowly loosened the ban and Congress finally ended it in late 2015 in a compromise that also extended tax credits for renewable energy.
Oil exports grew slowly through most of 2016, but this year there has been a surge reaching 1.3 million barrels a day — roughly 15 percent of domestic production — which even at today’s depressed prices is worth more than $1.5 billion a month.Continue reading the main story
That may be only the beginning. In a test a few weeks ago, the French-flagged supertanker Anne, empty but capable of holding more than two million barrels of oil, docked safely at Occidental Petroleum’s year-old export terminal here. The docking of the 1,093-foot vessel, larger than any tanker to come into port previously in the Gulf of Mexico, is seen as the herald of an export boom, lifting the spirits of American oil executives despondent over the crumbling price of crude and sending ripples across global energy markets.
“This is our chance, this is our turn to prosper,” said Khalid A. Muslih, executive vice president of Buckeye Partners, a pipeline and terminal operator in the midst of a major export expansion. “We’re working our way toward energy independence. We’re grabbing market share, and we’re doing our part to rectify our imbalance of trade.”
Suddenly buyers from all over the world are purchasing the new American supplies, from South Korea to India — even oil-rich Venezuela, which uses the light sweet crude that comes out of American shale to blend with its gooey heavy crude. The light crude is highly prized even while global oil markets are saturated. Canadian oil sands, which also tend to be heavy, are being increasingly produced and need to be mixed with lighter crudes.
European countries are looking to American exports to reduce their dependence on oil from Russia and African countries that produce light crudes, particularly Libya and Nigeria, which are politically unstable and unreliable suppliers. And China, with slumping oil production and rising demand, wants a more reliable source than the Persian Gulf, which it now depends on.
As the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries cuts production to prop up oil prices, American exports are beginning to elbow out Saudi crude in some markets, a development that would have been inconceivable four decades ago when OPEC oil embargoes threatened to cripple the American economy.
“U.S. oil exports are a game changer and are going to be a larger and larger changer in the markets,” said René Ortiz, a former Ecuadorean energy minister and former OPEC secretary general.
The United States still imports far more oil than it exports, and probably will continue to do so for many years. But since many American refineries were designed for heavy crudes from Mexico, Venezuela and Canada, the light shale oil from Texas is an awkward mismatch. Meanwhile, that oil is coming out of the fields in a record gush, and despite persistently low oil prices, the Energy Department projects that domestic production next year will top 10 million barrels a day, an all-time high.
That output, an increase of half a million barrels a day from current production levels, will need to find a market somewhere. With domestic demand flattening because of increased fuel efficiency in cars, oil executives say that somewhere is likely to be overseas.
The expansion of energy exports fits neatly with President Trump’s promise last week to usher in an age of “American energy dominance.” But oil executives say the driving force for future production and exports will be the economics of global supply and demand, rather than Washington policy.Continue reading the main story
And the world’s energy leaders are noticing.
Oil and dock workers here say the new exports are all the chatter among their buddies at the kitchen table and during their fishing trips and deer hunts.
“There’s definitely a vibe, there’s a buzz — people are excited about it,” said Kevin Craft, a terminal operator who got his job at NuStar Energy in April thanks to the company’s export expansion. After losing a job with a contractor in 2015 when oil prices plummeted, Mr. Craft has rebounded and is making more money than ever. At 37, he said, he can now start saving for his retirement and put money away for his son’s college education. “A lot of people are going back to work,” he added.
Much of Texas has been in an economic slump in recent years, having lost about 100,000 oil jobs since late 2014, when the price of oil fell from over $100 a barrel to less than $50. But because of the exports, the job losses have been stemmed and there is the promise of new jobs to come. Oil executives said that if weren’t for exports, so much oil would be stockpiled in already flush domestic inventories that the American benchmark price would be $10 to $20 below the current $45 a barrel, making most new drilling uneconomical.
Even with prices lagging, lower oil field costs and new technologies have enabled producers in the dominant Permian Basin shale fields of West Texas and New Mexico to deploy 250 rigs over the last year or so, which has led to the hiring or retention of as many as 25,000 workers, according to Scott Sheffield, executive chairman of the Pioneer Natural Resources, a leading Texas producer.
And here in Corpus Christi, a hub of refineries and pipelines between some of the country’s richest oil fields and the Gulf of Mexico, the port is just beginning a $1 billion capital investment program that includes deepening and widening the shipping channel for bigger tankers to dock and load. Some of the program is dependent on final approval of funding from Congress.
Occidental, NuStar and other companies have made major investments in additional dock and tankage facilities and are planning additional ones, while several pipelines between the Permian Basin and the port are in the planning stage.
Crude exports from Corpus Christi have already increased from an average of 68,000 barrels a day during the first half of 2016 to 384,000 barrels a day this April, according to a recent report by RBN Energy, an analysis firm.
Buckeye Partners alone has invested $1.2 billion since 2015 in docks and other export facilities here, putting to work 1,500 construction workers and 130 full-time employees. It has plans to put more than $1 billion into additional investments, including a pipeline system called South Texas Gateway that would connect West Texas with Corpus Christi and global markets. The system is expected to be finished in 2019, with the potential to move 400,000 barrels a day. In the meantime, it plans to add a sixth and seventh deepwater dock in the port capable of loading big tankers for export.
The expansion has been nothing but good news for Rudy Dominguez, a pipeline technician who was laid off in early 2016 after working for the same pipeline company for 26 years. With two children to support, he was out of work for 15 months and living off his severance pay, savings and odd jobs. Friends brought him fish from boating trips to put on the table, and he learned more hamburger recipes then he cares to remember. Learning of Buckeye’s expansion, he applied for several jobs and was finally hired a few weeks ago.
“God closes doors and then opens them right up,” Mr. Dominguez said. “I just hope oil, gas, energy exports go on forever.”
Many more jobs may be on the way. Ray Perryman, a leading Texas economist and president of the Perryman Group, a consulting firm, estimated that expanded crude exports will add more than 30,000 jobs in Corpus Christi over the next couple of decades. For the nation, 484,000 jobs could be added, nearly 60 percent of which will be in Texas, even if oil prices remain moderate to low, he estimated.
But oil executives still voiced concerns about the future, and many say that not all the pipelines planned to take crude to Corpus Christi will be built unless market conditions improve. Persistently low oil prices could squeeze the marginal price advantage — currently around $2.50 — that West Texas intermediate, the American benchmark, has over the international benchmark, Brent crude. The cheaper the American crude is relative to Brent, the more the price difference offsets the shipping costs to replace Saudi or Russian crude on global markets.
And if the shale boom spreads internationally, there could be a further glut. Domestic refineries could invest more money to refine more light crude, leaving less to export. And if electric cars catch on, demand for gasoline could shrink.
“The thing I worry about is price,” said Danny Oliver, senior vice president for marketing and business development for NuStar Energy. Nevertheless Mr. Oliver expressed optimism. “The potential is huge,” he said. “The ability to export means we can continue to drill for new oil.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/business/energy-environment/oil-exports-corpus-christi-texas.html
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The Energy 202: The Two Problems with Trump's Offshore Drilling Push
Jul 6, 2017 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
President Trump is moving forward with a campaign promise to reopen federal waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans for oil and gas drilling.
But he and his administration still haven't fully answered the question: How much interest is there, really, in opening these waters to fossil fuel exploration and exploitation?
On Monday, the Interior Department published notice in the Federal Register that it is seeking public comment on the effects offshore drilling would have on 26 areas in U.S. waters in the Gulf of Mexico, North Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean and Pacific Ocean both off the coast of Alaska and the lower 48 states.
The "request for information" is the first step in formally unwinding the five-year plan for oil and gas drilling President Obama put in place when he left office, which kept 90 percent of the outer continental shelf off limits as his administration sought to mitigate human impact on ocean life and reduce the emissions of planet-warming gases.
Last week, Vincent DeVito, Interior’s counselor for energy policy, countered that the Trump administration simply couldn't leave creating potentially 300,000 jobs off the table.
The history: Although drilling rigs stood shoulder-to-shoulder along the beaches of southern California about a century ago, drilling on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts has been suspended for more than three decades. The halt in drilling on those coasts is a result of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which soaked the coast and killed innumerable birds. The spill was a key catalyst for the modern environmental movement.
Congress in 1982 started inserting a moratorium on Pacific and Atlantic drilling every year in the appropriations bill. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush a presidential directive banning offshore drilling outside the Gulf of Mexico and parts of Alaska.
But President George W. Bush threatened to veto the appropriations bill in 2008 and the item was dropped. He rescinded his father’s directive and scheduled drilling off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in his final five-year drilling plan. President Obama overturned that, however. He added new lease sales in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico and allowed seismic work off parts of the Atlantic coast for possible leasing at a future date.Efforts to drill in the Arctic Ocean, greenlighted by both the Bush and Obama administrations over the last two decades, were less successful. Two years ago, Royal Dutch Shell abandoned an effort to develop offshore leases in the Chukchi Sea after failing to turn up enough oil to justify the cost of drilling in the frigid and difficult-to-manage Arctic waters.
The present: Currently there are two hurdles facing the president in his push for more offshore drilling — one political, the other economic.
1) Bipartisan opposition to more offshore oil and gas drilling. A handful of politicians in Trump's party, including Reps. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) and Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), have voiced support for or sponsored legislation, locking Obama-era offshore policy in place. These Republicans don't want to see oil rigs in their constituents' backyards, and risk backlash from any future spill due to a leasing push they backed. Plus, a local say in how nearby ocean waters are leased for exploration squares with the GOP ideology of states' rights.
"Clearly, the coastal governors will have different views about where they want to see offshore development," Katharine MacGregor, acting assistant secretary for lands and minerals management at the Interior Department, told a conference of offshore executives in May, according to the Houston Chronicle.
But she indicated her boss, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, may focus political fire at California, whose Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, also opposes drilling off his state's shores. "The secretary has had quite a few questions about California, and other areas that seem to come up every time you talk about a five-year plan," MacGregor said.
2) The price of oil. Due to strong natural gas production onshore in the United States (among other reasons), a barrel of oil is currently selling for less than $50, despite recent gains. The same supply-and-demand forces that kept gasoline prices low even during peak driving times over the Fourth of July weekend are giving oil and gas companies less motivation to build expensive offshore rigs with cheaper-to-extract natural gas available onshore.
Or as The Post's Darryl Fears reported last week, "many oil companies balk at the massive investment in equipment needed to drill offshore when the price is lower than $85, analysts say."
The price of petroleum, historically very volatile, could always rebound to the point of making offshore development economically viable. But so far, it doesn't appear that the Trump administration has offered an expected future price spike as justification for the current "drill, baby, drill" push.
Steven Mufson contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2017/07/05/the-energy-202-the-two-problems-with-trump-s-offshore-drilling-push/595a9f1ce9b69b7071abca53/?utm_term=.0f1b50c6bb92
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Methane Leak Rule in Effect Can't Be Halted, Lawsuit Says
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Carolyn Whetzel
The Interior Department can't halt measures to reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells on public lands six months after they took effect, the attorneys general of California and New Mexico said in a lawsuit.
The Bureau of Land Management's decision to postpone the methane standards amounts to “an improper end-run around” requirements to seek public comments when amending or repealing regulations, according to the lawsuit filed July 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (California v. Bureau of Land Management, N.D. Cal., No. 3:17-cv-03804, 7/5/17).
The lawsuit is the latest effort by Democratic-led states to block the Trump administration's efforts to delay or repeal environmental regulations. It comes on the heels of a July 3 federal appeals court decision reviving another Obama-era methane rule.
“The Trump administration is trying to dodge legal requirements at the expense of public health and American taxpayers—and today they got called on it,” Kate Kelly, public lands director at the Center for American Progress, said in a statement.
Issued in November 2016 and effective Jan. 1, the Waste Prevention Rule requires oil and gas operators to prevent accidental leaks of methane and restricts intentional venting or burning of natural gas from wells. The lawsuit argues the Bureau of Land Management lacks authority under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act to postpone compliance dates after a rule has already gone into effect as part of an effort to reconsider those standards.
In June, the BLM invoked Section 705 to delay the rule's compliance dates pending resolution of a lawsuit filed in Wyoming by several states and the Western Energy Alliance and other industry groups, alleging BLM lacks authority to regulate methane.
“We're not surprised,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, told Bloomberg BNA in an email. This filing “presents us with a reason to go back” to the Wyoming federal court and “push forward to briefing on the merits,” she said.
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115700166&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115700166&jd=115700166
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PHMSA Adjusting to New Political Landscape
Jul 6, 2017 | Bulk Transporter
DR Rachel A Meidl, deputy associate administrator in the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), doesn’t know the exact nature of the budget that Congress will ultimately pass.
But based on President Trump’s “skinny budget” released in March and the revised budget released in late May—both of which proposed the elimination of the Chemical Safety Board (CSB)—she says that “certainly there will be some sort of decrease in our budget.”
Meidl was the Annual Safety Awards luncheon speaker during National Tank Truck Carriers’ 69th Annual Conference held April 30 to May 2 in Chicago, Illinois. She said that in addition to budget cuts, the agency also is facing the impacts of two executive orders from the Trump Administration:
• EO 13771: Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs. Issued January 30, it declares that: when an agency promulgates a new regulation, it shall identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed; for FY17, the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, to be finalized this year shall be no greater than zero; and any new incremental costs associated with new regulations shall be offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least two prior regulations.
“So we are having to closely pull back on a lot of the rules that we did and a lot of our regulatory actions that we did, and having to re-justify some of them, which is not a bad thing in most cases,” Meidl said.
• EO 13777: Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda. Issued February 24, it directs each agency to establish a regulatory reform task force and designate an agency official to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations for improving implementation of regulatory reform initiatives and policies, and identifying regulations for repeal, replacement, or modification.
“You’ll also have an opportunity to weigh in,” she said. “If you have feedback or input on some of the duplications and the excess of government, now is your time to really weigh in and give your feedback.
“Despite the administration’s regulatory holds, we’re looking at ways we can advance the priorities we have right now. We’re operating in a difficult and challenging environment right now, with the demands continuing to grow. There are so many new energy sources. We’re looking at what that means for us in the transportation industry, what it means for production, what it means for new chemical products. So the scope of our work continues to grow. That’s a little bit of a challenge, considering the new administration and some of the budget shortfalls we have right now. What we can do is partner with you and our stakeholders.”
She said that as PHMSA works through the transition period, these are the key priorities she wants focus on:
• Invest in ourselves. “This helps maintain stability throughout changing times. I like to keep my staff engaged and motivated. It gives them a sense of dedication to what we do.”
• Increase communication internally and externally. “When I first came to PHMSA a few years ago, I noticed we were challenged with communication issues. I’m trying to engage with our stakeholders. I think that helps us maintain a level of control and equanimity and alleviate a lot of misconceptions that are out there.”
• Position ourselves for innovation. “There’s a lot of new technology out there, and I’m trying to embrace that and change the mindset in the agency to be truly results-driven and data-driven, and to drive our decisions based off of that. It’s a different culture, but we’re getting there.”
• Foster transparency. “It’s difficult for us as an agency, especially in a time of transition, to really communicate exactly what’s happening when things are changing by the minute and by the day. There are a lot of new executive orders that have a lot of implications for what we do, so we’re trying to be as transparent as possible to create that trust with you.”
• Improve engagement. “Not just with you, but with all partners and stakeholders. It’s so important for us to bring you all into the decision-making process instead of trying on our own to figure out what these new executive orders mean. Engaging with you and bringing you into the process is really going to help us, and it’s analogous to both of our safety missions.”
Meidl said that data and information that PHMSA collects has informed the agency’s actions. It can help drive policy decisions on how the agency is going to regulate and enforce.
But she thinks “that should be the last thing we do. It should help us identify where we can partner with the industry, where there are opportunities to invest and to educate. Our data isn’t perfect. We’re reconfiguring how we look at data. I’m a very data-driven person. When I first came to the agency, I was little bit horrified about how we were releasing our data and how we had so much of it. We were data-rich and information-poor. I challenged our group to look at the data we collect. Is it the right data? What are we doing with that data? What does it mean? How is it driving our decisions? It’s important to make sure that the decisions we’re making are being driven based off the right data.”
Addressing cargo tank rollovers, she said that in 2016, over 30% of hazmat incidents involving death or major injury resulted from rollovers, with gasoline being the main commodity. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) indicated that 78% of rollovers involved driver factors: sudden maneuvers, braking, and excessive speed.
PHMSA and FMCSA are analyzing a human factors study on rollover prevention.
“The approach we’re taking with this is, ‘What do drivers and safety directors and safety programs do? What do they entail? What do they do on a day-to-day basis that allows for the million-mile-plus accident-free drivers?’ FMCSA has reached out to NTTC to host a roundtable. And we’ve embarked on a number of initiatives to address rollovers.”
Outreach and prevention initiatives:
• Cargo Tank Rollover Prevention video: jointly produced by PHMSA, FMCSA, and the industry.
• Hazmat Transportation Training Modules: general awareness training available through a link on the PHMSA website.
• FMCSA provides useful reports, brochures, and other resources in its Cargo Tank Rollover Prevention toolbox.
PHMSA has been investigating a number of unloading and loading incidents involving incompatible materials. The poster child appears to be an incident in Atchison, Kansas, in 2016 involving an accidental mixing of sodium hypochlorite with sulfuric acid. The plume generated by the chemical reaction led to a shelter-in-place order for thousands of residents. At least 120 employees and members of the public sought medical attention.
In April, the CSB released preliminary findings indicating that there was “unclear labeling of fill lines—an engineering flaw of having the fill lines of incompatibles so close.”
“Events like this serve to remind us in the industry to review chemical unloading procedures and to make sure chemicals are unloaded safely and follow standard operating procedures,” Meidl said. “We worked hand-in-hand with the Chemical Safety Board. They asked a number of different questions: ‘What types of events trigger PHMSA’s involvement when trucks are unloading chemicals at fixed facilities? If a company’s SOP (standard operating procedure) is compliant with the attendance requirement, but the employee did not follow it, can/would DOT still cite the company? Is it common for chemical delivery companies to have site-specific procedures for unloading chemicals at specific facilities, or general procedures that apply to all facilities where chemicals are unloaded?’
“I said with a lot of these questions, you should really be talking to the regulated community, to folks like yourselves, because a lot of these questions were very much operational, and you’ve lived this every single day and would know the answers better than we would, especially in the area of precautions being taken at chemical facilities. I work with NTSB and CSB and I always recommend speaking to the community. Get their feedback. So we’ll continue exploring a lot of these incidents, but it would certainly be beneficial to collaborate with you to define solutions to these recurrent problems.”
For Cargo Tank Motor Vehicle (CTMV) loading/unloading operations, there is a 2014 recommended best practices guide that suggests: identifying the piping path, equipment lineups, and operational sequencing and procedures for connecting piping, hoses, or other transfer connections; and verifying that the material is being transferred into the appropriate receiving container, and that the container, and its contents, are compatible with the lading and has sufficient capacity to hold the quantity of material being transferred.
She said the Protecting Our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety (PIPES) Act of 2016 has created some “consternation” with the PIPES Act Requirements for Identification Numbers on Cargo Tanks Containing Petroleum Based Fuel.
“PHMSA currently is weighing the 13 comments to the docket to determine the next steps,” she said. “We’re trying to determine the best path forward. But the initial assessment, just looking it contextually, is that the current HMR already allows for compartmented cargo tanks containing diesel in one compartment and gasoline in another. This petition asks us to expand on an already flexible system that authorizes something that’s completely different. We are considering the implications of this.”
She said that with the regulatory freeze and the new executive orders, PHMSA has to take another look at a lot of its regulations.
“When Trump pushed out his executive order, he used the term ‘regulation’ very broadly, so I guess if you want to call it the regulatory or statutory or whatever, as an agency we interpreted that very broadly to mean anything that triggers the regulation,” she said. “So we kind of had to put a hold on petitions, special permits, rulemakings, and decisions we had to make in order for us to wait for clarification from the White House on what that meant.
“We are still moving with our safety mission. And since the regulatory freeze is still in place, we have kicked things down the pipeline and we are continuing to push things out. So we’ve got our own internal interpretation of what that is. But I’m just saying for you to be aware that if you see a slowdown in things, it’s because of the regulatory freeze coupled with the hiring freeze. But we have prioritized those issues and rulemakings and petitions that are considered high priority.”
She presented the NTTC’s open petitions and interpretations:
• Petition to amend 180.405(h)(3). It would add language to harmonize with packaging specifications and preclude use of fusible devices on MC307 when DOT407-compliant vent is installed.
“We decided it merits consideration for future rulemaking, so we are sending out a letter on that,” she said.
• Interpretation No. 16-0001. The request for clarification is:
“The required markings must be on the inlet and outlet equipment itself and in close proximity to its respective make/break connection point, rather than on the cargo tank wall.”
“We recognize that it’s pretty broad and we are in the process of drafting a response to clarify existing clarification,” she said.
She said there is recent proposed rulemaking in the form of HM-241: Adoption and IBR of ASME Section XII into the HMR.
“Current requirements for pressure vessels in transportation include ASME Section VIII,” she said. “This is for stationary applications in stationary tanks. So ASME Section XII, developed by the industry along with PHMSA engineers, takes into account the dynamic stresses in transportation. So this standard would allow manufacturers to take advantage of lower priced/lighter weight tank materials, reduce manufacturing costs, and better compete internationally. Shippers would be able to transport more material per tank, reducing overall transportation costs. A regulatory analysis is being updated and a Final Rule drafted.”
http://bulktransporter.com/regulations/phmsa-adjusting-new-political-landscape
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Auditors Say Fixes Made on Rail Safety, But More Work Needed
Jul 5, 2017 | Great Falls Tribune
By Phil Drake
Two state agencies have become more active in monitoring rail safety in Montana following a 2015 audit that noted several lapses and hazards, a legislative committee was told recently.
At the June 27 Legislative Audit Committee meeting, lawmakers were told in a follow-up report the Public Service Commission and Department of Military Affairs were enacting most of the recommendations from the earlier audit.
That includes the department now having two full-time inspectors certified in rail cars and locomotives, which is an improvement since the audit.
Nick Hill, a legislative performance auditor, said the Public Service Commission has made improvements to rail safety administration.
“However, additional work needs to be completed before the recommendations are fully implemented,” stated the audit update by Diedra Murray, information systems audit manager.No one from the Public Service Commission or Department of Military Affairs spoke to the commission at the meeting.
The report noted the Department of Military Affairs has completed work on all three recommendations.
Those included improving the planning and response capability to train derailment with a hazardous materials component.
The audit stated many of the earlier suggestions to the Public Service Commission have been followed, such as doing a rail safety risk assessment and establish goals and objections and have a rail safety plan that is reviewed annually with the Federal Railroad Association, working with Montana Disaster and Emergency Services and other state and federal agencies in emergency planning and being active members of the Association of State Rail Safety Managers to ensure Montana is represented at the national level.
The earlier study found 20 percent of Montana’s resident live in evacuation zones for an oil train derailment. And it found that the rail line along the Hi-Line has the highest risk and the Public Services Commission should be making improvements to its existing program such as adding inspectors and setting goals with the Federal Railroad Administration.
The Department of Military Affairs was asked to establish a system for determining local jurisdiction capability statewide to assess capability at the local, county and regional level. And the department asked to seek statutory authority that supports a system in which local governments report capability annually to Disaster Emergency Services.
The Department of Military Affairs balked at the requirement, agreeing it has a coordinating role and that knowing more about local response capabilities would be beneficial, however it was limited to the information provided by local jurisdictions. Nor did they plan to seek statutory authority to support a system where local governments report local jurisdiction capability.
The audit division said that in April the Department of Military Affairs tested hazardous response capabilities in northeastern Montana, which included Plentywood, Sheridan County, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Sheridan County Memorial Hospital and the Montana National Guard,
They said from initial discussions with the DMA there would be a response window of four to six hours.
Murray told the committee that a hazmat team can respond within two hours and that a Billings hazmat team can respond within 81/2 hours.
A report released in 2016 by the Legislative Audit Division faulted the PSC for not identifying rail safety risks, not having a safety plan, not having enough inspectors to adequately cover the state and not participating in regional safety issues. It said the agency is not actively engaged in rail safety, and its lone goal seems to be meeting a minimum number of inspections each year.
The report also found there's a lack of statewide emergency planning and hazardous-material response capability should an oil spill occur. It recommended more coordination with local, state and national planners, as well as adding a third inspector to check rail lines, cars and engines.
The audit noted that Montana, a state of 147,000 square miles, has six hazardous materials units with none east of Great Falls or Billings. Other units are stationed in Helena, Bozeman, Missoula and Kalispell.
Of Montana’s 27 counties with active rail lines, 22 are totally or mostly dependent on a regional team to respond to any large hazardous material event. While the average time for a team to respond is four to six hours, it could take as many as 12 hours in the northeastern part of the state, the audit found.To read the follow-up report, go to http://bit.ly/2tNFbhW
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/07/05/auditors-say-fixes-made-rail-safety-but-more-work-needed/453885001/
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SAB Panel Members Question Agency Method for Air Toxics Rule Reviews
Jul 5, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) panel members are questioning many of the agency's assumptions in its method for reviewing health risks from air toxics emitted by a host of industries, saying the approach might be too conservative by capturing too many emissions sources and could create too much work for EPA.
However, environmentalists are countering that the method might not be conservative enough and could screen out air toxics sources that require further analysis. For example, they fear that the agency's approach could underestimate some emissions health risks, specifically the increased susceptibility of children to health problems.
The method that EPA uses is central to its pending slew of reviews of existing air toxics rules for various industrial sectors that the agency must complete in the coming months and years under court-ordered deadlines. The Clean Air Act mandates that EPA review its existing hazardous air pollutant rules for industry sectors eight years after their implementation to determine whether health risks remain or if new technology exists to further curb emissions. The process is known as a risk and technology review (RTR), and if the agency finds that there are lingering threats to public health, or new emission control technology exists, it can decide to revise and tighten the rules.
The SAB panel held a June 29-30 meeting in Arlington, VA, where it discussed draft remarks to approve in principle EPA's concept of a “tiered” screening method to eliminate sources from more-demanding, in-depth analysis to support the reviews of the various RTR rules. But the panelists also found EPA's underlying assumptions to be very conservative and potentially flawed, raising concerns over methodology and data quality.
If EPA does not screen out emissions sources that clearly present no health risks when it conducts RTRs, it must include those sources in more complex risk assessments as part of developing the RTR, costing the agency more time and money at a time of dwindling budgets and other resources. EPA is asking SAB to evaluate its existing tiered screening approach, already used for several RTRs, which the agency recently modified to add an “urban gardener” option to account for the impacts of air pollution on fruits and vegetables grown in urban environments.
In its charge document to the panel, EPA says that after a prior SAB review of the risk assessment procedure in 2009, “we refined our original one-tier multipathway screen to include a three-tiered multipathway screening approach that progressively replaces health-protective default assumptions with location-specific data” at higher tiers.
“Since full-scale facility specific multipathway assessments are time consuming and expensive, the tiered screening approach 'screens out' low-risk facilities for which no additional analysis is needed, so that only facilities with potentially higher risk remain in the pool for further analysis,” EPA says.
Calling the full-scale analysis “very costly,” EPA says “we consider these screens to be an important step in the RTR risk assessment process that helps the agency to maximize the use of its resources."
EPA is facing a 31 percent cut under President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget proposal. Even if, as many lawmakers suggest, Congress ultimately sets a less harsh budget, budget cuts are still likely under a GOP-controlled appropriations process. The resource constraints will likely strain the RTR program further.
Ongoing Reviews
According to a presentation to the SAB panel by EPA staff, the agency has now completed 56 of 118 RTRs required by the air law, leaving 62 still to be completed. EPA in recent legal filings in litigation over late RTRs noted it is already under binding deadlines, either agreed with environmentalists in settlements or ordered by courts, to complete RTRs for 37 industry sectors, of which 33 must be completed in 2020. The agency has fought environmentalists' suggested timelines in several lawsuits, arguing that limited resources made the schedules unrealistically short.
At the SAB meeting, panelists considered a series of EPA questions based on a May 2017 document titled “Screening Methodologies to Support Risk and Technology Reviews (RTR): A Case Study Analysis,” in which the agency outlines its methodology as recently modified.
Also, the agency asked for input on a new tool to check on whether its methodology for determining population exposure, which is based in part on the “centroids” of census blocks, is appropriate. Measuring exposure at the centroid can be arbitrary and yield unrealistic results, if that is not where most inhabitants of the census area live or that is not where exposures are highest.
In their preliminary conclusions -- still subject to revision prior to adoption by the chartered SAB -- the panelists found EPA's three-tiered screening approach conceptually sound, calling it “reasonable and logical."
“However, with the information presented, it is not possible to determine how effective it will be,” the panelists said, calling for EPA to apply the framework to new or previously evaluated sources in order to “ground-truth” the method.
There is the possibility of an “overestimate of risk” from “multiple conservative assumptions,” panelists concluded, calling for the application of “probabilistic analysis” to better characterize risks. Probabilistic risk assessment entails evaluating both the severity of a possible adverse health effect, and the likelihood that it will occur.
The panelists called for efforts to ensure data quality, as possible errors in emissions data supplied by industry, or other data necessary for the program, such as location information for sources, can skew risk assessment results.
The EPA methodology considers impacts to subsistence fishermen, areas that have stoked controversy in the past. Opponents of EPA's methods say the agency makes overly conservative assumptions based on the need to protect a tiny number of subsistence fishermen in the United States, but the SAB panelists took seriously the prospect that hundreds of thousands of Americans lead a largely subsistence lifestyle that could exposure them, for example, to contaminants that are deposited in waterbodies then concentrated in fish.
However, the panelists did question EPA's focus on lakes, rather than other waterbodies, and also some of the agency's assumptions about the behavior of fishermen and how much fish they catch and consume.
On EPA's urban gardener scenario, panelists sought more information on the underlying assumptions, although the “parameters generally appear to be health-protective."
Some panelists also questioned whether SAB should condone EPA's tool for checking the accuracy and appropriateness of using the centroid of census blocks, suggesting that EPA use satellite imagery to check on where the population of a given area actually lives.
Environmentalists' Input
Environmentalists in their comments to the panel disagreed with the panelists' view that EPA's approach is in general quite conservative.
For example, Emma Cheuse, on behalf of Earthjustice, said, “currently, EPA's methods lead the agency to underestimate some serious health risks,” citing specifically the increased susceptibility of children to health problems.
Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said “we are incredibly concerned” that the screening process may depict some hazardous facilities as not presenting risks. NRDC considers EPA's approach “piecemeal,” and therefore not in accordance with guidance from the National Academies of Science on the need for more comprehensive assessment.
NRDC and Earthjustice welcome the addition of the urban gardener scenario to the RTR analysis, but say it does not go far enough to protect children from health risks presented by contaminated urban soils.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/sab-panel-members-question-agency-method-air-toxics-rule-reviews
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G-20 Ire On Paris Withdrawal Unlikely to Affect Trump Plans
Jul 6, 2017 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Bryce Baschuk
Leaders of Group of 20 nations, outspoken in their opposition to President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, won't be able to do much about it at this week's summit in Hamburg, Germany, business representatives and an academic told Bloomberg BNA.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that she would use her position as the host of the July 7-8 summit to defend the Paris climate agreement as a necessary tool to fend off the growing threats to the environment. G-20 nations make up about two-thirds of the world population.
Other world leaders—such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Chinese President Xi Jinping—are expected to back Merkel's call to support the accord.
But in the absence of new negotiations, the high-level statements should amount to little more than hot air, officials told Bloomberg BNA in recent phone interviews.
Agree to Disagree
“I don't believe that anyone wants to isolate the U.S. or gang up on the U.S.,” said Gary Litman, the vice president for global initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “That won't help anyone.”
Matthew Goodman, a senior advisor at the Washington, D.C. based Center for Strategic and International Studies, generally agreed.
“When this group last met in May for the G-7 summit they agreed to disagree,” he said. “Then Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement.”
“Maybe this issue doesn't become a debate at all,” he said.
Rob Mulligan, a senior vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based United States Council for International Business, said the time may not be ripe for discussion on the issue.
“G-20 leaders have already had some exchanges on the issue of climate change,” he said. ”They are not at a point where any change can be discussed.”
Fair Playing Field
When Trump announced America's withdrawal from the Paris agreement last month, he said it would hurt U.S. businesses and make it more difficult to compete with international rivals such as China and India.
Though both Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have reaffirmed their support for the deal, their countries were granted lengthy implementation timelines, financial aid, and other flexibilities in order to join the accord.
Gary Cohn, the director of Trump's National Economic Council, told reporters last week that the president wants to ensure that the climate accord offers a “level playing field” to all participants.
“We cannot be in a position where the United States is cutting and cutting emissions while other countries continue to grow until 2030,” Cohn said during a June 29 press conference in Washington. “We're looking for fairness across the board in the agreement.”
Environmental advocates pointed out that Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord cannot technically go into effect until November 2020, at which point the issue is expected to be a key focus of the next American presidential election.
Irreversible, Non-Negotiable
Last week, Merkel said the Paris accord was not open to renegotiation and told members of the German parliament that Europe is “more determined than ever” to make the agreement a “success” following Trump's decision to withdraw.
“We will not wait until the last people in the world are finally convinced by the crushing weight of the scientific evidence of climate change,” Merkel said in a June 29 speech to the German parliament. “In other words, the climate agreement is not reversible and it is non-negotiable.”
Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the impasse could prevent any significant environmental outcomes at this year's G-20 summit—but that's not necessary a disaster.
“The G-20 is a latent organization—it is there in a big crisis to have all the players in the room,” Kirkegaard told Bloomberg BNA. “But in the absence of an acute crisis, don't expect them to agree on everything.”
http://news.bna.com/deln/DELNWB/split_display.adp?fedfid=115700162&vname=dennotallissues&fn=115700162&jd=115700162
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Trump May Find Some Allies on Climate Change at G-20 Meeting
Jul 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Western European efforts to isolate President Trump for rejecting the Paris climate change agreement appear to be faltering as leaders gather for a summit meeting in Hamburg, Germany, at the end of the week.
The gulf between Mr. Trump’s worldview and that of most European leaders on topics from trade to immigration will be on display in the coming days. But nowhere is the difference as stark as it is on climate change, which Mr. Trump has mocked as a hoax.
In announcing last month that the United States would withdraw from the Paris agreement, the president portrayed the pact signed by 194 nations to cut planet-warming emissions as a bad deal for America.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has cast the agenda of the Group of 20 summit meeting as a stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s America First approach, particularly on climate change. She has called the Paris accord “irreversible,” and diplomats have expressed hope that the 19 other countries would make it clear that their support is unwavering. Environmental activists, hoping to highlight America’s status as an outlier, also are pushing hard for a united front against Mr. Trump.
In recent days, however, those aiming to isolate the United States on climate issues have softened their language to say they hope an “overwhelming majority” embrace the Paris agreement. Saudi Arabia has indicated it is unlikely to climb on board and Russia, Turkey and Indonesia are sending mixed signals about how forcefully they will declare their support for the Paris deal.
“Huge efforts are underway now to make sure as many countries as possible hold the line and compensate for America’s withdrawal by redoubling their efforts. How far this goes, I have my doubts,” said Dennis Snower, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a leading German think tank advising the European Commission ahead of the summit meeting.
“It doesn’t look good,” Mr. Snower said. “It does not look like we are going to have 19 countries and the United States against.”
The Group of 20 meeting is the first high-level diplomatic gathering since Mr. Trump announced last month that America would exit the Paris agreement. How full-throated a case other rich nations are willing to make for the climate deal now could set the tone for years to come.
Some fear the future of the Paris agreement itself could be at stake. At a minimum, a weak statement or one that fails to clearly cast the United States as a renegade on climate change would signal that leaders are reluctant to jeopardize deals on trade or security by antagonizing the Trump administration over climate issues.
“This is a litmus test. How does the world behave?” said Jonathan Pershing, former special envoy for climate change under President Barack Obama and now director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s environment program.
Climate change policy is playing out in two places at the Group of 20. The first is in a document currently titled “G20 Action Plan on Climate and Energy for Growth,” which tells how nations can make good on their pledges. A May 5 draft obtained by The New York Times calls for nations to meet the emissions goals they set as part of the Paris agreement. A footnote explains the United States is reviewing its policies.
An important second place is the Group of 20 communiqué, the leaders’ official report of the summit meeting, and how it will address the Paris agreement. The Trump administration clearly will not accept language that commits the Group of 20 nations to the Paris agreement, but France and Germany are indicating they will not accept anything less.
“It would be great to have a clear message that everyone understands we need to be taking action on climate change, and the Paris agreement is critical to that. Canada is really pushing for that,” said Catherine McKenna, the Canadian minister of the environment.
A proposal by Germany says leaders “take note of the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris agreement. The United States affirms its strong commitment to a global approach that lowers emissions while supporting economic growth and improving energy security needs.” The other countries, it says, agree that the Paris accord is “irreversible.”
A Trump administration official declined to say whether that language would be accepted, but maintained the United States was not trying to pull other countries away from the Paris agreement.
“From a high level, what we’re looking for is a positive outcome, one in which the chancellor and the president can walk away happy,” the official said. “We’re very much committed to a unity document.”
That is a way of saying the administration would prefer not to be left as a footnote again the way it was in the recent statement by the Group of 7’s environment ministers. The Trump administration refused to support language calling the Paris agreement “irreversible” and central to the “security and prosperity of our planet.” If the Trump administration and other leaders cannot agree on a way to sum up their divergent opinions on climate change, trade and other issues, Ms. Merkel might be forced to simply write a summary of where various countries stand.
“A collision course is unavoidable, but the chancellor is doing her very best to avoid one,” Mr. Snower said.
It is not at all clear at this point what will emerge. Tensions are high between Turkey and several European nations, including Germany, where officials have refused to allow a demonstration of ethnic Turks at the summit meeting. Indonesia has ratified the Paris agreement but has been silent in more recent discussions, one diplomat said. Russia is similarly not showing its hand.
Saudi Arabia is a wild card. Fresh off a $500 million arms deal with the United States that narrowly escaped Senate opposition, the Saudis are eager to keep Mr. Trump’s support for the kingdom’s crackdown against Qatar. Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest per capita emitters of planet-warming emissions, has always been a reluctant participant in climate discussions.
Conservatives in the United States say Europeans should know by now that goading Mr. Trump is likely to fail.
“It’s like trying to poke a bear,” said Nicolas Loris, a research fellow in energy and environmental policy at the Heritage Foundation. “President Trump will stick to his convictions. I don’t think any type of pressure from Merkel or any of the other 19 countries is going to change that.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/climate/g20-climate-change-paris-accord-trump-merkel-germany.html
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Jerry Brown to Announce a Climate Summit Meeting in California
Jul 6, 2017 | New York Times
By Lisa Friedman
Even before President Trump took office, Gov. Jerry Brown of California let it be known he was ready to do battle over climate change, vowing in December that California would launch its own satellite if Mr. Trump cut funding for federal space missions.
On Thursday evening, Governor Brown will mount a new challenge to the administration on climate change. In a videoconference address to a global citizen festival in Hamburg, Germany, where President Trump and other officials will negotiate wording of a statement on the Paris climate change accord, Governor Brown will issue a sweeping invitation to a global “climate action” summit meeting in San Francisco.
“Look, it’s up to you and it’s up to me and tens of millions of other people to get it together to roll back the forces of carbonization and join together to combat the existential threat of climate change,” Brown will tell the thousands of people expected to attend the festival. In the message, a preview of which was provided by aides, he will invite “entrepreneurs, singers, musicians, mathematicians, professors” and others who represent “the whole world” to the September 2018 conference in San Francisco.
“Yes, I know President Trump is trying to get out of the Paris agreement, but he doesn’t speak for the rest of America,” Brown will say in the video. “We in California and in states all across America believe it’s time to act.”
Mr. Trump declared in May that the United States would withdraw from the 2015 pact in which nearly 200 nations pledged to curb greenhouse gas emissions and support poor countries’ plans to develop clean energy and protections against weather disasters. That announcement prompted a nationwide backlash from mayors, governors and other local leaders, who vowed to continue the fight against climate change.
The California summit meeting is part of a broad effort to both galvanize local organizations newly energized by the withdrawal of the United States from the climate deal, and to begin making good on pledges that thousands of businesses and municipalities already made in Paris. According to Governor Brown’s office, it will be the first meeting an American state has hosted to support the United Nations’ climate change negotiations.
The former United Nations climate chief, Christiana Figueres, who will introduce Governor Brown on Thursday night, said groups were working to quantify how much ground the pledges cover across countries and sectors. But having the first meeting in California, she said, sends a strong message to the Trump administration.
“A summit like that takes on even more importance because it has become even more crucial for the United States to see evidence of the fact that the U.S. economy continues to decarbonize,” she said.
Bruce E. Cain, a professor of political science at Stanford University, noted that Governor Brown was no stranger to environmental crusading and that California had a long history of setting itself apart from Washington on environmental policy.
“This is a perfect role for him,” Mr. Cain said. “The only problem is he’s got less than two years to play that role, so for him the challenge is how to segue out of office and still be relevant to the debate.”
Governor Brown maintained that his goal was not to antagonize the president, but to urge everyone to do more.
“It isn’t being cooked up because of Trump,” Governor Brown said in an interview Wednesday. “No nation or state is doing what they should be doing. This is damn serious, and most people are taking it far too lightly than the reality of the threat. You can’t do too much to sound the alarm because so far the response is not adequate to the challenge.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/climate/jerry-brown-california-climate-summit.html
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