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ACC AM 11/13/2017
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Hearing On Air Emissions Regulations
Nov 15, 2017 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
Location: 406 Dirksen Senate Office Building / 10:00 -
(ACC Mentioned) $300 Billion War Beneath the Street: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes
Nov 10, 2017 | The New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchinov
America is facing a crisis over its crumbling water infrastructure, and fixing it will be a monumental and expensive task. -
'Mr. Pruitt Is Welcome To Officially Fire Me’ – As EPA Carries Out Controversial Policy, One Scientist Balks
Nov 10, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
When EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a plan recently to forbid scientists who receive grants from the agency from serving as outside advisers, he singled out three key groups: the Scientific Advisory Board, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors. -
Senate Releases Overhaul Plans
Nov 10, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
The Senate Republican tax overhaul will match the House version by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, according to highlights released by the Finance Committee this afternoon. -
Dems Ask GAO To Consider New Advisory Panel Policy In Probe
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly,
A group of 10 senators is asking the Government Accountability Office to expand a probe of U.S. EPA's advisory panels to include a new policy that bars membership to anyone currently receiving grants from the agency. -
(ACC Mentioned) Why $84 Billion From China Can't Buy a U.S. East Gas Hub
Nov 10, 2017 | Bloomberg Markets
By Emma Ockerman and Lynn Doan
During President Donald Trump’s visit to Asia this week, a Chinese energy company pledged to spend almost $84 billion helping West Virginia build an entire supply chain that would bring the benefits of America’s shale gas boom to bear. -
(ACC Mentioned) China Deal Hailed as a Major Step Forward
Nov 13, 2017 | The Wheeling Intelligencer
By Casey Junkins
The $83.7 billion a Chinese firm plans to spend developing West Virginia’s shale natural gas resources exceeds the total value of all goods and services produced in the state each year. -
(ACC Mentioned) Chinese Investments Could Boost Natural Gas
Nov 11, 2017 | The Weirton Daily Times
By Casey Junkins
A natural gas-fired power plant in Brooke County could be one of the initial projects funded by the $83.7 billion that China Energy plans to spend in West Virginia. -
A U.S. Natural-Gas Bonanza in China Isn’t a Done Deal
Nov 13, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Nathaniel Taplin
Thanksgiving isn’t here yet, but it’s already Christmas in Alaska—and West Virginia, and Texas. -
Gulf Coast Exporters Talk Up LNG, Ethane Sales to China
Nov 13, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
U.S.-based energy companies this week announced billions of potential investments from Chinese firms that would not only ensure financing to develop domestic natural gas but also the wherewithal to export more gas and ethane products to the fastest growing market in the world. -
Senate Version of Tax Reform Bill Appears More Generous to Oil, Gas Industry
Nov 13, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
A working version of a comprehensive tax reform bill under consideration by a Senate panel appears more generous to the oil and gas industry than a version unveiled by lawmakers in the House. -
CP Chem Inaugurates New US PE Plant In Old Ocean, Texas
Nov 12, 2017 | ICIS
By Zachary Moore
Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) inaugurated two new polyethylene (PE) units at its facility in Old Ocean, Texas on Friday. ICIS representatives were present at the inauguration ceremony. -
New Jersey Eyes DOJ's Input On EPCRA Defense Against Data Disclosure
Nov 10, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
New Jersey officials say the Department of Justice's (DOJ) input may be warranted after their criticism of an EPA-administered reporting law in the state's defense against environmentalist and labor groups' lawsuit seeking release of industrial facility data, in a case that could have broad implications for public disclosure of facility data. -
U.S. Climate Delegation Won't Outline Conditions To Stick With Paris Deal
Nov 12, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
The Trump administration does not plan to give international diplomats any clues about how they could convince the U.S. to stay in a global agreement to fight climate change but will use meetings this week as an opportunity to promote U.S. coal, gas and nuclear companies, according to a White House official. -
States, Greens Slam EPA's Latest Ozone Move
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is continuing to sidestep Clean Air Act compliance responsibilities for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, a coalition of Democratic-led states and environmental groups charged in asking a court to keep previously filed legal challenges alive. -
Wehrum Could Revert To EPA NAAQS Process With Earlier Political Input
Nov 13, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Newly confirmed EPA Office of Air & Radiation (OAR) chief William Wehrum could now undo an Obama-era policy memo on ambient air standard reviews and reinstate a process from Wehrum's prior tenure at EPA during the George W. Bush administration that gave political leadership more control earlier in the reviews, sources say. -
20 States, 50 Cities Sign Pledge To Abide By Paris Agreement Even If US Withdraws
Nov 11, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Max Greenwood
A coalition of U.S. cities, states, companies and universities said on Saturday that they still plan on meeting the commitments of the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump's announcement earlier this year that the U.S. would withdraw from the deal.
Congressional Hearings
Industry and Association News
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Environment News
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Hearing On Air Emissions Regulations
Nov 15, 2017 | Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
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(ACC Mentioned) $300 Billion War Beneath the Street: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes
Nov 10, 2017 | The New York Times
By Hiroko Tabuchinov
Bursting pipes. Leaks. Public health scares.
America is facing a crisis over its crumbling water infrastructure, and fixing it will be a monumental and expensive task.
Two powerful industries, plastic and iron, are locked in a lobbying war over the estimated $300 billion that local governments will spend on water and sewer pipes over the next decade.
It is a battle of titans, raging just inches beneath our feet.
“Things are moving so fast,” said Reese Tisdale, president of the water advisory firm Bluefield Research. And it’s a good thing, he says: “There are some pipes in the ground that are 150 years old.”
How the pipe wars play out — in city and town councils, in state capitals, in Washington — will determine how drinking water is delivered to homes across America for generations to come.
Traditional materials like iron or steel currently make up almost two-thirds of existing municipal water pipe infrastructure. But over the next decade, as much as 80 percent of new municipal investment in water pipes could be spent on plastic pipes, Bluefield predicts.
The outcome of the rivalry will also determine the country’s response to an infrastructure challenge of epic proportions.
By 2020, the average age of the 1.6 million miles of water and sewer pipes in the United States will hit 45 years. Cast iron pipes in at least 600 towns and counties are more than a century old, according to industry estimates. And though Congress banned lead water pipes three decades ago, more than 10 million older ones remain, ready to leach lead and other contaminants into drinking water from something as simple as a change in water source.
As many as 8,000 children were exposed to unsafe levels of lead in Flint, Mich., after the city switched to a new water supply but failed to properly treat the water with chemicals to prevent its lead pipes from disintegrating. Corroding iron pipes, meanwhile, have been linked to two outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease in Flint that added to the public health emergency.
The plastics industry has seized on the post-Flint fears.
The American Chemistry Council, a deep-pocketed trade association that lobbies for the plastics industry, has backed bills in at least five states — Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Indiana and Arkansas — that would require local governments to open up bids for municipal water projects to all suitable materials, including plastic. A council spokesman, Scott Openshaw, criticized the current bidding process in many localities as “virtual monopolies which waste taxpayer money, drive up costs and ultimately make it harder for states and municipalities to complete critical water infrastructure upgrades.”
Opponents of the industry-backed bills, including many municipal engineers, say they are a thinly veiled effort by the plastics industry to muscle aside traditional pipe suppliers.
“It’s simply catering to an industry that is trying to use legislation to gain market share,” Stephen Pangori of the American Council of Engineering Companies testified this year before a Michigan Senate committee.
To more directly reach towns and counties across the country, the plastics industry is also leaning on the American City County Exchange, a new group that gives corporations extraordinary capacity to influence public policy at the city and county levels. The group operates under the auspices of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a wider effort funded by the petrochemicals billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch that has drawn scrutiny for helping corporations and local politicians write legislation behind closed doors.
Corporations pay membership fees as high as $25,000 to gain access to some 1,500 mayors and local council members who have signed up for the initiative. At a July convention in Denver that brought together about three dozen local legislators, Bruce Hollands, executive director of the plastic pipe industry group Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association, discussed what had gone wrong in Flint, and explained what needed to be done to open up local bidding for plastic water pipes. To spur local decision-making, the A.C.C.E. has also adopted model legislation pushing for more open bidding for water pipes.
“We’re just trying to take up policies that limit the size of government, that keep it from growing exponentially,” said Jon Russell, national director of the A.C.C.E. and a councilman from the town of Culpeper, Va.
Plastics are an obvious replacement for the country’s aging pipes. Lightweight, easy to install, corrosion-free and up to 50 percent cheaper than iron, plastic pipes have already taken the place of copper as the preferred material for service lines that connect homes to municipal mains, as well as water pipes inside the home.
Still, some scientists warn that the rapid replacement of America’s water infrastructure with plastic could bring its own health concerns.
Scientists are just starting to understand the effect of plastic on the quality and safety of drinking water, including what sort of chemicals can leach into the water from the pipes themselves, or from surrounding groundwater contamination. Studies have shown that toxic pollutants like benzene and toluene from spills and contaminated soil can permeate certain types of plastic pipes as they age. A 2013 review of research on leaching from plastic pipe identified more than 150 contaminants migrating from plastic pipes into drinking water.
“Plastics are being installed without any real understanding of what they’re doing to our drinking water,” said Andrew J. Whelton, assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue University, and an author of the 2013 study. “We don’t know what chemicals we’re being exposed to.”
Sensing an opening, the iron pipe industry has started a public relations push of its own, voicing concerns over plastic, wooing President Trumpwith accolades for his infrastructure drive and setting up a war between the two industries.
“Iron is just more durable. It’s a more proven material,” said Patrick Hogan, president of the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association, the industry’s main lobby group. “Iron’s been in the ground for 100 years.”
Plastic groups have criticized the studies, saying they focus on older generations of plastic piping and conflate different types of plastics. They also stress that their pipes are independently tested by the third-party organization.
“It’s not a new material. It’s a safe material. It’s independently tested,” said Mr. Hollands, executive director of the Uni-Bell plastic pipes group.
The industry outreach, at times, has been more overt.
At the height of Flint’s water crisis, the chief executive of one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of plastic pipes, JM Eagle, traveled to the beleaguered city and offered to replace the city’s lead pipes at no cost.
Pipes from JM Eagle would last 100 years and are a long-lasting and safe solution, the company’s chief executive, Walter Wang, told the City Council last February. “This water crisis, this contamination issue,” he said, “it’s hurting children and making them sick.”
JM Eagle, however, has faced recent legal problems. In 2013, a federal jury in California found that the Los Angeles-based company had defrauded states and municipalities for more than a decade by knowingly selling defective water pipes. In some places, PVC pipes that were supposed to last 50 years exploded in their first year, causing injuries and flooding.
JM Eagle declined to comment but has previously said the litigation was based on “scurrilous allegations” by a disgruntled former employee. Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese industrial conglomerate that was its parent company at the time, agreed to pay $22.5 million in a settlement with municipalities and other government agencies in California.
The uncertainty over potable water pipes of all kinds is exacerbated by a lack of regulation over their safety. There is no federal oversight of the materials or processes used to manufacture plastic water pipes; instead, water pipes are certified and tested by an organization paid for by industry.
That organization, NSF International, displays a picture of the Capitol building on its regulatory resources web page and runs a hotline for questions on regulations and product safety. Yet it has never received regulatory authority from the federal government. Nor does it disclose test results for the pipes it certifies.
NSF International called its testing robust. “If a product does not meet the requirements of a standard, it will not pass,” said Dave Purkiss, the organization’s general manager of water systems.
For now, Flint is fitting the city with service lines made with another material: copper, at an expected cost of more than $140 million. Officials discussed creating a pilot area using plastic to replace the service lines to houses on several city blocks, according to Plastics News, though a Flint spokeswoman, Kristin Moore, said plastic pipes were not currently under consideration.
“When you take that inherent issue that we needed to rebuild trust of the citizens in the water system, we felt that copper was the way to go,” Michael McDaniel, a retired Michigan National Guard brigadier general put in charge of replacing Flint’s water pipes, said at a conference this year.
In Burton, just next door to Flint, budget realities have made plastics the realistic choice.
The small city of 29,000 saved $2.2 million by using plastic to replace its own 1930s-era water system after state regulators alerted the city to critically needed fixes. For a municipality struggling with a dwindling tax base, those savings were huge.
“We needed safe water, and we needed it fast. We needed to replace the system, and PVC was a good choice for us,” said Burton’s mayor, Paula Zelenko. “I’ve got to get the best bang for the buck, because bucks are hard to come by these days.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/climate/water-pipes-plastic-lead.html
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Nov 10, 2017 | The Washington Post
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin
When EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a plan recently to forbid scientists who receive grants from the agency from serving as outside advisers, he singled out three key groups: the Scientific Advisory Board, the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Counselors.
While those rank among the most influential groups in providing the EPA with the scientific and technical advice it historically relies on while crafting environmental regulations, they represent only a portion of the agency’s outside advisers. The EPA boasts 22 advisory committees, offering regulators guidance on everything from children’s health to pesticides to hazardous waste.
Each of them will be subject to the agency’s new and unprecedented restriction.
“The policy directive applies to all of these committees moving forward, and members whose current grant status does not line up with the directive will have an opportunity to make a decision about their continued service when their term is up for renewal,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email.
Shortly after announcing the policy last month, Pruitt appointed 66 advisers, bringing in more researchers from the Midwest and West and adding multiple researchers from industry and state government. The Center for Science and Democracy estimates that on the Scientific Advisory Board alone, Pruitt has tripled the number of industry and consulting-firm scientists while cutting academic researchers nearly by half.
The move set in motion what could be an elemental shift at the agency.
“It is very, very important to ensure independence, to ensure that we’re getting advice and counsel independent of the EPA,” Pruitt said in explaining his decision.
But the EPA has chosen not impose a similar litmus test on scientific advisers who receive grants from outside sources. Pruitt said merely that they will undergo the same sort of ethics review already in place “to ensure that there aren’t issues of potential conflict with areas that they’re working upon.”
Some industry groups and Republican legislators have welcomed the change, saying it will bring long-overdue balance to the boards. Environmental and scientific groups were quick to condemn it, arguing that Pruitt had turned the notion of conflict-of-interest on its head. They say the move will amount to a purge of independent scientists and tip the scales toward the wishes of industries regulated by the EPA.
Pruitt’s new directive has also prompted pushback from 10 Democratic senators, who on Thursday asked the Government Accountability Office to expand its probe examining the independence of EPA’s advisory boards. Led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the lawmakers asked the GAO to analyze whether accepting EPA grants poses a true conflict of interest for members of its federal advisory committees.
On the three main boards Pruitt targeted, according to Bowman, two scientists opted to give up their EPA grants to continue serving but seven did not — and no longer can serve.
A list of new appointments to those boards includes more voices from regulated industries, academics and environmental regulators from conservative states, as well as researchers who have a history of critiquing the science and economics underpinning tighter environmental regulations.
But at least one researcher being removed from the Scientific Advisory Board has challenged Pruitt to explicitly fire her.
Robyn Wilson, an Ohio State University professor and specialist in risk analysis, got word in a terse email that she no longer would be needed as an adviser.
“Thank you for your service,” an EPA staffer wrote last Friday, noting Pruitt’s new policy. Wilson, who had received her first EPA grant this year — for a project evaluating the impact of federal funding on restoring the Great Lakes — was now barred from serving.
In a small act of rebellion, Wilson hit reply.
“I just wanted to let you know that I am not officially resigning or stepping down from the board,” she wrote. “It seems as if the intention of the Administrator is to force us to choose between our grants and the board given the new policy. I simply will not do that as it is a false choice.”
One irony, she noted, was that her agency-funded research actually indicated that there are ways to improve water quality in the Great Lakes without regulation. She saw far greater potential for a conflict of interest among board members representing the regulated industries than she did for academics, she continued.
“Mr. Pruitt is welcome to officially fire me from the Board, as I am clearly not on the new list of SAB members,” Wilson wrote. “But given I had one year left in my term, and I was hired by the previous Administrator, it seems as if the appropriate way for him to enact this policy is to provide an official letter informing me that I am being let go before my term ends.”
She won’t be getting a letter, it seems.
“We appreciate her service and desire to continue to serve,” Bowman said when asked about the situation. “The Administrator has issued a directive which clearly states his policy in this regard.”
Wilson said this week that she felt compelled to protest given her view that Pruitt’s actions are arbitrary, capricious and possibly in violations of the law surrounding federal advisory boards. More than that, she said, they are simply wrongheaded.
“Somebody has to start standing up to this nonsense, and it seems like the least I could do is go on the record to say I am not resigning, as I don’t think it is appropriate that we be given this ‘choice,'” Wilson said in an email. “If this policy is so sound, then officially fire us, which no one has done yet . . . If we are hired with a letter from the Administrator, we should be fired with a letter from the Administrator.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/10/epa-extends-controversial-conflict-of-interest-policy-to-nearly-two-dozen-advisory-boards/?utm_term=.6ff72966b49d
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Senate Releases Overhaul Plans
Nov 10, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Geof Koss
The Senate Republican tax overhaul will match the House version by lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, according to highlights released by the Finance Committee this afternoon.
While the bill, details of which remain under wraps, will match the House's corporate rate, it may include a one-year delay. The measure would also allow full and immediate expensing of new equipment, according to the summary.
GOP senators got a briefing on the proposal this morning. But the fate of the renewable and investment tax credits was unclear. Asked about how the bill treats the wind industry, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters, "I think we're still working on it."
The House version, which was passed by the Ways and Means Committee this afternoon on a 24-16 vote, would reduce the value of the PTC while adding new eligibility requirements.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said that as of 1:30 p.m. today, "we have not seen the text, the legislative language from the Finance Committee majority."
"The rumors we've heard are that amendments are due on Sunday, we will have a markup on Monday," he told reporters. "We have not had a single hearing on this legislation because the legislation has not been written.
"The American people have not had the opportunity to testify on it. Not a single economist in America has been able to give their opinion about it. We haven't heard from the American people or the private sector what they want out of a tax bill. This is not the way to do our legislative work."
Reporter Kellie Lunney contributed.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/09/stories/1060066211
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Dems Ask GAO To Consider New Advisory Panel Policy In Probe
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly,
A group of 10 senators is asking the Government Accountability Office to expand a probe of U.S. EPA's advisory panels to include a new policy that bars membership to anyone currently receiving grants from the agency.
While EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has said the ban is needed to preserve the committees' ability to provide independent advice, "we doubt this premise withstands scrutiny," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and nine other lawmakers wrote in the request today to the congressional watchdog agency. Instead, the new policy "appears to be making it easier for industry-funded scientists" to serve on EPA's 22 federal advisory committees, they said.
The ban also entails a double standard, according to their letter. While an academic scientist who receives an EPA grant for any purpose cannot provide advice — even on different topics — industry scientists "are presumed to have no inherent conflict even if their research is entirely funded by a company with a financial stake in an advisory board's conclusions."
This summer, the GAO had agreed to a request by most of the same senators — all Democrats with the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — to explore EPA's process for selecting advisory committee members (E&E News PM, July 20). In today's letter, they asked the GAO an array of other questions, including whether other agencies have similar policies and whether receipt of an EPA grant presents "a legitimate conflict of interest."
A GAO spokesman could not be reached for comment this afternoon.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/09/stories/1060066213
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(ACC Mentioned) Why $84 Billion From China Can't Buy a U.S. East Gas Hub
Nov 10, 2017 | Bloomberg Markets
By Emma Ockerman and Lynn Doan
During President Donald Trump’s visit to Asia this week, a Chinese energy company pledged to spend almost $84 billion helping West Virginia build an entire supply chain that would bring the benefits of America’s shale gas boom to bear.
Much of it will probably never materialize. Here are the reasons why.The Returns
China Energy Investment Corp. and West Virginia have grand -- albeit non-binding -- plans to build new gas-fired power plants, along with complexes to store the fuel and chemical plants to help turn it into plastics. Based on a statement from West Virginia’s Department of Commerce, China Energy Investment would spend $83.7 billion over 20 years, or more than $4 billion annually.
China Energy Investment was formed from the combination of Shenhua Group Corp., the nation’s largest coal miner, and China Guodian Corp., one of its top-five power generators, making the combined power company the world’s biggest.
As Bloomberg Intelligence energy analyst Michael Kay points out, not even U.S. energy pipeline giant Kinder Morgan Inc. budgets that much for growth projects. There just isn’t enough infrastructure with high enough returns to make it worthwhile.
“That’s not going to happen,” Kay says. “The problem isn’t necessarily anything other than financial.”
On the surface, a massive build-out of infrastructure in Appalachia -- a region that now supplies more than a third of America’s natural gas -- makes sense.
Companies and politicians have been pushing for more pipelines and plants there since the shale boom unleashed a flood of gas from formations like the Marcellus a decade ago. West Virginia, in the heart of Coal Country, could especially use the help after a market collapse forced shut hundreds of U.S. mines. Another plus -- the region offers an alternative to the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast.The Rival
One reason more projects haven’t taken off: The Gulf Coast is an easier and often cheaper alternative with existing pipelines to power plants, chemical plants and storage tanks. Meanwhile Texas is home to its own giant shale plays, including the Permian Basin where 9 billion cubic feet of gas is pulled from oil wells every day.
“When you already have a market established in the Gulf Coast, it’s easy to expand it -- you have a lot of storage, you have a lot of supply,” said Prachi Mehta, a natural gas liquids analyst for Wood Mackenzie Ltd. In Appalachia, “you have a lot of constraints.”The Opposition
But by far the biggest constraint that energy companies face in the eastern U.S. is the regulatory process.
Some project developers have spent over a year waiting for federal approval as landowners and environmentalists there lodge complaints and stage protests. Even as politicians push for more investments, pipeline giants from Energy Transfer Partners LP to Williams Partners LP are being forced to delay projects because of regulatory setbacks and legal challenges.
Even Dave Spigelmyer, president of a coalition that’s been pushing for the kinds of projects China Energy Investment has pledged to build, acknowledges the challenges.
"We need to make sure we have our A-game on, because folks are going to go where they have certainty on the return on investment,” Spigelmyer said. “When you talk about investment in Pennsylvania, it takes over 100 days to get a drilling permit.”The Money Spent
Another reason West Virginia shouldn’t get its hopes up, Kay said, is the fact that much of the major investments that Appalachia’s energy market needs may have already been made.
Enough pipelines are coming online to increase the region’s take-away capacity by about a third. And so much gas-fired power generation has been built in the area that Moody’s Investors Service has warned of “a gas-driven apocalypse” in the power market.
Later this year, Dominion Energy Inc. will bring online a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Maryland, and an ethane export terminal at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, is already sending cargoes overseas.
“The truth is,” Kay said, “we need to see these projects coming online to see if we do need more infrastructure.”
To be sure, a record volume of gas keeps flowing out of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations of the eastern U.S. IHS Markit forecasts that, between 2026 and 2030, the region will produce enough natural-gas liquids to supply as many as four more chemical plants that “crack” the ethane in natural gas streams into a chemical widely used by manufacturers.Storage Hub
In July, Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, joined other policy makers to pitch a $10 billion Appalachian storage hub to Trump. The proposal outlined underground storage in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, plus pipeline to link storage and petrochemical plants. A report from the American Chemistry Council found that, if approved, it could create more than 100,000 jobs and nearly $36 billion in capital investment.
As shipping gas southeast becomes more expensive, any opportunity to store gas locally may stoke desire for the cheaper fuel there, said Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc., a gas industry consultant in Villanova, Pennsylvania.
"It would be more than competitive," Schork said. "The price of natural gas in the Marcellus shale is really advantageous."
And the MOU with China Energy Investment may be one step toward that. According to the West Virginia Department of Commerce, the company has already made “several trips” to the state. On Thursday, Governor Jim Justice described the agreement as proof that “the tides are turning in West Virginia.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/why-even-84-billion-from-china-can-t-buy-a-u-s-east-gas-hub
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(ACC Mentioned) China Deal Hailed as a Major Step Forward
Nov 13, 2017 | The Wheeling Intelligencer
By Casey Junkins
WHEELING –The $83.7 billion a Chinese firm plans to spend developing West Virginia’s shale natural gas resources exceeds the total value of all goods and services produced in the state each year.
That investment also would be more than double the approximately $35 billion total that West Virginia University Energy Institute Director Brian Anderson estimates drillers, frackers, processors and pipeliners have spent in the Mountain State since the Marcellus and Utica shale boom began several years ago.
John Deskins, director of Bureau of Business and Economic Research at WVU, said Thursday the state’s annual gross domestic product is about $75 billion.
“West Virginia has actively sought direct foreign investment to strengthen and diversify our economy,” Woody Thrasher, the state’s secretary of commerce, said. “The massive size of this energy undertaking and level of collaboration between our two countries is unprecedented.”
While in the presence of President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing early Thursday, Thrasher signed a memorandum of understanding with China Energy Investment Corp. that calls for the company to invest $83.7 billion in West Virginia during a 20-year span. The investment could lead to ethane crackers, storage areas, pipelines, processing plants, electricity plants and other such facilities.
“It could be one big ethane cracker, or it could be a couple of smaller ethane crackers,” Anderson said. “They are looking at several different projects.”
Anderson said the firm known as China Energy is both the largest electricity producer and the largest coal company in the world.
“This is a way for them to enter the U.S. domestic market,” Anderson said.
Recently, Anderson discussed the results of a study to determine the best locations for underground storage caverns to create the Appalachian Storage Hub. This alone could lead to 100,000 permanent jobs in the Marcellus Shale region, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Several of the areas the study lists as “top-rated” for storing ethane, propane, butane or other natural gas liquids are in the Upper Ohio Valley. Mountaineer NGL Storage is already working on such a project along the Ohio River in Clarington that will connect to West Virginia by pipeline.
“The prime zone stretches from Hancock all the way down to Putnam County,” Anderson said. “We have very good geology for it.”
Anderson said among the Marcellus, Utica and Rogersville shale formations, West Virginia has “several decades worth” of natural gas reserves.
“The best thing about China Energy is that they are not going to extract our resources and export them,” Anderson said. “We are going to be able to add value to the products before they leave the region because of these downstream projects.”
R. Dennis Xander is past president of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia. Now the president of Buckhannon-based Denex Petroleum, he’s worked in Mountain State natural gas fields since 1974.
“This is a wonderful day for West Virginia,” Xander said. “How can you be anything but optimistic about this?”
Xander said the industry has come along way in 43 years, as he said a driller could go an average of about 1,400 feet in a typical day at that time.
“Now, these horizontal drillers can go 40,000 feet in a day,” he said. “It’s simply amazing how far the industry has come.
“There will probably be jobs coming out of this that we can’t even dream about yet,” Xander added. “Schools need to be preparing to get our kids ready to work in these industries.”
Marc Monteleone serves as the active IOGA president. He said the spending plans will allow West Virginia to redevelop its once-prominent chemical industry.
“Our natural resources are of great value, and this is going to significantly impact West Virginia’s energy future, as well as the national and global energy outlook,” Monteleone said.
Officials said the Chinese officials made several trips to the Mountain State to evaluate the prospects. The China Energy expenditure in West Virginia is the largest investment in a series of projects in U.S. companies and other states totaling a reported $250 billion of investment in America.
“We implore state and federal officials to pass policies and initiatives that promote more of this type of investment in our natural gas resources to make a brighter economy for everyone,” West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Executive Director Anne Blankenship said. “West Virginia must support legislation and rules that make development as possible as it is in surrounding states, while avoiding any possibility of hampering natural gas power production, if we are to see the true value of this investment.”
All members of the Mountain State’s congressional delegation issued statements of support for the project, as did Gov. Jim Justice.
“We have had a complete turnaround in West Virginia in 2017. Just think, we started with a $500 million dollar deficit and now the jobs are coming back and where there was despair there is now real hope,” Justice said. “All of these things have created a momentum to bring prosperity and goodness to the people of our state. While this is a great day for West Virginia, we truly believe there are thousands of more great days to come.”
http://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2017/11/china-making-natural-gas-moves-in%E2%80%88the-mountain%E2%80%88state/
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(ACC Mentioned) Chinese Investments Could Boost Natural Gas
Nov 11, 2017 | The Weirton Daily Times
By Casey Junkins
WHEELING — A natural gas-fired power plant in Brooke County could be one of the initial projects funded by the $83.7 billion that China Energy plans to spend in West Virginia.
While in China Thursday, West Virginia Secretary of Commerce Woody Thrasher signed a memorandum of understanding with the firm in the presence of President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Thrasher later said some of the first projects that are part of the agreement are the Brooke County plant, along with another natural gas plant in Harrison County, W.Va.
Thrasher said the total investment in these plants will be about $1.3 billion.
Patrick Ford, executive director of the Business Development Corp. of the Northern Panhandle, said the Brooke County site is near Colliers, although original plans called for it to go at the former Wheeling Corrugating plant now known as the Beech Bottom Industrial Park.
“That plant, itself, is about a $748 million investment,” Ford said.
The website for the Brooke County plant states it will create more than 1,000 jobs during the construction phase, while eventually leading to $440.5 million worth of economic activity per year.
Curtis Wilkerson serves as a spokesman for Energy Solutions Consortium, which is working to develop the natural gas-fired power plants in Brooke County and Harrison County. Each project, upon approval, would result in hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment, in addition to hundreds of construction jobs.
“We have been talking with the company in China for some time,” Wilkerson said Thursday, though he declined to further discuss financing of the power plants.
According to Wilkerson, the West Virginia Public Service Commission is considering the certificate to allow the plant, while other environmental permits are in the works. He said the PSC granted permission for the Harrison County plant, but it still needs other certificates.
“These are viable projects because of the vast shale natural gas in West Virginia,” Wilkerson said.
Both the Brooke County Commission and Brooke County Board of Education approved in lieu of tax agreements for the proposed power plant earlier this year.
Plans call for the plant to be built in a stripmined area off Cross Creek Road, near Tent Church Road and the Cross Creek Wildlife Management Area.
Another potential natural gas-fired power plant, Moundsville Power, remains stalled, although officials with Quantum Utility Generation still list it on their website.
Called for comment, Brooke County Commissioner Tim Ennis said, “An exciting part of this news is they’re looking to establish a storage hub in this area for natural gas byproducts. We have property that would be suited for that.”
Ford said such a facility would be used to store natural gas-based liquids used to create byproducts used in a variety of products ranging from clothing to appliances.
He said 75 percent of existing petrochemical processing facilities are within 400 miles of the Northern Panhandle, but the American Chemistry Council believes the Ohio Valley could support up to five additional processing plants.
Ford said a West Virginia University study found the development of a storage hub, itself a $10 billion investment, would generate up to $36 billion in the development of petrochemical plants.
Each would require thousands of workers for their construction and hundreds for their operation, he said.
(Staff writer Warren Scott also contributed to this story.)
http://www.weirtondailytimes.com/news/local-news/2017/11/chinese-investments-could-boost-brooke-county-power-plant-project/
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A U.S. Natural-Gas Bonanza in China Isn’t a Done Deal
Nov 13, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal
By Nathaniel Taplin
Thanksgiving isn’t here yet, but it’s already Christmas in Alaska—and West Virginia, and Texas.
The source of the good cheer: big natural gas deals announced in China during President Trump’s state visit last week. The headline figures are impressive: a $43 billion pipeline and liquefaction project in Alaska, $84 billion for shale gas and chemicals in West Virginia, and a memorandum on gas exports for Texas-based Cheniere Energy .
That sounds like a lot of money and a lot of gas—and it would be, if all these nonbinding agreements metamorphose into real brick and mortar projects. That, however, is unlikely.
Building liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants is a notoriously expensive and lengthy proposition: one reason a 2012 study found the cost of the Alaskan project might actually be as high as $65 billion.
And because the Asian gas market is forecast to be oversupplied until the early-2020s at least, and LNG projects are so risky, companies have a strong incentive to make splashy announcements with big partners, to frighten off other potential suppliers. The global LNG business resembles a giant game of chicken, with every player trying to convince the competition that they are poised to throw tons of money at scary, game-changing projects. If the Alaskan project goes through it will compete with Cheniere, which in turn might compete with Russian gas supply to China—which is also under negotiation. Of course many of these monstrous multibillion deals will remain forever trapped in the Upside Down, without a viable pathway into our reality.
Burning Brighter
Chinese investors considering plowing their billions into Alaska have the cautionary tale of Australia to consider. Terminals greenlighted there during the height of the commodities boom nearly all ran massively over budget. That is causing huge problems for Aussie exporters now facing Asian gas prices trading in the $6 to $9 per million British Thermal Units (mmBtu) range, down from over $15 in 2015.
The Alaskan project, meanwhile, would produce at a cost of around $6 to $7 per mmBtu, including shipping and tax breaks, according to a presentation by Alaska Gasline Development Corp., the U.S. partner on the deal. Even assuming Asian prices are higher by the time the project would come online in the mid 2020s, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for error. Cheniere, which already ships some cargoes to Asia, might be better placed—it said in 2016 that its margin to Asia would be as much as $2 per mmBtu, even with Asian gas prices at just $7.
So—keep an eye on gas prices and on whether any of these contracts evolve into actual investment over the next 12 to 24 months. The U.S. is well placed to become a significant gas supplier to China. But the game is really just beginning.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-u-s-natural-gas-bonanza-in-china-isnt-a-done-deal-1510555196
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Gulf Coast Exporters Talk Up LNG, Ethane Sales to China
Nov 13, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
U.S.-based energy companies this week announced billions of potential investments from Chinese firms that would not only ensure financing to develop domestic natural gas but also the wherewithal to export more gas and ethane products to the fastest growing market in the world.
Multiple gas-related deals, announced during President Trump’s first trade mission to the Asia-Pacific, were led by Alaska and West Virginia, each securing potentially billions in future investments.
Chinese operators tentatively agreed to provide financing for languishing Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, while West Virginia officials touted a potential investment of close to $84 million to develop shale gas and petrochemical projects.
But they were far from the only big gas-related news between U.S. and Chinese companies. Most of the transactions are in the form of joint development agreements (JDA), letters of intent or memorandums of understanding (MOU), nonbinding agreements that are preliminary and may require years of negotiations, but Houston-based American Ethane Co. LLC (AEC), announced it has a binding contract in hand to export ethane to Chinese markets.
Gulf Coast LNG operators Cheniere Energy Inc. and Delfin LNG each secured MOUs to export gas to Chinese markets.
In its MOU with gas distributor China Gas Holdings Ltd., Delfin gained more clout for its proposed first-of-its-kind floating LNG export project offshore Cameron Parish, LA. A final investment decision is expected next year and startup as soon as 2021.
Under the MOU, China Gas agreed to take up to 3 million metric tons/year (mmty) over 15 years, said Delfin CEO Frederick Jones, who accompanied the president to Asia.
Delfin also signed an MOU with Chongqing Oil and Gas Exchange to help develop a trading platform designed to connect the Chinese market with international markets, similar to the Henry Hub, according to Bloomberg. Chongqing is in Western China, near the largest gas province of Sichuan.
Cheniere, which operates Sabine Pass LNG, the only operating export facility in the Lower 48, is said to have an MOU to export gas for China National Petroleum Corp. worth as much as $11 billion. Cheniere also is building an export terminal in Corpus Christi, TX.
Cheniere would not confirm any details about the MOU, however. A spokesperson on Friday said the Houston operator would not “release the text of the MOU nor any details of its contents.”
Meanwhile, AEC, a privately held operator developing an ethane export terminal on the Texas Gulf Coast, announced one of the largest binding contracts of the trade mission.
AEC, whose proposed ethane project has not broken ground, made its official announcement this week after securing a contract in June worth an estimated $26 billion with Nanshan Group. According to the contract, AEC agreed to supply up to 2.6 mmty of ethane over 20 years to an ethylene cracker Nanshan is building in China. The Texas terminal as proposed would have output of up to 10 mmty.
AEC in May 2015 completed a front-end engineering design study. Construction now is to be “coordinated with downstream infrastructure in China and is expected to be started in early 2018 and completed by 2020,” AEC said.
Terminal construction would be coordinated in four phases, and AEC is working with “major shipowners” to move volumes by very large ethane carrier vessels.
“This deal will create thousands of jobs in our countries, and American Ethane will also invest in infrastructure in China,” said AEC CEO John Houghtaling. “As one of the larger deals of this summit, the agreement meets the U.S. goal of reducing the trade deficit, China’s goal of creating for the first time an ethane-to-ethylene production...and the mutual goal of providing a long term economic link between our two countries.”
AEC, he said, “has more than 10 potential petrochemical customers in China each willing to take 1 mmty-plus of ethane per year. Two of them, 2.6 mmty each, are in the final negotiation phase and plan to reach definitive sales and purchase agreement by end of 2017, which will strengthen U.S.-China trade ties even further.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112416-gulf-coast-exporters-talk-up-lng-ethane-sales-to-china
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Senate Version of Tax Reform Bill Appears More Generous to Oil, Gas Industry
Nov 13, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
A working version of a comprehensive tax reform bill under consideration by a Senate panel appears more generous to the oil and gas industry than a version unveiled by lawmakers in the House.
Last Thursday, the Joint Committee on Taxation released a 253-page description of the chairman's mark version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which if enacted would be the first overhaul of the nation's tax code since 1986. The Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to hold a markup hearing on the bill on Monday (Nov. 13).
Like the version released Nov. 2 by the House Committee on Ways and Means, the Senate version of the tax reform bill would continue to allow oil and gas operators to deduct intangible drilling costs and the passive loss exception. But the Senate appears to be parting with the House over plans to repeal credits for enhanced oil recovery and production from marginal oil and gas wells.
The Senate version of the bill also proposes lowering the corporate tax rate to 20%, but the cut would not take effect until 2019. The House version calls for the cut to take effect in 2018.
"We have been laser-focused on reducing taxes for the middle class, and that is exactly what this bill will do," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said from the Senate floor. "Combined, these changes to our broken tax code in the chairman's mark will give hardworking taxpayers across the country bigger paychecks and more opportunities."
Hatch was joined by nine Senate colleagues, all Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Lawmakers from four major energy-producing states -- Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Rob Portman (R-OH), Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) -- were also at Hatch's side.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112415-senate-version-of-tax-reform-bill-appears-more-generous-to-oil-gas-industry
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CP Chem Inaugurates New US PE Plant In Old Ocean, Texas
Nov 12, 2017 | ICIS
By Zachary Moore
HOUSTON (ICIS)--Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) inaugurated two new polyethylene (PE) units at its facility in Old Ocean, Texas on Friday. ICIS representatives were present at the inauguration ceremony.
The two plants – PE units 40 and 41 – each have a capacity of 500,000 tonnes/year. They are part of CP Chem’s US Gulf Coast Petrochemical Project, a $6bn investment encompassing the two new PE plants in Old Ocean as well as a new ethane cracker at the company’s Cedar Bayou facility in Texas.
“We announced plans to build these world-scale units in 2011, broke ground in 2014, and today, we are celebrating the successful start-up of commercial operations,” said Mark Lashier, president and CEO. “With these new assets in place, we can penetrate new markets to reach new customers, expand our global presence, and deliver on our growth commitments to our owner companies.”
“Congratulations to CPChem on a milestone that is helping Phillips 66 achieve its vision of providing energy and improving lives,” said Tim Taylor, president of Phillips 66. “The two new polyethylene units on the Texas Gulf Coast will have a global impact, providing the world with plastics for everything from automobile parts to smartphones."
The company stated that while it had always planned to start up the PE units ahead of the new cracker, the impact of Hurricane Harvey resulted in some additional delays at the start up of the Cedar Bayou cracker. The company currently anticipates initial start-up at the cracker in the first quarter of 2018 and commercial operations by the second quarter.
CP Chem’s new PE plants at Old Ocean will source much of their ethylene from the existing crackers at the Old Ocean site, while the company expects to remain a merchant seller of ethylene even with the new PE capacity.
A company executive stated in an interview with ICIS that the company is trying to spread its assets throughout the greater Houston area partly to mitigate against hurricane risks. The company hopes to keep overall operations healthy, even if one facility is shuttered due to adverse weather events.
In addition to the PE plants, CP Chem also inaugurated a storage in transit (SIT) facility adjoining the plant. The SIT facility includes 2,750 new hopper cars, which will allow CP Chem to easily ship product to customers throughout the US as well as major port cities to take advantage of export opportunities.
Company executives stated that much of the product from the new plant will be destined for export, although the percentages likely to be exported are not as high as many market participants had been anticipating for new US PE facilities. Exports will be shipped to whichever region of the world provides the best netback, with the company adding that the Old Ocean facility is among the most efficient and competitive PE plants currently operating in the global marketplace.
Touching on future investment possibilities, the company stated that it anticipates shale gas and the resulting ethane advantage for US producers to remain in place over the longer term and this could justify additional investments in the Gulf Coast.
“CPChem is a critical part of Chevron’s investment strategy, and this Gulf Coast expansion project is an important piece of the US energy value chain that has been revolutionized by shale resources,” said Pierre Breber, Chevron’s executive vice president for downstream and chemicals. “The two new polyethylene units enable CPChem to meet the demand for a wide variety of valuable products. Today’s milestone is a testament to the hard work of the entire CP Chem organisation.”
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/11/10/10162885/cp-chem-inaugurates-new-us-pe-plant-in-old-ocean-texas/
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New Jersey Eyes DOJ's Input On EPCRA Defense Against Data Disclosure
Nov 10, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
New Jersey officials say the Department of Justice's (DOJ) input may be warranted after their criticism of an EPA-administered reporting law in the state's defense against environmentalist and labor groups' lawsuit seeking release of industrial facility data, in a case that could have broad implications for public disclosure of facility data.
In a Nov. 3 letter to the federal district court judge overseeing the case, New Jersey Work Environment Council (NJWEC) et al. v. State Emergency Response Commission (SERC), a plaintiffs' attorney faults New Jersey officials' claim that requiring the state's SERC to enforce the disclosure provisions of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) violates the state's sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Plaintiffs do not agree that there is a Constitutional issue with the application of EPCRA to the SERC in this case,” the attorney says, citing an exception from states' sovereign immunity for cases where an official violates federal law.
The attorney says that the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey could reject the SERC's constitutional challenge before U.S. Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions on behalf of DOJ decides whether to intervene to defend EPCRA in the lawsuit, but says a delay to allow Sessions sufficient time for a decision may be warranted.
In the lawsuit filed April 28, plaintiffs argue that the New Jersey SERC and the Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) in Linden, NJ, which is home to at least two industrial facilities, as well as the majority of other LEPCs in the state, have failed to publicly disclose facility emergency response plans (ERPs) as required under EPCRA. The City of Linden is also a defendant in the case.
But in an Oct. 19 motion to dismiss, the New Jersey SERC argues that EPCRA only requires states to set up a system for industrial facilities to release information to LEPCs but not for the state officials on a SERC to require the local planners to disclose the data to the public.
“Although the LEPCs are required to develop the emergency response plan and to make them available to the public, EPCRA does not provide the SERC with the authority to take enforcement action against the LEPCs,” the motion says. “Even if Congress provided the SERC with enforcement authority against the LEPCs, the SERC’s decision on whether to take such enforcement action would not be reviewable by the courts."
In an Oct. 20 letter to Sessions, New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino says federal rules require notification to the Department of Justice when a state argues that a federal law is unconstitutional, in this case because New Jersey says it violates the state's immunity under the 11th Amendment.
The advocates' lawsuit seeking disclosure of facility data under EPCRA comes as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has delayed and is planning to revise an Obama-era rule updating the agency's facility accident prevention program with new requirements for auditing and hazard analysis, as well as for streamlined release of facility data to the public.
Facility Data
During his tenure as Oklahoma's AG, Pruitt was the lead signature on a letter from a group of Republican AGs to the Obama administration, arguing that provisions in the agency's then proposed update to its Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety program strengthening disclosure of facility data to the public risked worsening terror threats.
A source familiar with the advocates' lawsuit says the case shows a failing in EPCRA that is preventing communities from receiving information on chemicals hazards that is necessary to plan for potential releases.
“If the statute can't reach the SERC for whatever reason, I'm not sure the statute is enforceable by anybody,” the source says. “And that is a problem.”
The source adds that the groups' lawsuit could help give the SERC's the power it needs to ensure adequate disclosure of facility data needed to ensure effective emergency planning.
“The issue is does the plan make sense,” the source says, noting that if a facility's ERP calls for firefighters to respond by way of a road that could sustain damage in an explosion then the plan may not be useful. “That's why it's important that these plans be reviewed in the light of day.”
But a chemical industry attorney argues that the SERC is correct to sidestep pressure to enforce EPCRA, because the appropriate defendant in the litigation is the LEPC that has refused to release the data. Advocates likely sued the SERC, the source says, because suing each individual LEPC in the state is a costly undertaking that would require advocates to show standing in each case.
“I think they've gone after the wrong” defendants, the industry source says, arguing that disclosure on a local, rather than state-wide basis is consistent with EPCRA. “I think I understand why, but I think the defendant is the LEPC.”
Although the case does not directly affect EPA's RMP rule, the industry source says that if advocates are unable to obtain facility data through EPCRA that could bolster their claims that the provisions seeking to improve emergency planning and increase disclosure of facility data in the Obama-era update to the RMP rule are necessary.
But the attorney argues that such assertions should not “trump the security concern that led to the restriction on this information being widely available to begin with.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/new-jersey-eyes-dojs-input-epcra-defense-against-data-disclosure
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U.S. Climate Delegation Won't Outline Conditions To Stick With Paris Deal
Nov 12, 2017 | PoliticoPro
By Emily Holden
BONN, Germany—The Trump administration does not plan to give international diplomats any clues about how they could convince the U.S. to stay in a global agreement to fight climate change but will use meetings this week as an opportunity to promote U.S. coal, gas and nuclear companies, according to a White House official.
The centerpiece of the White House presence at the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, will be a Monday evening presentation where government officials and industry executives will urge developing countries to pursue “cleaner” fossil fuel and nuclear power — a pitch that could be meant to widen the market for American energy exports.
The White House source said State Department diplomats and Trump aides would not engage on remaining in the 2015 Paris agreement, which Trump has said he would exit unless he got terms more favorable to U.S. businesses.
“We’re not going to address that issue,” the official said on an embargoed call with reporters on Thursday. “The president has left the door open, the president has said multiple times that he’s willing to reconsider our engagement in the Paris agreement if we can find a fairer deal that works for American businesses, taxpayers, consumers, so yeah it’s up to the president.”
Trump has never repudiated his view that man-made climate change is a hoax,although the White House has since said he “believes the climate is changing” without elaborating on the cause. But the lack of engagement from his negotiating team suggests he has little interest in reaching a better deal to limit global greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. panel is not expected to discuss ways to reach the Paris agreement goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid a 2 degrees Celsius rise above pre-industrial levels, which scientists say would be a dangerous tipping point.
“The president believes that we can reduce our emissions while growing our economy,” the White House official said.
Climate activists were mulling protest actions ahead of the Monday night forum, while fearing the event would only further cast a shadow over the United States’ role in the conference.
“It’s what you expect when we have fossil fuel billionaires running our government,” said Garrett Blad, executive director of the SustainUS, a youth advocacy group. “I think it’s irresponsible and dangerous, and I think the American people know that and are on our side.”
Former Vice President Al Gore said he expected the forum would do little to alter dynamics of the conference.
“I think that people will see it for what it is,” he said in an interview. “The president has surrounded himself with some of the most notorious climate deniers, and people who come to these meeting know who these characters are, and I think they see it for what it is.”
The White House official said he didn’t expect other countries to ask what kind of deal the president is looking for, adding that the United Nations conference “is really not the place for that to happen,” and that the conversation would be more likely to occur between world leaders. Trump returns Tuesday from a 12-day trip to Asia, which included meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other heads of state. He did not mention climate change once while abroad.
The Trump administration is rolling back President Barack Obama’s climate efforts and also trying to boost coal-fired power--a major driver of rising temperatures that are making seas swell and extreme weather intensify.
Despite Trump’s stance, a delegation of career officials from the State Department is on site at the United Nations conference to represent U.S. interests as countries negotiate how they will achieve and verify their commitments to curb emissions.
In the discussion Monday, George David Banks, special assistant to President Trump on energy and environment, will make introductory remarks. Francis Brooke, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, will moderate the talk among executives from the liquefied natural gas company Tellurian, the coal company Peabody Energy and the nuclear power company NuScale, as well as Barry Worthington, director of the U.S. Energy Association.
The panel will outline ways U.S. could encourage developing countries to build “cleaner, more efficient,” fossil fuel plants to mitigate climate change, the White House source told reporters last week.
Worthington told Climate Home News that striking fossil fuel trade deals was a major objective of the discussion.
“The flavor du jour is LNG but we’re also exporting crude oil and derivative products and continue to export a sizeable volume of coal,” he told the outlet.
The White House source said climate mitigation is a “lesser priority” than energy security and economic development, “but it’s still a priority.”
Without U.S. involvement, “the Chinese will build the coal plants and use inefficient technology,” the official said.
“Quite frankly, if we don’t bring it up and want to engage people on it, it’s just not going to happen,” he said. “It’s burying your head in the sand if you don’t have a conversation, just simply because of the facts, again because of the role coal is going to play in the energy mix…because of the role that natural gas is going to play.”
The official cited International Energy Agency projections that natural gas demand will grow 50 percent and coal demand will increase by 2040, especially in South and Southeast Asia. And he pointed to reports that at least 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to the environmental group Urgewald. Chinese companies are reportedly planning many of them, but the Chinese government in January canceled plans for 103 plants.
As part of the Paris agreement, China pledged to begin shrinking total emissions by 2030. Trump has said it’s unfair that China would be able to keep increasing its carbon output in the meantime, although the U.S. over time has contributed more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than any other nation and China’s economy was slower to begin growing.
The White House official did not explain how the U.S. would seek to push of more efficient coal plants abroad, but he said the conversation in Bonn Monday would cover “high efficiency, low emissions coal, but then also the more advanced technologies that either improve efficiency, or the carbon capture and utilization pieces.”
Trump on his trip to Asia last week unveiled a slate of deals with China, but none were to promote more efficient coal-fired power plants. One is for sales and rentals of Caterpillar mining equipment to China’s largest coal mining company and another is a joint venture between a U.S. industrial gases company and state-owned Chinese firm to build a coal-to-syngas facility, according to Bloomberg. Trump’s travels focused far more on promoting the export of U.S. liquefied natural gas.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2017/11/white-house-to-push-the-cleanest-coal-plants-at-climate-talks-164899
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States, Greens Slam EPA's Latest Ozone Move
Nov 13, 2017 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
U.S. EPA is continuing to sidestep Clean Air Act compliance responsibilities for its 2015 ground-level ozone standard, a coalition of Democratic-led states and environmental groups charged in asking a court to keep previously filed legal challenges alive.
In a rule signed Monday, the agency declared some 2,650 counties in attainment for the 70-parts-per-billion standard but made no nonattainment designations for out-of-compliance areas, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) wrote in a filing yesterday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Those nonattainment designations, which were legally due Oct. 1 and could cover several hundred other counties, "trigger steps to achieve meaningful reductions in ozone levels," Schneiderman wrote.
"EPA has failed to offer any substantive defense of the deadline extension," he added, while the public is "indefinitely denied the benefits" of the 2015 standard, which EPA adopted after determining that the previous 75 ppb limit wasn't strict enough to adequately protect public health (Greenwire, Nov. 7).
Schneiderman is leading a group of 14 other states and the District of Columbia that sued in July after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt initially sought to impose a blanket one-year extension that would have pushed back the deadline for both the attainment and nonattainment designations until October 2018. Pruitt called off that extension in August; the agency is now trying to get both Schneiderman's suit and a separate legal challenge by the American Lung Association and other public health and environmental groups thrown out as moot.
But because the agency's failure to make the nonattainment designations — or say when it plans to do so — amounts to the "same concrete result," the court should at least keep the litigation in abeyance until all designations are completed, the lung association and other organizations said in a separate motion yesterday.
Ozone, the main ingredient in smog, is a lung irritant linked to childhood asthma attacks and worsened breathing problems for people with emphysema and other chronic respiratory diseases.
Pruitt has offered no legal justification for missing the Oct. 1 deadline to make the nonattainment decisions but said in a Monday press release that they will now be handled on a case-by-case basis and suggested the agency isn't in any hurry.
"The ozone designation process is complex and requires ongoing and extensive conversations with state and local agencies," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2017/11/09/stories/1060066201
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Wehrum Could Revert To EPA NAAQS Process With Earlier Political Input
Nov 13, 2017 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker
Newly confirmed EPA Office of Air & Radiation (OAR) chief William Wehrum could now undo an Obama-era policy memo on ambient air standard reviews and reinstate a process from Wehrum's prior tenure at EPA during the George W. Bush administration that gave political leadership more control earlier in the reviews, sources say.
The Senate on Nov. 9 in a 49-47 vote confirmed Wehrum to be air chief, and as head of OAR he is expected to play a major role in implementing the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda for Clean Air Act rules. Among his priorities will be repeal of the Clean Power Plan greenhouse gas standards for existing power plants, reconsidering first-time limits on the GHG methane from new oil and gas drilling, and new source review streamlining.
Wehrum will also be EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's main contact in the air office for the agency's ongoing review of the Obama-era decision to tighten the ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) from the 2008 limit of 75 parts per billion (ppb) down to 70 ppb -- and potentially other changes to the NAAQS process.
For example, he might try to reinstate a policy memo that elevates the agency political leadership's role in NAAQS reviews earlier in the process, which critics have previously said slows down the assessments.
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to review and if necessary revise NAAQS every five years for the six “criteria” pollutants -- ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. In practice, the agency has struggled to stick to this timetable, often completing reviews years behind schedule.
Industry groups and GOP critics of EPA have argued that the NAAQS review cycle is too short, and tends to drive unreasonably tough limits by requiring the agency to be in a constant cycle of assessing whether to tighten the standards. To remedy this purported shortcoming, the House this year approved a bill, H.R. 806, which would among other things extend the review cycle from five to 10 years.
Many of the same critics have also faulted EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), which advises EPA on how to set the NAAQS, for having an apparent bias toward tougher regulation. CASAC, along with the agency's broader Science Advisory Board, now faces an extensive membership shakeup that will see some panelists leave, to be replaced by others that environmentalists and Democrats say will bring pro-industry bias with them that is likely to favor maintaining or weakening the various NAAQS.
Under a policy set out by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, CASAC members may no longer receive EPA grant funding for their research, and the panel's membership should represent different geographical regions -- which in effect means recruiting more Southern and Midwestern members. Pruitt further wants the membership to turn over more often. Currently, CASAC members serve three-year terms, but some have served more than once.
While the membership changes will alter the composition of CASAC, possibly making the body more reluctant to back tighter NAAQS, Wehrum's experience as acting head of the Bush EPA also points toward a possible shift in the NAAQS review process he could reinstate that would involve senior management in the process earlier.
Wehrum did not respond to a request for comment.
NAAQS Process
The current administration, with its explicit deregulatory agenda, is not expected to issue tougher NAAQS. However, a change in the review process might also further militate against tougher standards, sources say.
During the Bush administration, Wehrum and then-EPA Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock in a series of policy memos shifted the review process to involve input of political leadership earlier, by substituting an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” (ANPR) for the agency staff's traditional “policy assessment” document.
The ANPR expresses the views of agency leadership, rather than staff, and invites stakeholder input as a precursor step to a formal proposal.
Wehrum and Peacock justified the shift in part as an effort to speed up NAAQS reviews, but their critics say it had the opposite effect, further delaying the already slow proceedings.
This change provoked concern among CASAC members over the integrity of the scientific review and independence of EPA staff's positions that would ordinarily be presented in the policy assessment.
Lisa Jackson, President Barack Obama's first EPA administrator, reversed this aspect of Wehrum's policy shift in a memo of her own. In a May 21, 2009, memo to senior EPA managers, Jackson wrote, “One change announced in the former Deputy Administrator's memoranda that has raised strong concerns is the replacement of the policy assessment document, generally referred to as a Staff Paper, with an advance notice of proposed rulemaking issued after completion of the Agency's scientific and risk/exposure assessments.
“I believe this step has complicated and delayed the NAAQS development process and made it vulnerable to the introduction of policy options that are not supported by the relevant scientific information. We must address these concerns by reinstating the use of a policy assessment document which presents a transparent staff analysis of policy options for senior management to consider prior to rulemaking,” Jackson said. Jackson noted, however, that the public may also comment on policy assessment documents.
If Wehrum undoes the Jackson policy, and again strives for an ANPR instead of a policy assessment, the Trump administration's critics may therefore argue that the agency is politicizing the scientific review, or injecting industry influence too early in the process, where implementation costs concerns may affect the outcome of a review.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/wehrum-could-revert-epa-naaqs-process-earlier-political-input
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20 States, 50 Cities Sign Pledge To Abide By Paris Agreement Even If US Withdraws
Nov 11, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Max Greenwood
A coalition of U.S. cities, states, companies and universities said on Saturday that they still plan on meeting the commitments of the Paris climate accord, despite President Trump's announcement earlier this year that the U.S. would withdraw from the deal.
"It is important for the world to know, the American government may have pulled out of the Paris agreement, but the American people are committed to its goals, and there is nothing Washington can do to stop us," former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a climate conference in Bonn, Germany, according to The Associated Press.
The group, called America's Pledge, said that many states, cities and private entities in the U.S. would continue to pursue efforts to reduce carbon emissions, including promoting renewable sources of energy.
The group consists of 20 U.S. states and more than 50 major cities.
But in a report released by America's Pledge, the group acknowledged that any effort to meet the Paris accord's carbon-reduction commitments by 2025 would require some level of federal action.
"[W]e cannot underscore strongly enough the critical nature of federal engagement to achieve the deep decarbonization goals the U.S. must undertake after 2025," the report reads.
Trump announced in June that the U.S. would pull out of the 195-nation climate agreement as soon as it is able to, saying that the accord was "unfair" to the U.S. and would ultimately hurt American business interests, while allowing developing countries, like India, to continue to rely on fossil fuels.
At the time of that announcement, only one other country, Syria, had not joined the pact. That changed this week when Syria said during the climate conference in Germany that it would sign onto the deal.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/359910-20-states-50-cities-sign-pledge-to-abide-by-paris-agreement-even-if
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