Preview Newsletter
PM ACC 12/4
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemistry Production Grows During October - ACC
Dec 4, 2017 | ICIS
By David Haydon
With the effects from hurricanes well behind the chemical industry, global chemical production rose by 0.4% in October from September, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said on Monday in its latest Global Chemical Production Regional Index (Global CPRI). -
(ACC Mentioned) Wrap Recycling Action Program Expands to Omaha, Nebraska
Dec 4, 2017 | Recycling Today
The Flexible Film Recycling Group (FFRG) of the Washington-based American Chemistry Council (ACC) joined partners in Omaha, Nebraska, during the first weekend in December to launch a new campaign designed to increase recycling of plastic wraps and bags in the city. -
Trump Promised 'Best People' Would Run Government — They Upended It
Dec 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John O'Grady
Who is running our government? It is true that the presidential transition is a difficult process. -
U.N. Summit Eyes Zero Tolerance Plan for Plastic Waste
Dec 4, 2017 | BBC (In E&E Greenwire)
By Roger Harrabin
Governments at a United Nations environment summit are considering a zero tolerance plan for plastic pollution in oceans. -
Green Alliance Urges UK Government to Stick to REACH
Dec 4, 2017 | Chemical Watch
During Brexit talks, the UK should negotiate full access to REACH and maintain waste regulations, definitions and principles, a report by UK thinktank Green Alliance says. -
Producers' Deal Could Help U.S. Shale Industry
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
OPEC's decision to extend its production cuts will stabilize oil prices for the foreseeable future but could give U.S. shale drillers an opportunity to recover, analysts said. -
Bill Introduced to Reform Arcane PURPA Law
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Congress took the first step toward reshaping a nearly 40-year-old law last week with the introduction of a House bill that would affect how certain smaller players in the electricity industry behave and make their money. -
Appalachia Still Driving Most U.S. NatGas Growth, Says EIA
Dec 4, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Natural gas production in the Appalachian Basin has increased by more than 14 Bcf/d since 2012, helping to drive an overall increase in U.S. volumes, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a note on Monday. -
Alaska Native Communities Clash Over ANWR Bill
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
A decades long clash of cultures among Alaska's Native communities is coming to a head this week as Congress takes final steps to allow oil and gas development in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. -
Judge Orders Monitoring, Audit of Dakota Access Pipeline
Dec 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A federal judge on Monday imposed a series of conditions on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is currently transporting oil while undergoing a court-ordered environmental review. -
Supreme Court Keeps Liability Test Untouched
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A bid by New York property owners to hold their former tenants liable for cleanup costs under the nation's hazardous waste law dead-ended today at the Supreme Court. -
Government Seeks Scientists' Doubts for Climate Court Battle
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Justice Department lawyers are quietly courting climate scientists for a simmering legal fight that could have massive implications for government global warming policies. -
Pruitt on Climate Science: 'I Have a Whole Plan'
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
U.S. EPA's transition team had planned a much harder attack on the agency's ability to address climate change, according to a former member.
Industry and Association News
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(ACC Mentioned) Global Chemistry Production Grows During October - ACC
Dec 4, 2017 | ICIS
By David Haydon
With the effects from hurricanes well behind the chemical industry, global chemical production rose by 0.4% in October from September, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said on Monday in its latest Global Chemical Production Regional Index (Global CPRI).
October production gains were broad-based, the ACC noted.
Year over year, the global CPRI was up by 2.7% on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis.
Though chemical production in North America improved overall, the rise in production reflected a rebound from the effects of Hurricane Harvey in the US. The ACC noted that for Canada and Mexico, chemical production slipped during October.
In Latin America, the ACC said chemical industry output in October increased by 0.3% month on month.
The ACC said that for Western Europe, chemical production rose by 0.4% month on month in October. Chemical production in the Asia-Pacific region also increased 0.4% in October, the ACC said, despite weakness in China.
The Global CPRI measures the production volume of the business of chemistry for 33 key nations, sub-regions, and regions, all aggregated to the world total. The index is comparable to the Federal Reserve Board production indices, the group said.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2017/12/04/10170872/global-chemistry-production-grows-during-october-acc/
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(ACC Mentioned) Wrap Recycling Action Program Expands to Omaha, Nebraska
Dec 4, 2017 | Recycling Today
The Flexible Film Recycling Group (FFRG) of the Washington-based American Chemistry Council (ACC) joined partners in Omaha, Nebraska, during the first weekend in December to launch a new campaign designed to increase recycling of plastic wraps and bags in the city. Representatives from the FFRG, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and First Star Recycling material recovery facility (MRF) were on-site at four Hy-Vee grocery stores to educate consumers about the campaign and encourage them to recycle plastic wraps and bags at participating retail and grocery stores.
The Omaha campaign is part of the Wrap Recycling Action Program (WRAP), a public-private partnership that promotes plastic wrap and bag recycling.
Consumers in Omaha and across the nation can recycle clean and dry plastic bags, such grocery bags, produce bags, bread bags, dry cleaning bags, newspaper bags and food storage bags (even sealable food bags and bags with zippers); plastic wraps from beverage cases, diapers, bathroom tissue and paper towels; bubble wrap and shipping pillows. Any thin, flexible plastic wrap labeled with a No. 2, No. 4, or the How2Recycle store drop-off label can be recycled more than 18,000 retail locations in the U.S.
The WRAP launch in Omaha coincided with a promotional event for the Hefty Energy Bag Program, which the city has participated in for more than a year. The Energy Bag Program allows consumers to separate nonrecyclable plastics from their garbage. The separated plastics are collected at MRFs and converted into fuel. Omaha’s WRAP campaign and Energy Bag Program will help the city to divert more plastics from landfill, the ACC says.
“We’re thrilled to work with our partners in Omaha to educate consumers about recycling plastic wraps and bags,” says Shari Jackson, director of film recycling for ACC. “Omaha residents can play an important role in keeping these items out of landfill by bringing their plastic wraps and bags to a Hy-Vee grocery store or other participating retailer for recycling.”
She adds, “Recycling plastic wraps and bags at retail drop-off locations instead of through curbside collection programs helps ensure that this material does not damage equipment at the local MRF. Moreover, recycling plastic wraps and bags at grocery and retail locations helps keep the material clean and dry, which is critical to maintaining quality for recycling.”
National WRAP partners include the FFRG, the U.S. EPA, GreenBlue/the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, the Association of Plastics Recyclers, brand companies, retailers, states, cities and others.
These bags and wraps are recycled into products such as lumber for backyard decks, fences and benches and new bags and packaging.
http://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/retail-platic-bag-wrap-recycling-omaha-nebraska/
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Trump Promised 'Best People' Would Run Government — They Upended It
Dec 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By John O'Grady
Who is running our government? It is true that the presidential transition is a difficult process. There are upward of 4,000 positions to be filled by presidential appointment. However, of 614 key positions in the Trump administration requiring Senate confirmation, only 203 have been confirmed by the Senate, 150 have been formally nominated, 10 are still awaiting nomination, and 251 positions have no nominee. According to Max Stier, the CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, the Trump administration is lagging behind almost every modern-day president.
Trump’s failure to move his nominees through the confirmation process has real world implications. The nominee for EPA’s top law enforcer, the head of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Susan Bodine, still has not been confirmed. EPA’s normal process of catching and punishing polluters has been disrupted for an entire year. Instead, cases are piling up, and EPA is unable to move quickly to protect public health.
On the other side of the spectrum, Trump’s nominees are often so odious and unsuited for their positions that they have difficulty earning Senate confirmation. Michael Dourson, the nominee to head EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, is another case in point. Thought to be a shill for the chemical industry, he was involved in setting a West Virginia standard for PFOA that was at least a thousand times higher than EPA’s current safety level. The Senate has yet to find that he is worthy of protecting the American people from chemical contamination.
This is particularly troubling given Mr. Trump’s penchant for recruiting the “best people” for his administration and picking fights on Twitter using polarizing and outlandish declarations himself that push the boundaries of human decency.
Private citizens and elected officials alike are asking whether Mr. Trump is fit to perform the responsibilities of the Office of President of the United States. Certainly, recent news reports that the Republican leadership in the House and Senate are weighing their options.
Fortunately, there is a modicum of hope in the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution (adopted on Feb. 16, 1967). Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows a majority of the president’s cabinet to declare in writing to the president pro tempore of the Senate (Utah's archconservative Sen. Orrin Hatch) and the Speaker of the House of Representatives (Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin), that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Congress would then have to assemble and determine by a two-thirds vote of both chambers that the President is unfit to serve.
However, look at the president’s Cabinet. It is alarming that hostile zealots occupy vital positions, and many among them counteract the intended values of their agency. That includes Scott Pruitt at EPA, Ryan Zinke at Interior, Rick Perry at Energy, Sonny Purdue at Agriculture, Betsy DeVos at Education, Ben Carson at HUD. The list goes on as each ideolog would redefine an antithetical purpose of their confirmation.
Pruitt and Zinke have been particularly adept at upending what their respective agencies stand for. Pruitt consistently, and spectacularly, disregards the scientific advice of EPA career scientists, preferring the advice of polluting industries in “protecting” the environment.
Zinke is expected to accompany Trump to the Bears Ears and Grand Escalante-Staircase National Monuments this week, to drastically reduce their size and scope so the American people have less, not more, natural land under protection from development. It’s hard to see how cabinet officers who do not honor the mission of their own departments would honor their commitment to the Constitution under the 25th Amendment.
Even when they are confirmed, Trump’s nominees have trouble complying with the simple ethical rules that would allow them to stay in office and serve the American people. Tom Price served less than eight months in office because he implicated ethical rules by flying on pricy private planes for government travel. Pruitt and Zinke have also come under fire for using private planes at exorbitant cost on the public dime. Pruitt has been investigated for lying under oath to Congress and violating the Hatch Act, leading one to wonder how these could be “the best people.”
John O’Grady is president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National Council of EPA Locals #238 representing over 9,000 bargaining unit employees at the U.S. EPA nationwide.
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/363058-trump-promised-the-best-people-would-run-the-government-theyve
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U.N. Summit Eyes Zero Tolerance Plan for Plastic Waste
Dec 4, 2017 | BBC (In E&E Greenwire)
By Roger Harrabin
Governments at a United Nations environment summit are considering a zero tolerance plan for plastic pollution in oceans.
Currently, ships are prohibited from throwing plastic waste overboard. However, there is no international law that bans plastics entering the sea from land.
Delegates preparing for the environmental meeting this week in Nairobi are said to be in agreement that tougher action is needed to fight the plastic crisis.
The United States has volunteered to take part in exploring the options.
Some say that the effort could mirror the Paris climate agreement model, in which nations volunteer for legally binding goals.
"Plastic flows are huge and damaging; they flow across borders. We absolutely have to stop allowing plastics into the ocean — and this meeting looks like it could prove a very important start," said Eirik Lindebjerg of the World Wildlife Fund (Roger Harrabin, BBC News, Dec. 1). — CS
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067987
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Green Alliance Urges UK Government to Stick to REACH
Dec 4, 2017 | Chemical Watch
During Brexit talks, the UK should negotiate full access to REACH and maintain waste regulations, definitions and principles, a report by UK thinktank Green Alliance says.
The report was produced for the Circular Economy Task Force, a UK business group which includes home improvement company Kingfisher and pharmacy chain Boots.
Attempting to create a UK equivalent to REACH would be "enormously expensive and time consuming", the report says, and adds that some believe "it will be impossible" as a single country cannot replicate its scope and expertise.
Leaving REACH while copying its rules could make the UK vulnerable to legal challenges from businesses wanting to use potentially dangerous chemicals, it says. Maintaining REACH and accepting the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in this area "is necessary to keep the same levels of protection from chemicals in the UK," the report says.
The report outlines two critical challenges it says the UK’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will have to manage effectively over the next two years to achieve a good post-Brexit outcome for resources policy.
The first is managing divergence from existing EU waste and resource governance. Differing environmental standards create ‘non-tariff barriers’ that harm trading arrangements, it says. Retaining or recreating EU institutions to ensure adherence to chemicals, waste, recycling and products legislation will guarantee "sufficient equivalence" so the UK can continue trading freely with the EU.
The second challenge is creating new policy. "Failing to update and improve legislation once it is transposed risks opening an unpopular and environmentally harmful domestic policy gap after March 2019," the report says. The UK should therefore focus its efforts on enhancing resource efficiency and productivity "to suit the UK’s particular circumstances", the report says.
In October, the Greener UK Unit at Green Alliance launched a Brexit risk tracker, which concluded the British chemical industry is at a "high level" of risk from the country's departure from the EU.
https://chemicalwatch.com/62261/green-alliance-urges-uk-government-to-stick-to-reach
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Producers' Deal Could Help U.S. Shale Industry
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
OPEC's decision to extend its production cuts will stabilize oil prices for the foreseeable future but could give U.S. shale drillers an opportunity to recover, analysts said.
The 14 members of OPEC, which began cutting production in 2016 to prop up crude prices, agreed at a meeting Thursday to extend the cooperative effort until the end of 2018. Russia, which is not an OPEC member and had been viewed as a wild card going into the meeting, agreed to continue holding down its production and two other countries, Libya and Nigeria, agreed to maintain their output at current levels.
Together, the countries are trimming 1.8 million barrels a day off their combined production.
The cuts have helped the price of Brent crude, the international standard, recover after it plummeted from $100 a barrel to less than $30 in 2014 and 2015 and lowered a glut in global supply. Brent was trading at a little over $63 a barrel Friday. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was above $58 a barrel.
But OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, is essentially gambling that its partners will continue to comply with the agreement that rising demand will help reduce the stocks of oil held in storage around the world and that U.S. shale producers won't increase their drilling.
None of those factors is guaranteed.
"The longer output cuts last, the more likely compliance is to deteriorate," analysts at Capital Economics wrote in a note published Friday. "As a result, even with the extension, the market will probably still be in a small surplus in 2018."
Saudi Arabia's oil minister said shale production will stay about the same in 2018 as in 2017, but that may not be the case, according to analysts Damien Courvalin and Jeffrey Currie at Goldman Sachs.
"We estimate instead that shale production is fast accelerating," the analysts wrote in a note.
That was confirmed last week when U.S. Energy Department data showed that domestic oil production rose to 9.48 million barrels a day in September — a faster-than-expected increase that occurred even though Hurricane Harvey struck oil-producing regions in Texas the month before.
Onshore oil producers in the U.S. added two new drilling rigs in the last week, for a total of 749, according to data from Baker Hughes. That's up from 477 in the same week a year ago.
Analysts are now watching for details on how OPEC will unwind the production cuts. If all the members begin pumping at their previous levels, they could cause a glut and push the price of crude back down.
However, the OPEC oil ministers have said they support a gradual increase in production, and some of the members are seeing their output fall because of natural decline in their oil fields.
"An abrupt rise in production is unlikely to follow the end of the deal," UBS analyst Jon Rigby wrote in a note.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067939
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Bill Introduced to Reform Arcane PURPA Law
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Congress took the first step toward reshaping a nearly 40-year-old law last week with the introduction of a House bill that would affect how certain smaller players in the electricity industry behave and make their money.
The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) was enacted in 1978 partially in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo and ensuing skyrocketing oil prices.
The law aimed to encourage conservation, more reliance on domestic energy sources and, in particular, developing renewable energy technologies.
A longstanding debate over the law's usefulness in a very different energy era has pitted utilities and their customers against an array of interests representing industrial co-generators, independent power producers, and solar and wind developers.
A controversial aspect of the law is a provision allowing developers to build small power projects, known as qualifying facilities (QFs), without the consent of the utility or regulator in a given state. Then the utility has to enter into a long-term contract to buy that power whether it is needed or not, and those costs are borne by the utility's customers.
"Energy markets have changed significantly over the last 40 years, and many challenges of that era no longer exist," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.).
His "PURPA Modernization Act of 2017," H.R. 4476, would lower the threshold requiring utilities to enter into contracts with small power producers (SPP) and enable state utility regulators to waive a utility's mandatory purchase obligation if the SPP has access to a competitive power market or if the electricity is not needed to meet utility customers' needs.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing in September on possible reforms to PURPA (Energywire, Sept. 7).
"PURPA is an outdated policy that is causing our customers to pay around 30-50% over market value for energy provided by qualifying facilities," said Patti Poppe, president and CEO of Michigan's Consumers Energy.
"In fact, over 10 years, Consumers Energy customers subsidized PURPA facilities to the tune of $300 million above market price," she said.
In early November, Walberg led a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee in asking federal regulators to amend rules governing small power producers to prevent project developers from "gaming" PURPA's intent and driving up consumer costs for electricity (Energywire, Nov. 3).
They asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to revisit its regulations governing PURPA.
FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee has said that "major reforms for PURPA need to come from Congress."
But "in the absence of major statutory changes coming from Congress, there are still some productive things [FERC] can do to better align PURPA with modern-day realities," he said.
"From my vantage point, we need to look at what we can do within our own purview," Chatterjee said.
Renewable energy advocates worry that the bill, if enacted, could amount to another blow to wind and solar after the House-passed tax bill partially or entirely eliminates tax incentives for their development (E&E Daily, Dec. 4).
Chief concerns for the renewables industries with Walberg's bill are that it would greatly restrict the size of projects that are deemed to have nondiscriminatory access to transmission and tilt the balance in favor of utilities. That would undermine one of the key intentions of PURPA, which was to give renewables the ability to interconnect to the grid and get a contract from the utility without waiting for the utility to offer one.
"Conditions today definitely warrant review of PURPA to ensure that the statute is being implemented as the pro-competition legislation it was originally intended to be, but this legislation is not the right vehicle," said Christopher Mansour, vice president for federal affairs, at the Solar Energy Industries Association.
"Thanks to falling prices for renewables and natural gas generation, customers are paying less for electricity than ever before. We hope Congress allows that consumer-friendly progress to continue," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067947
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Appalachia Still Driving Most U.S. NatGas Growth, Says EIA
Dec 4, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Natural gas production in the Appalachian Basin has increased by more than 14 Bcf/d since 2012, helping to drive an overall increase in U.S. volumes, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a note on Monday.
According to the agency’s Drilling Productivity Report(DPR), Appalachian production primarily from the Marcellus and Utica shales grew from 7.8 Bcf/d five years ago to 22.1 Bcf/d in 2016. The basin produced 23.8 Bcf/d this year, according to EIA data through October.
The average monthly natural gas production per rig for new wells in Appalachia has increased by 10.8 MMcf/d since January 2012. The EIA attributed the sharp increases to efficiency improvements in horizontal drilling and completion techniques in the region, including faster drilling, longer laterals, better technology and improved well targeting.
In West Virginia, for example, EIA said the average lateral length per well rose from 2,500 feet in 2007 to more than 7,000 feet in 2016. More recently, some operators have recorded lateral lengths as long as 15,000 feet in Appalachia and more than 19,000 feet in the Utica Shale. The time it takes to complete a well, EIA added, decreased from about 30 days in 2011 to seven days in 2015.
As of November, EIA said 1,800 wells have been drilled in the Utica, and more than 11,300 wells have been drilled in the Marcellus.
The EIA expects U.S. dry natural gas production to average 73.4 Bcf/d this year, a 0.6 Bcf/d increase from 2016, when dry gas production fell for the first time since 2005. Natural gas production in 2018 is forecast to be 5.5 Bcf/d higher than this year’s level, according to the agency’s latest Short-Term Energy Outlook.
In its latest DPR, EIA said it expects natural gas and oil production from the nation’s seven most prolific onshore unconventional plays to increase by an estimated 1.3% this month compared to last, which would mark the 12th straight increase.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112624-eia-says-appalachia-continues-driving-us-natgas-growth
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Alaska Native Communities Clash Over ANWR Bill
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
A decades long clash of cultures among Alaska's Native communities is coming to a head this week as Congress takes final steps to allow oil and gas development in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
For years, the Gwich'in Steering Committee and the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. have locked horns over the fate of an isolated, expansive, flat stretch of tundra along the Arctic Ocean in northeastern Alaska known as the coastal plain.
The Gwich'in people refer to that 1.5-million-acre region as "the place where life begins" and introduce themselves as the "caribou people." They honor the coastal plain as a sacred calving area for the Porcupine caribou herd, which they rely on for 80 percent of their diet.
"We must protect the calving grounds," explained Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee. "That place is untouched, unspoiled. These lands, these animals — this is a gift from the Creator. And anybody who thinks that oil or money is more important, I don't understand."
The Porcupine caribou herd, which the Fish and Wildlife Service estimates at 197,000 animals, migrates 700 miles each year from ANWR's coastal plain, through much of the wildlife refuge and into Canada.
Over the centuries, the Gwich'in set up their villages along the migratory route. Today the Gwich'in Steering Committee represents about 9,000 people and 15 small villages scattered across northeastern Alaska and western Canada.
Since the 1980s, the steering committee has worked closely with powerful, well-funded national environmental groups to rally public opposition to oil drilling on those lands. That alliance has blocked repeated attempts to permit oil rigs on the coastal plain.
But this year, the political stars aligned for the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., which has been lobbying shoulder to shoulder with state and oil industry leaders to allow drilling in ANWR's coastal plain.
The pro-oil forces are focused on the whopping 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil that the U.S. Geological Survey estimates could be located in the region.
ASRC is one of 12 regional corporations that Congress created in 1971 to resolve conflicting land claims between the state of Alaska and its indigenous residents. In passing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, lawmakers granted ASRC nearly 5 million acres of land that covers a broad region stretching from the Chukchi Sea to the Canadian border.
The Native corporation's territory engulfs most of the Arctic refuge, including the much-disputed coastal plain.
ASRC is a private, for-profit regional corporation that represents the business interests of its 13,000 Iñupiat shareholders and eight northern Alaska Native villages. Last year, the corporation earned $2.4 billion through six lines of business, including a variety of petroleum services.
In the hours before the Senate voted to allow leasing in part of the Arctic refuge, ASRC Executive Vice President Richard Glenn explained that oil development on the Alaska coastal plain is essential to maintaining the quality of life for the North Slope villages.
"The only way to create huge quality-of-life improvements is by the presence of the oil and gas industry in our region," Glenn said. "The industry provides a tax base. The tax base provides opportunities for community development. I'm talking about schools and fire engines and snow removal and water, sewer and reliable power."
He took issue with the Gwich'in's claims that oil drilling would devastate the Porcupine caribou herd. "At some point, there may be development," noted Glenn, who heads the lands and natural resource division at ASRC. "And development is going to have a footprint. And the footprint of development will be such a small fraction of the overall proportion of the coastal plain that it's negligible."
Arguing that extensive oil and gas development in the Prudhoe Bay region has not affected Alaska's central caribou herd, he said, "The looming disaster for the caribou herd and its calving areas is not accurate."Land-swap deal at heart of drilling battle
At the heart of today's battle over oil drilling in ANWR is a shrewd land swap deal that the Native corporation negotiated with the Interior Department 30 years ago.
The land exchange gave ASRC the subsurface mineral rights to 92,000 acres of the Alaska refuge's coastal plain land. The Kaktovik Iñupiat Corp. (KIC) owns the surface rights to those lands. KIC, which works closely with ASRC, is a for-profit corporation that handles land development issues for the residents of Kaktovik.
That community, located on the Beaufort Sea coast, is the only city located in ANWR's coastal plain.
By law, the ASRC-Interior land swap properties couldn't be drilled without congressional approval. But all that would change as a result of the $1.5 trillion tax legislation approved early Saturday morning by the Senate. House lawmakers and President Trump are also expected to sign off on the ANWR language in the tax bill.
The massive tax package includes language opening the door to hydrocarbon development in ANWR's coastal plain, with the promise that oil and gas leasing will raise nearly $1.1 billion for the federal Treasury over the next 10 years.
Once the tax bill becomes law, ASRC can immediately sell leases to its coastal plain lands or begin its own exploration and development projects, subject to state and federal technical and environmental mandates.
The Interior Department will be following a far longer timeline. Regulators won't be able to auction off leases on the federally owned coastal plain lands until they assess the environmental impacts of drilling and begin the long process of managing the area for energy development.
Meanwhile, there's some evidence that ASRC may have already sold leases on its Arctic refuge lands to oil interests.
In 1986, ASRC joined forces with KIC, Chevron Corp. and several other oil companies to drill an exploration well on the coastal plain. The well, located 15 miles southeast of the city of Kaktovik, is the only hole ever drilled in ANWR.
Ever since then, the results of that drilling operation — known as the KIC-1 well — have remained one of Alaska's most closely held secrets. Only a handful of executives at BP PLC, Chevron and the Native corporations are privy to that information, along with a select few state officials.
The details of the ASRC-Interior land swap were laid out in a 1989 report from the Government Accountability Office. That study reported that ASRC had "received $30 million from its oil company partners for the exclusive right to conduct exploratory activities and to acquire oil and gas leases" on the Native corporation's refuge lands.
Glenn declined to comment about ASRC's private agreements with industry.
The ASRC-Interior Department land deal, known as the Chandler Lake land exchange, also gives the Native corporation exclusive rights to all revenues from development of its 92,000 acres of Arctic refuge lands.
That's a stark departure from terms of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which requires Alaska's 12 Native corporations to share 70 percent of the revenues that each individual corporation derives from any subsurface estate.
However, the exchange was specifically structured to absolve ASRC from having to share the money it receives from its ANWR lands with the other regional corporations.
In retrospect, the GAO report observed that the land swap "was not in the government's best interest" in part because it allows ASRC to retain the exclusive rights to the KIC-1 test well data.
"As a result, [ASRC] and its oil company partners are now in a superior position to all other potentially interested parties, including the federal government, in assessing the oil and gas potential of ANWR," the report said.ANWR tug of war
Late last week, the Gwich'in Steering Committee and other Alaska opponents of oil development in the Arctic refuge held a prayer service and a candlelight vigil in downtown Fairbanks to protest the ANWR provisions in the Senate tax bill.
Now, as the future of the wildlife refuge takes a dramatic turn toward oil development, Demientieff and a small group of Gwich'in and Iñupiat activists are flying to Washington for Wednesday's 57th anniversary of the Arctic refuge.
"We will continue to defend our homelands," Demientieff said in an email after the Senate vote.
The wildlife refuge, originally established by President Eisenhower as the Arctic National Wildlife Range, has always been the subject of a tug of war between oil interests and those who want to preserve the land.
In 1980, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which vastly expanded the Arctic wildlife range and gave the region its current name. Today, ANWR covers roughly 19.6 million acres of land and water in northeastern Alaska — an area about the size of South Carolina.
But at the time, Congress left open the fate of the much-disputed coastal plain. One part of that law — Section 1002 — specifically set aside the 1.5-million-acre northern lands and directed the Interior Department to analyze the region's oil and gas potential and wildlife resources.
Under that provision, only Congress can authorize oil drilling on the coastal plain, which is often referred to as the 1002 area. Over the years, the Alaska congressional delegation has repeatedly advanced legislation to sanction oil and gas development. But each time, pro-oil forces hit a brick wall.
This year, the Alaska delegation has had its best shot in decades to begin energy development in the refuge's coastal plain.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) managed to use the budget reconciliation process to attach ANWR language to a massive tax package. As a result, the provision moved through the Senate by a simple majority vote without the threat of a Democratic filibuster.
Murkowski's ANWR title directs the Interior Department to hold two oil and gas lease sales in the 1002 area over the next 10 years. Each sale must offer at least 400,000 acres of coastal plain lands for development.
Under Murkowski's provisions, oil production facilities in the region would be limited to a total footprint of just 2,000 acres including the airstrips, gravel berms and pieces used to support pipelines. At a congressional hearing last month, Murkowski argued that thanks to advanced oil development technologies, the oil developers need far less land than they have in the past.
The Senate bill would give management of the coastal plain to the Bureau of Land Management, which is already handling oil and gas leasing in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. ANWR is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Former USGS Director Mark Myers observed that the oil companies will need to work cooperatively to keep their operational footprint to 2,000 acres. "It would be logical for the government to require a lot of technical cooperation between various parties that would have the leases," he said.
Myers, who also served as Alaska's natural resources commissioner, predicted that prospective industry developers will have to find large reservoirs of oil before they would be willing to invest in the ANWR lands.
"You need a substantial size accumulation for anchor production, just because you will have to build a significant amount of infrastructure over there," he said. "But once you build that infrastructure, you can see where the satellite fields are and you could expect further development within the environmental constraints that are put on development."
Meanwhile, final passage of the congressional tax package could launch a flurry of activity at the Arctic Slope Native corporation. ASRC's Glenn said the corporation won't make final plans until the ANWR provisions become law.
But he added: "It's typical [to have] active exploration and development ... if it becomes available for leasing, depending on the interest of industry. That's what happens all over America."
While the Gwich'in people and environmental activists debate the next step in their battle to stop resource development in the Arctic coastal plain, oil industry advocates are awaiting the results of future seismic studies to explain, at long last, how much oil is in the 1002 area.
Glenn noted, "If we remove the provisions that lock up the coastal plain right now, we'll be able to finally assess the value of the subsurface using modern tools. Until that point comes, it's like people arguing about the belongings inside of a closet when they don't even want to open the door."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067945
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Judge Orders Monitoring, Audit of Dakota Access Pipeline
Dec 4, 2017 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry
A federal judge on Monday imposed a series of conditions on the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is currently transporting oil while undergoing a court-ordered environmental review.
U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg ordered Dakota Access operators to coordinate an oil spill response plan with federal and tribal officials near Lake Oahe in North Dakota; conduct a third-party audit of the pipeline’s compliance with federal and state regulations; and produce bi-monthly reports on the pipeline’s operations.
Boasberg said the public has “an interest in ensuring the status quo at Lake Oahe is preserved” while the 1,170-mile, 570,000-barrel-per-day pipeline undergoes the new environmental review.
“The interim conditions …. are instead a means by which the court can ensure that it receives up-to-date and necessary information about the operation of the pipeline and the facts on the ground,” he wrote in an opinion issued Monday morning.
Boasberg previously ruled that the Dakota Access Pipeline, which began pumping oil in June, needs to go through a more thorough environmental review process, especially near Lake Oahe, which local tribes consider sacred.
He also ruled that the pipeline can continue transporting oil during that time, predicting there is a “significant likelihood” federal regulators will approve the project after that review moves forward.
Opponents of the pipeline, including the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, requested Boasberg impose conditions on the pipeline until regulators finalize that review. Federal officials expect that process to stretch into the spring.
Dakota Access argued the court doesn’t have the authority to impose those conditions, and said previous government approvals of the pipeline are sufficient to ensure its safety.
Boasberg disagreed, saying the new conditions are “means by which the court can gather information about the risks posed by the pipeline … and can ensure that the status quo is preserved for both sides.”
He specifically raised last month's Keystone pipeline oil spill in South Dakota, where the pipeline leaked 5,000 barrels of oil.
“Although the court is not suggesting that a similar leak is imminent at Lake Oahe, the fact remains that there is an inherent risk with any pipeline,” Boasberg concluded.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/363093-judge-orders-monitoring-audit-of-dakota-access-pipeline
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Supreme Court Keeps Liability Test Untouched
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
A bid by New York property owners to hold their former tenants liable for cleanup costs under the nation's hazardous waste law dead-ended today at the Supreme Court.
Justices issued an order declining to take up their petition appealing a decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The property owners had argued that the lower court had incorrectly thrown out their claims on the grounds that the former tenants were not owners under the waste law.
The Supreme Court's decision leaves in place a test for determining cleanup liability that involves looking at the property rights of both the tenants and owners.
At issue in the case was the cleanup of a spill of perchloroethylene, or PCE, at the site in Westbury, N.Y. At the time of the spill, sublessees had installed a commercial dry cleaner that used large quantities of the chemical. The chemical was released in 1976 when an employee committed arson and burned the site to the ground.
A decade after New York listed the site as an inactive hazardous waste area in 1988, developers Next Millennium Realty LLC and 101 Frost Street Associates LP purchased the property and entered into an agreement to clean it up.
After spending more than $10 million, the developers then turned around and sued the group of companies that leased and subleased the property at the time of the spill with the hope of recovering the costs under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, also known as the Superfund law.
They argued that the former tenants qualified as owners under CERCLA because they had exclusive control of the site when the incident occurred.
But the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled in favor of the former occupants. The 2nd Circuit upheld that ruling in May.
Both courts drew from a former 2nd Circuit decision that laid out a test for determining when a tenant and subtenant of a property could be held liable for cleanup costs.
That test included looking at the lease and the rights it gave to tenants. At the time, the court found that site control was not enough for imposing owner liability.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Next Millennium and 101 Frost Street argued that the 2nd Circuit's decision lets polluting companies off the hook.
"A tenant that sublet the property to a contaminating subtenant has completely escaped CERCLA liability," their petition said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067991
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Government Seeks Scientists' Doubts for Climate Court Battle
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldman
Justice Department lawyers are quietly courting climate scientists for a simmering legal fight that could have massive implications for government global warming policies.
In recent months, Department of Justice officials have met with Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, as well as Judith Curry, a professor emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who has broken with many of her colleagues in the field by questioning the extent of humanity's role in climate change.
The Justice Department officials questioned the scientists about the level of certainty in climate science, possibly in an effort to help formulate a legal argument that would maintain that climate change is not enough of a dire threat to require immediate government action. The case has the potential to be one of the first Trump administration legal showdowns over climate science. For now, the department is casting a wide net, consulting with climate scientists, environmental law experts and economists, according to the researchers.
A children's climate change case, known as Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 by 21 young plaintiffs who claimed their constitutional rights had been violated by government inaction on climate change. Earlier this year, just days before Trump took office, the Obama administration Justice Department argued that there is no widespread belief among scientists that the world's climate becomes dangerous after passing the 350-parts-per-million mark for atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key metric in the case. Scientists have noted that the current level of CO2, which is about 410 ppm, has not been seen in at least 800,000 years.
Where the Trump administration will take the argument, if the case should proceed to trial, remains an open question. Trump and many top Cabinet officials have rejected the mainstream scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented pace.
Phil Gregory, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, compared the case to the famous Scopes monkey trial of 1925, when a high school teacher fought for the right to teach human evolution in public schools. The difference now, he said, is that this case would be a showdown on climate science in a courtroom.
Ultimately, the case could have even broader implications than an upcoming "red team" climate debate exercise planned by U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt because it could yield future government action on climate change, according to Gregory. He said his plaintiffs have extensive evidence that glacial melt, coral reef destruction and rising temperatures pose a grave threat to future generations.
"What we're going to have is the youth of America and their climate scientists," he said. "The Trump administration can bring on any scientist it wants, and we can have that debate based on evidence in a courtroom, so it's better than the Scopes trial, because in the Scopes trial, it wasn't limited to scientific evidence; they talked about the Bible and waved that around."
The next step in the case is oral arguments on Dec. 11 before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The government, through a writ of mandamus, wants a review of a 2016 decision by a lower court not to throw the case out. If the government is not granted that review, the case could eventually head to trial and climate science could become a central part of a legal argument.
Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax, and chose a number of Cabinet secretaries who question basic climate science. If the case proceeds to trial, however, government lawyers would be forced to argue that climate change does not pose an immediate threat, something mainstream climate science long ago determined is endangering humanity. There has been a significant focus from both critics and supporters of the Trump administration on whether Pruitt will challenge the endangerment finding, the legal undergirding of EPA's climate rules.
Taking on the endangerment finding would be a major legal fight, requiring the creation of a mountain of alternative research to challenge the significant body of peer-reviewed science that shows humans are warming the Earth at an unprecedented pace.'Put the science on trial'
A few months ago, Justice Department lawyers went out to lunch with Caldeira, he told E&E News.
They asked if he would take the lead on assembling government witnesses for the case. He said the lawyers are career officials, holdovers from the Obama administration. The lawyers told Caldeira they thought the case was weak, but that proving climate change poses an irreversible harm to humanity would benefit the plaintiffs, he said. Their position was that energy policy is something for the legislative branch to grapple with, not the executive branch, he said.
The Justice Department likely reached out to Caldeira because he has been critical of the case, because he does not think the courts are the place to resolve climate policy. He said he would have worked with the Obama Justice Department because he feels a duty as a scientist to ensure that the best available research is used.
But he declined the Justice Department's request for help, he said, because he is concerned that his work would be distorted for political means by the Trump administration.
"Since so much science is publicly funded, scientists have some responsibility to help have good science considered by the judicial process," he said. "Things are terribly clouded because we have such an awful president and such an awful administration, even efforts to try to get good science into the process could result in negative consequences."
Caldeira is also concerned that if reputable scientists don't participate in the case, the Justice Department could use contrarian researchers to weaken established science.
"You could easily imagine the Trump administration arranging things to not having the best available science presented, but having a perverted view of science presented," he said. "So I think there is a conflict if all good scientists refuse to participate because they don't want to collude with the Trump administration, then that leaves only the hacks, and it's likely that the government's case will be buttressed by hack science."
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment. However, it appears the department is still talking to researchers.
Curry said last week that she was still interested in helping the government with the case, but only if it took place in a nonpartisan manner. Curry has broken from many in mainstream climate science by casting doubt on the belief that humans are the primary driver of climate change. She has also published a significant amount of peer-reviewed research in major scientific journals, including on the Arctic and the causes of the climate feedback that have shaped the region.
"I'm prepared to give my best expert advice in a nonpartisan way; they may not like some of it," she said. "You just have to give it your best, deepest, most honest shot of explaining what's what, what we don't know."
The plaintiffs in the case have already submitted an expert review by scientists, economists and other experts in the field that clearly shows the threat climate change poses to future generations, said Gregory, the co-counsel representing the plaintiffs. The government has not submitted a report that would challenge established climate science, and lawyers have essentially argued that producing such a report would be too burdensome, he said.
"Our position all along has been to put the science on trial, and we want for them to bring in recognized scientists and let those individuals submit reports and testify before the courts; that's exactly what we think should happen," he said. "Obviously what's occurring now in our climate should not be decided by politicians, but should be dictated by the best available science."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067949
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Pruitt on Climate Science: 'I Have a Whole Plan'
Dec 4, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen
U.S. EPA's transition team had planned a much harder attack on the agency's ability to address climate change, according to a former member.
A draft of President Trump's "energy independence" executive order had initially directed EPA to reconsider the endangerment finding, said David Schnare, a transition and "beachhead" team member at EPA who helped draft the order.
In an interview with E&E News, Schnare recounted being disappointed as he reviewed the final order with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. References to the endangerment finding had been removed, and Schnare raised objections.
"And he said, 'Dave, I'm way ahead of you on that; I have a whole plan,'" Schnare said, quoting Pruitt. "Well, he didn't have a plan. He didn't know what he was going to do, and whatever he thought he was going to do he has had to change his mind on a couple of times now."
The endangerment finding provides the scientific basis for the agency's climate regulations, stating that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to human health and welfare. If the Trump administration fails to undo it, conservatives fear that rules to reduce emissions could be resurrected under future presidents.
"The endangerment finding is a critical policy finding because it drives an enormous number of mandates," said Schnare.
Trump signed the final version of the executive order at the end of March, leading to a wide-reaching regulatory review that sparked the reconsideration of the Clean Power Plan and the end of a federal methane-reduction target, among other actions.
Schnare, who worked at EPA for more than 30 years, gained notoriety for questioning mainstream climate science and for a series of lawsuits aimed at obtaining the emails of individual climate scientists. Schnare abruptly left the beachhead team at EPA, citing conflicts in leadership style with Pruitt.
More recently, Schnare has spoken at meetings organized by the Heartland Institute for potential participants in a "red team, blue team" debate on mainstream climate science.
While the endangerment finding didn't make it into the final executive order, discussions around it reached high into the White House. The transition team spoke with the staff of then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and "had the ear" of former chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Schnare said. The team did not discuss the issue directly with the president, his children or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to Schnare. However, Kushner was briefed on the issue, Schnare added.
Schnare said he now agrees with the decision to omit the endangerment finding from the executive order. But he wasn't happy with the decision at first.
"At the time, I wasn't thinking clearly enough that you have to start with the science. I was just thinking we could just go back and look at the endangerment finding. Well, you can't. And so taking that out of there bothered me but probably wasn't a bad idea," he said.
Schnare said he considers the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment a major, but not insurmountable, legal obstacle to reviewing the endangerment finding. The report says man-made climate change is an imminent threat. Schnare said that after he left the transition team, he urged the White House to delay releasing the assessment report, but the White House declined, saying it would look like "political malingering."
"The only way, with this other report in place, for EPA could do it would be a point-by-point refutation of each of the points made [in the endangerment finding]. That's a lot of work; it could be done," he said.
Schnare said that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, rather than EPA, would be better-suited to reviewing climate science. The office is currently without a director. He noted the importance of filling that position in order to begin reviewing climate science.
Ultimately, discussion on the transition team shifted away from the endangerment finding to focus on exiting the Paris Agreement, the landmark international climate accord. This action was also poised to be included in the "energy independence" executive order but was split off into a separate order that both the Department of Energy and EPA transition teams worked on.
"It really came down to — nothing to do with environmental quality — it had to do with, is this or is this not a treaty and what does it commit us to, and that's how the decision got made," he said. "So this whole issue of endangerment finding is out there, people are concerned about it on both sides, but there is no obvious path at this point that anyone has sorted."
Myron Ebell, the former head of the transition team at EPA and director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, declined in an email to confirm discussions about the endangerment finding with the White House or EPA. However, he noted that the plan was written to implement "every promise" made by Trump during the campaign.
"Getting out of the Paris Climate Treaty was a top line promise that Mr. Trump made repeatedly. Re-opening the Endangerment Finding was a lower level campaign commitment that was to my knowledge only made once in a questionnaire that Mr. Trump submitted to the Institute for Energy Research," Ebell said. "So I would say that re-opening the Endangerment Finding was definitely a campaign promise, and therefore you can infer that it was contained in the transition plan."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/04/stories/1060067961
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