Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 22/12/17
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(ACC Mentioned) PP, PET Only Commodities Up in November
Dec 22, 2017 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
November was a somewhat quiet month for North American commodity resins, with only polypropylene and PET bottle resin posting higher prices. -
(ACC Mentioned) Scientists Claim EPA’s Pruitt Broke The Rules to Sack Them From Advisory Boards
Dec 22, 2017 | Courthouse News
By Brandi Buchman
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt violated ethical rules when barring scientific researchers from sitting on federal advisory boards because they receive agency grants to conduct public health studies, a lawsuit claims. -
Pruitt Sweeps More Scientists off Advisory Panels
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Bill Ball knew the question was coming. -
The EPA is Driving Away Scientists and That’s Just What Trump Wants
Dec 22, 2017 | New York Magazine
By Adam K. Raymond
Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency over the years. -
2017: EWG Sets Health Standards for Chemicals in Tap Water, Pushes Industry Transparency in Cosmetics, Cleaning Products and More
Dec 22, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Jocelyn Lyle and Olga Naidenko
In 2017, EWG once again pushed the envelope in our mission to protect public health and the environment and empower all Americans to make better decisions about their safety and well-being. -
Judges Reject EPA Air Chief Wehrum's Silica Arguments
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
A federal appeals court today rejected a broad industry challenge led by President Trump's pick to lead U.S. EPA's air office to an Obama-era rule limiting worker exposure to potentially toxic silica particles. -
Some Bigelow Tea Not 'Natural' Because It Contains Glyphosate, Lawsuit Says
Dec 21, 2017 | EcoWatch
By Lorraine Chow
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has filed a lawsuit against R.C. Bigelow, Inc. alleging that glyphosate—the world's most widely used weedkiller—can be detected in some of the company's popular tea products. -
In Alaska, State Leaders Take a Long-Awaited Victory Lap
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
On Wednesday, shortly after Congress passed a historic tax package permitting oil and gas leasing in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a group of Senate Democrats and environmental advocates vowed to unseat the lawmakers who helped pass the controversial drilling proposal. -
U.S. Eyes a Caribbean Market as Venezuelan Imprint Fades
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
A Caribbean build-out of natural gas infrastructure fits the mainstream U.S. script for climate action. It also happens to gel with American geopolitical aims. -
McIntyre Era Begins at FERC with Pipeline Policy Review
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday launched a sweeping review of its 18-year-old policy on how it evaluates applications for natural gas pipelines and ultimately acts on them. -
2018 Prospects for LNG Heat Up
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
2018 could be a watershed year for U.S. natural gas exports. -
Kinder Morgan Gives Go-Ahead for Permian Gas Project
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Jenny Mandel
Kinder Morgan Inc.'s Gulf Coast Express pipeline yesterday won an official green light from developers, laying the groundwork for construction to start next year on the $1.7 billion, 500-mile natural gas project. -
Aramco Eyes U.S. Shale Acquisitions
Dec 22, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal (In E&E Greenwire)
By Sarah McFarlane and Summer Said
Aramco is exploring two separate acquisitions in U.S. shale, in what would be a watershed for Saudi Arabia and global markets as a whole. -
Alaska Reserve Could Hold 8.7B Barrels of Oil — USGS
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The U.S. Geological Survey today announced that the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska could hold a whopping 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 25 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, remarkably more resources than scientists predicted just seven years ago. -
TSA to Expand Gas Pipeline CyberSecurity Oversight
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr and Blake Sobczak
The Transportation Security Administration has refreshed a 6-year-old set of pipeline security guidelines after lawmakers voiced concerns about its oversight of cybersecurity threats to natural gas networks, officials confirmed this week. -
Interior Halts National Academies Study of Safety Program
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Nathaniel Gronewold
The Interior Department has ordered independent scientists to stop a study on its offshore drilling safety and inspection program, prompting condemnation from the researchers and advocacy groups. -
Complications for Conservatives' Climate Wish List
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender and Scott Waldman
President Trump's conservative supporters took some knocks this week on the climate change front. -
EPA Weighs GHG Rule, Wants Public Input
Dec 22, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Days after unveiling a blueprint for rolling back several Obama-era regulations into 2018 and beyond, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is considering a future rule to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing power plants, and it wants public input into what its role -- and the role of state regulatory agencies -- should be. -
Supreme Court Poised to Decide on Whether to Hear Key Air Act Appeal
Dec 22, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss & Stuart Parker
The Supreme Court could decide as soon as Jan. 5 whether to take up either of two high-profile Clean Air Act cases that EPA has urged it to reject, including one testing whether courts can enforce the agency's duty to review air policies' effects on jobs, and another over states' ability to use preexisting “contingency measures” to meet air quality standards. -
Lawmakers' Cap-and-Trade Proposals Unveiled
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Debra Kahn
Oregon lawmakers are gearing up to enact a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases later this winter that would be compatible with the regional market already underway in California and Canadian provinces. -
It's Almost Over. Here's What Happened in '17
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Zach Colman
Well, we did it. We're about to make it through 2017.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) PP, PET Only Commodities Up in November
Dec 22, 2017 | Plastics News
By Frank Esposito
November was a somewhat quiet month for North American commodity resins, with only polypropylene and PET bottle resin posting higher prices.
Regional PP prices ticked up another penny per pound for the month, marking the second straight month that market prices had moved up by that amount. Prices had jumped 7 cents per pound in September as the market reacted to temporary shortages caused by Hurricane Harvey.
North American PP sales grew just over 1 percent in the first 10 months of 2017, according to the American Chemistry Council. Domestic sales grew 2.5 percent in that period but were softened by a 32.5 percent plunge in exports.
North American PET prices moved up a total of 3 cents per pound in October and November, resulting from material tightness and higher feedstock costs. Prices for the material had increased an average of 4 cents per pound in September as Hurricane Harvey affected the availability of PET feedstocks made on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Regional PET prices now have increased for six consecutive months. The bankruptcy filing of PET maker M&G Polymers led the firm to stop production at plants in Altamira, Mexico, and Apple Grove, W.Va., reducing the availability of resin in the region and providing some justification for higher prices.
Imports might help North American processors in the short term. But on Nov. 8, U.S. trade officials voted to continue to investigate a request by four major North American PET makers to place antidumping duties on PET imports from Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan. A decision is expected by early March.
Plastics News also recently reported higher prices for nylon 6 and 6/6 resins in North America. Higher feedstock costs and strong demand from the automotive market sent nylon 6 prices up an average of 6 cents per pound and nylon 6/6 prices up an average of 8 cents per pound since Sept. 1, according to market sources. North American nylon 6 and 6/6 prices already had surged a total of 18 cents this year.
Post-hurricane, other resins flat
Regional prices for polyethylene, polystyrene and PVC all were flat for November, after each of those materials had absorbed price increases of 3 cents per pound in October. The 3-cent October PE hike came after prices jumped a total of 7 cents in September and October. Tight PE supplies in the post-hurricane PE market helped price increases take hold.
U.S./Canadian PE sales were mixed in the first 10 months of 2017, according to the American Chemistry Council. Sales of high density PE were down almost 4 percent as a domestic sales gain of 3 percent was wiped out by a drop of almost 27 percent in exports.
Low density PE sales ticked up almost 2 percent in those 10 months, with a domestic sales drop of almost 1 percent negated by an export sales gain of 12 percent. In linear low density PE, regional sales were up 1.5 percent as domestic growth of 4 percent was lowered by a 7 percent drop in exports.
The 3-cent PS hike for October marked the second consecutive month that prices had climbed by that amount. Some production of benzene, which is used to make styrene monomer, had been affected by Harvey.
North American PS sales fell more than 1 percent in the first 10 months of 2017. A domestic sales loss of more than 1 percent was softened a bit by a boost of 8.5 percent in exports.
After being flat for six consecutive months, PVC prices moved up 3 cents in October as suppliers were able to get most of a 5-cent hike they'd been seeking. Market sources said lower export prices prevented the full 5 cents from taking hold.
U.S./Canadian PVC sales managed growth of just over 2 percent in the first 10 months of 2017. Domestic sales growth of more than 4 percent was weakened by an export sales loss of almost 3 percent.
In broader feedstocks, West Texas Intermediate crude oil began November around $54.50 per barrel but ended near $58.25 for an increase of almost 7 percent. Regional natural gas prices were around $3 at the start of the month and rose only slightly to $3.05 by the end of November for an increase of less than 2 percent.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20171222/NEWS/171229966/pp-pet-only-commodities-up-in-november
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(ACC Mentioned) Scientists Claim EPA’s Pruitt Broke The Rules to Sack Them From Advisory Boards
Dec 22, 2017 | Courthouse News
By Brandi Buchman
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt violated ethical rules when barring scientific researchers from sitting on federal advisory boards because they receive agency grants to conduct public health studies, a lawsuit claims.
In a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, DC on Thursday, the plaintiff scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility, say Pruitt’s Oct. 31 order, “Strengthening and Improving Membership on EPA Federal Advisory Committees,” violated conflict of interest regulations set in motion over 30 years ago.
According to Pruitt’s order: “Members shall be independent from EPA, which [includes] a requirement that no member of an EPA federal advisory committee be currently in receipt of EPA grants, either as principal investigator or co-investigator, or in a position that would otherwise reap substantial direct benefit from an EPA grant.”
Pruitt’s reasoning amounted to worry over unfair influence on committees which inform public policy.
“When we have members of those committees that have receive tens of millions of dollars in grants, at the same time they’re advising the agency on rulemaking, that is not good and that is not right,” Pruitt said in a written statement in October.
Shortly after, six advisory committee members were dismissed.
Those dismissed include plaintiffs Robyn Wilson, an Ohio State University professor who sat on the Scientific Advisory Board, and Edward Lawrence Avol, an expert in air pollution and children’s respiratory health, who sat on the Clean Air Science Advisory Committee.
Plaintiff Joe Arvai, a University of Michigan professor researching environmental, social and economic impact on federal rulemaking , was also dismissed. He sat on the Chartered Science Advisory Board.
Pruitt’s order “[forced] them to choose between serving on [advisory committees] or receiving grants to fund important scientific research,” they claim.
Further, the order “causes significant harm to the public interest,” because their replacements “work directly for industries regulated by EPA or receive financial support from such industries.”
Additionally, they claim, Pruitt violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act when appointing Robert Merritt, an executive with Total, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, to the scientific advisory board.
The same goes for appointees Larry Monroe, an executive with Southern Company, a utility operating coal-and gas-fired power plants throughout the United States, and Kimberly White, senior director at the trade association, the American Chemistry Council.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 should bar a revolving door of industry giants onto scientific panels, the plaintiffs say.
In the text of the Act Congress noted “one of the great dangers of unregulated use of advisory committees is that special interest groups may use their membership on such bodies to promote their private concerns.”
The plaintiffs argue that expression of congressional intent means Pruitt must ensure committee advice and recommendations aren’t “inappropriately influenced” either by himself, “the appointing authority,” or any other special interest.
Influence on policy should be a result of the advisory committee’s independent judgment and sound research, they say.
Robert Johnston, an environmental economist at Clark University in Massachusetts, was also removed from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board this year after refusing to surrender his grant-funded research on water quality.
“The reason they have these grants, like any government grant, is to have the people who are often the best scientists in a particular field [available],” Johnston told Courthouse News on Friday. “By excluding people who have EPA grants automatically and replacing them with people who often don’t have the same scientific credentials or who come in from the regulatory community – that leads to concerns regarding what kind of scientific advice you’re getting. And to what extent.”
An EPA official would not comment on the litigation but said when it comes to the Act, as the long as the conflict is “generic” then it’s okay to serve on a committee.
But determining what constitutes a “generic” conflict never discussed publicly, the plaintiffs claim.
“EPA did not provide public notice of the directive for the purpose of taking public comment, nor did it take public comment. EPA did not promulgate the Directive jointly with [Office of Government Ethics or] publish the Directive in the Federal Register” the complaint states.
The Office of Government Ethics declined to comment Friday.
Deborah Swackhamer, who currently chairs the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors, said Friday she will follow the suit “with interest.”
“Mr. Pruitt’s policy is unnecessary under current ethics laws, and appears to be a clumsy move to exclude academic scientists’ advice. This censorship is not being applied to industry voices, who often have significant conflicts of interest due to the fact that EPA regulated them,” Swackhamer said.
https://www.courthousenews.com/scientists-claim-epas-pruitt-broke-the-rules-to-sack-them-from-advisory-boards/
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Pruitt Sweeps More Scientists off Advisory Panels
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Bill Ball knew the question was coming. When it did, he quit a U.S. EPA advisory panel before he could be fired.
"I regret that the US EPA is no longer what it once was," Ball, executive director of the Maryland-based Chesapeake Research Consortium, wrote to an agency employee last month in reply to an email asking whether he was currently receiving an EPA grant.
"Please know that I and others stand ready to help and support [its] rebuilding when the opportunity comes," Ball said in the message, which he provided to E&E News.
Ball, who had sat on a Science Advisory Board environmental engineering subcommittee, was an early casualty of a ban on active grant recipients from serving on EPA advisory panels.
But almost two months after Administrator Scott Pruitt publicly wielded the new policy to help reshape the main Science Advisory Board and a separate air quality committee, the agency continues to quietly use it to cull researchers from more specialized panels.
Bill Ball. Chesapeake Research Consortium Inc.
Just in the last two weeks, at least four members of various Science Advisory Board subcommittees have effectively been told they have to surrender their seats in order to keep their funding, according to interviews.
While the immediate impact may be slight — in his resignation notice, for example, Ball noted that he had been given no work to review during his tenure — other observers share his fears for the long-term integrity of the scientific research used to guide agency decisionmaking.
"I think there is a pretty significant level of concern," said Linda Weavers, an Ohio State University faculty member who is also president of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors.
Last month, the association announced it was creating an ad hoc committee to "provide unbiased reviews of the science supporting selected planned regulatory actions under consideration by the EPA," according to its website.
The committee's formation is a reaction to the new policy, Weavers confirmed. "We want to be sure that science is driving the policy decisions that are being made, not politics," she said.
But the association's effort will focus on just two of the SAB's seven subcommittees, Weavers said, and it is unclear whether other scientific organizations are planning similar initiatives.
While three researchers yesterday filed a lawsuit challenging Pruitt's directive on the grounds that it violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act, it remains to be seen whether they can persuade a judge that Pruitt overreached (E&E News PM, Dec. 21).
Also uncertain is how far EPA has gone in enforcing the grants prohibition for members of all of the agency's sprawling archipelago of 22 advisory committees.
In his Oct. 31 announcement, Pruitt focused on just three: the Science Advisory Board, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) and the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC).
While an agency representative later confirmed it also applies to the other 19, chairs of several of those committees have told E&E News in recent weeks that they had heard nothing from the agency.
As of publication time today, EPA press aides had not replied to an email sent yesterday seeking clarification on that score, as well as a cumulative total of the number of advisory panel members forced to step down because they receive agency grants.
Pruitt, echoing arguments made by some congressional Republicans, contends the policy is needed to ensure the independence of outside experts advising the agency.
Critics say that EPA already has regulations in place to guard against conflicts of interest and that grants are awarded competitively.
Even before the new directive was unveiled, Pruitt had jettisoned a tradition of reappointing panel members to a second consecutive term after they had served their first.
Between the two changes, dozens of members of the Science Advisory Board, the CASAC and the BOSC, as well as the BOSC subcommittees, have been ousted. In some cases, their replacements have close ties to industries overseen by EPA.
"Those perspectives are different, I feel, than the scientific role," said Thomas Burke, a former EPA science adviser who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University.
The workload for the SAB and its subcommittees is shaped by requests from EPA officials; their output in recent years has included major studies on topics like hydraulic fracturing and the efficacy of ship ballast water treatment systems, along with reviews of the agency's rulemaking plans.
The researchers most recently forced out include:Daniel Phaneuf, a widely published economist on environmental and natural resource issues, based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.Greg Lowry, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who is also deputy director of the National Science Foundation's Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology.George Van Houtven, an environmental economist at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute in North Carolina.
Last year, the institute considered Van Houtven's appointment to the Science Advisory Board's environmental economics subcommittee noteworthy enough to warrant a news release.
This week, an RTI spokeswoman confirmed to E&E News that he had stepped down as a result of the grant policy, but said he would "continue his research to evaluate environmental and risk management policies" for EPA and other agencies.
Lowry had served on the Science Advisory Board's environmental engineering subcommittee, and Phaneuf was on the environmental economics subcommittee.
Steve Swallow, a University of Connecticut professor who is also on the environmental economics panel, confirmed that he has also heard from EPA this week.
While he has not yet notified the agency of his decision, Swallow said in an interview this morning that he intended to continue his EPA-funded work examining the value people place on improving water quality, primarily in rivers and streams.
"Where can I do the most good for the welfare of the general public?" Swallow asked rhetorically. His answer: "Stay with my research."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069799
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The EPA is Driving Away Scientists and That’s Just What Trump Wants
Dec 22, 2017 | New York Magazine
By Adam K. Raymond
Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency over the years. Two decades ago, in his book The Art of the Comeback, he mounted a furious defense of asbestos, and in the first year of his presidency, Trump has appointed a handful of zealots to lead the agency. Most notable among them is Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma who repeatedly sued the EPA in his old job and now likes to cozy up with the industry executives he’s supposed to be regulating.
It turns out that Trump is not just damaging the EPA by appointing people hell-bent on its destruction. He’s also driving away people who want the agency to succeed. All told, more than 700 people have left the agency since Trump took office and most of them aren’t being replaced, according to the Times. At the start of December, the agency had 14,188 full-time employees, nearly 3,000 fewer than it had at the end of President Obama’s first year in office.
Among those departing the agency are lawyers, program managers, and environmental-protection specialists, along with 200 scientists.
More than 27 percent of those who left this year were scientists, including 34 biologists and microbiologists; 19 chemists; 81 environmental engineers and environmental scientists; and more than a dozen toxicologists, life scientists and geologists. Employees say the exodus has left the agency depleted of decades of knowledge about protecting the nation’s air and water.
The Times spoke to two former, and one current, EPA employees who have all seen a lack of morale at the agency as its ranks are depleted. “This is exactly what they wanted, which is my biggest misgiving about leaving,” Ronnie B. Levin, a 37-year EPA vet who worked on lead-exposure issues, told the paper. “They want the people there to be more docile and nervous and less invested in the agency.”
And they want the depletion to continue. The administration’s goal is to cut 3,200 positions from the agency and they have a plan for making that happen, by tying the hands of enforcement officers, silencing scientists, and probing the emails of dissenting employees, all while Pruitt spends lavishly on himself.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/the-epa-is-driving-away-scientists-just-what-trump-wants.html
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Dec 22, 2017 | Environmental Working Group
By Jocelyn Lyle and Olga Naidenko
In 2017, EWG once again pushed the envelope in our mission to protect public health and the environment and empower all Americans to make better decisions about their safety and well-being. Our efforts this year included identifying the dangerous contaminants in tap water throughout the nation, pointing out how to avoid the toxic chemicals in our cleaning and personal care products, and combatting the most widely used pesticide in the country.
Toxic Chemicals in Your Drinking Water
Until this year, finding reliable information about the contaminants that flow from our faucets and what those chemicals could mean for our health has been surprisingly difficult. That changed in July, when EWG released our National Tap Water Database, which allows nearly every American to access a detailed analysis of the chemical contamination in their drinking water.
EWG collected data from state agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water tests conducted from 2010 to 2015 by 48,712 water utilities in all 50 states. All told, the utilities tested for 500 different contaminants and found 267. According to our findings:93 are linked to an increased risk of cancer.78 are associated with brain and nervous system damage.63 are connected to developmental harm to children or fetuses.38 may cause fertility problems.45 are linked to hormonal disruption.
Just Because It’s Legal, Doesn’t Mean It’s Safe
Federal drinking water standards are often woefully inadequate to protect public health because they don’t consider the increased risk that toxic chemicals pose for children, infants and developing fetuses. In addition, the standards set for pollutants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act are almost always aimed at keeping treatment and cleanup costs down rather than prioritizing public health and safety.
For many common pollutants found in tap water, there are no enforceable federal legal limits, leaving the public vulnerable to harm from new and emerging contaminants.
EWG decided it was critical to set our own standards—free of industry and political interference—as a goal post defining what levels of drinking water contaminants are safe for people, especially children and pregnant women. Our approach puts public health ahead of corporate interests, lobbyists and government agencies.
EWG Helps Raise the Bar on Chemical Ingredient Transparency
Millions of American consumers have used EWG’s Skin Deep® database and our Guide to Healthy Cleaning Products to find out what personal care and cleaning products are the safest to use. So it’s no surprise that companies have begun to feel pressure from customers who want more information and transparency about the chemical ingredients used in their products.
In 2017, several of the world’s biggest companies took significant action on chemical ingredient disclosure and they asked EWG to help spread the word.
In February, Unilever announced a bold new initiative to provide detailed information on fragrance ingredients for all products in its multibillion-dollar portfolio of personal care brands. EWG President Ken Cook responded by saying, “With this impressive display of leadership, Unilever has broken open the black box of fragrance chemicals and raised the bar for transparency across the entire personal care products industry—and beyond.”
SC Johnson announced in May that it will disclose the presence of hundreds of potential skin allergens that could be found in its line of household cleaning products. In the company’s news release announcing the new initiative, EWG President Ken Cook said: “This level of transparency is sweeping across other industries and is rapidly becoming the new normal for companies, like SC Johnson, who place a premium on giving consumers more, rather than less, ingredient information.”
Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest maker of both household cleaning and personal care products, announced a sweeping fragrance ingredient transparency initiative In August. By 2019, it will begin online disclosure of fragrance ingredients down to 0.01 percent for all its products and lines sold in the United States and Canada. In the P&G press announcement, EWG’s Cook said: “The policy announced today not only demonstrates P&G’s deep commitment to providing consumers everywhere with the information they increasingly demand, it also marks a turning point for the entire consumer product industry.”
In September, Walmart, the biggest brick-and-mortar retailer in the world, announced it is encouraging all companies that sell personal care products in its U.S. stores to get the EWG VERIFIED™ seal. So far, more than 1,080 products from 75 brands have been approved to carry the EWG VERIFIED™ seal.
EWG’s Victories on Behalf of California’s Children
In October, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law sweeping legislation that will result in up to 300,000 more at-risk California children being tested for lead poisoning each year. The bill was sponsored by EWG and introduced by Assembly Members Bill Quirk, D-Hayward and Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens.
EWG co-sponsored and helped pass another piece of legislation that will require manufacturers of a wide array of cleaning products to disclose chemical ingredientsboth on the product label and online. Considering California’s economy is the 6th largest in the world, this new law could have repercussions across the country.
EWG Pushes for Stricter Guidelines on Cancer-Causing Herbicide in California
California’s public health guidelines for Monsanto’s carcinogenic weed killer glyphosate are by far the most stringent in the country and far exceed the federal standards set by the EPA. The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment’s proposed limit for the herbicide is 1.1 milligrams a day— a health guideline 127 times less than the EPA’s legal allowance for the average-sized American. However, an independent analysis by EWG found that, at a minimum, the risk level for glyphosate must be 100 times lower because the California assessment did not consider special risks of glyphosate to children.
“Cancer-causing herbicides such as Monsanto’s glyphosate do not belong in children’s food, period,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s senior science advisor for children’s environmental health.
EWG’s Resistance Against Controversial Trump EPA Nominee Pays Off on Behalf of Public Health
EWG, along with a handful of other public interest and grassroots organizations, played a critical role in defeating President Trump’s nominee, Michael Dourson, to run the chemical safety division at the EPA. Mr. Dourson, through is his decades-long career greenwashing chemicals as a scientist-for-hire for the chemical industry, was uniquely unfit to hold the top job in charge of protecting the public from the dangers of toxic chemicals.
The consistent and vocal resistance by EWG and others ultimately forced Mr. Dourson to withdraw his name for consideration after it was clear there were not enough votes in the Senate to confirm him.
Looking Toward 2018 and Beyond
With new marketplace innovations and federal deregulation coming at a head-spinning pace, EWG will remain on our toes, weighing in whenever we can in order to arm consumers with the information they need to lead heathier lives.
Our long-term plans include expanding our chemical standard setting beyond drinking water, moving EWG VERIFIED™ into other product groups and continuing to hold our elected officials accountable for protecting our most vulnerable populations.
If 2017 has taught us anything, it’s that in the face of federal indifference, we must forge our own path to empower people with information on everyday hazards. We must also work with the private industry to set standards when government agencies fall short and demonstrate that corporations are ready and willing to make smarter decisions that help their customers.
Since EWG’s founding almost 25 years ago, our two key tenets have been education and empowerment. It’s our intention to continue along that path, no matter the marketplace landscape or who’s in power.
https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2017/12/2017-ewg-sets-health-standards-chemicals-tap-water-pushes-industry#.Wj02FVWWbIU
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Judges Reject EPA Air Chief Wehrum's Silica Arguments
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Jeremy P. Jacobs
A federal appeals court today rejected a broad industry challenge led by President Trump's pick to lead U.S. EPA's air office to an Obama-era rule limiting worker exposure to potentially toxic silica particles.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit summarily denied multifaceted arguments from hydraulic fracturing, foundry, construction and other industries to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's 2016 silica rule.
"We reject each challenge," the three-judge panel unanimously ruled in a 60-page opinion.
Crystalline silica is among the most common workplace environmental hazards. It is a major component of most building products, including concrete, brick and ceramic tile. Hydraulic fracturing operations also shoot silica into wells.
OSHA estimated that more than 2.3 million workers are exposed to the substance, which is associated with a bevy of health effects including lung cancer.
After decades of study and delay, OSHA in 2016 halved the standard of 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air for general industry to 50. The agency claimed the action would prevent 642 deaths per year.
The rule sparked countless lawsuits across the country from industry, which claimed it was too stringent, and unions, which argued that it didn't go far enough.
Those lawsuits were consolidated at the D.C. Circuit. A panel of three judges — two Democratic-appointed and one Republican-appointed — heard arguments in September, and the industry team was led by Bill Wehrum, who was then nominated by President Trump to lead EPA's air office. He has since been confirmed.
Wehrum sought to poke holes in several aspects of the OSHA rule, including whether substantial medical evidence justified lowering it and whether the brick industry should have been excluded.
"People are designed to deal with dust," Wehrum said. "People are in dusty apartments all the time, and it doesn't kill them." He also said that "common sense" shows the previous standard "seems to be working."
Wehrum met an audience of skeptical judges. D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Merrick Garland responded, "There are scientists that believe the opposite of you" (Greenwire, Sept. 26).
Industry also contended that meeting the standards was not economically feasible, including for the hydraulic fracturing sector given the recent decline in oil prices. The panel again rejected those claims.
The panel also denied all of the arguments from unions except one.
Unions contended that the rule should have contained provisions protecting workers from losing their compensation should a doctor recommend that the worker be removed from his or her job due to a silica-related illness, a concept known as "medical removal protection," or MRP, in OSHA regulations.
The court ruled that such a provision may be appropriate in the OSHA rule and sent it back to OSHA to reconsider or further explain its decision.
"[W]ithout MRP, employees whose doctors recommend removal may hide those recommendations from their employers," the court wrote.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069791
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Some Bigelow Tea Not 'Natural' Because It Contains Glyphosate, Lawsuit Says
Dec 21, 2017 | EcoWatch
By Lorraine Chow
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has filed a lawsuit against R.C. Bigelow, Inc. alleging that glyphosate—the world's most widely used weedkiller—can be detected in some of the company's popular tea products.
But the consumer interest group is not suing Bigelow due to the presence of the controversial chemical in its tea products (an estimated 0.38 ppm in Bigelow Green Tea, according to the lawsuit). Rather, the complaint alleges that Bigelow deceptively labeled, marketed and sold tea products with the representation of "All Natural" and "Natural," making the products appear environmentally friendly.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 15 in Superior Court in Washington.
"Like other companies that market their products as 'natural' and 'environmentally friendly,' Bigelow is using these terms to profit from growing consumer demand for healthier, more sustainably produced products, even though the company knows those claims are false," said Ronnie Cummins, international director of the OCA.
While the lab results cited by OCA's lawsuit showed glyphosate levels far lower than the government's threshold of 1 ppm for dried leaves, the group believes there is no safe level of glyphosate exposure for a person.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in many herbicides, most notably in Monsanto's star product, Roundup. The chemical is applied to more than 150 food and non-food crops and used on lawns, gardens and parks. In fact, researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that human exposure to glyphosate has increased approximately 500 percent since 1994, the year Monsanto introduced its genetically modified Roundup Ready crops in the U.S. Today, the chemical can be detected in everyday household foods such as cookies, crackers, ice cream and even our urine.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) which labeled glyphosate a "probable carcinogen." The France-based panel's ruling has since sparked debate around the world, prompted hundreds of lawsuits over allegations that glyphosate causes cancer, and resulted in the state of California adding glyphosate to its list of cancer-causing chemicals.
However, other scientific bodies and institutions—including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's draft assessment this week—have contradicted the IARC's classification. Monsanto strongly disagrees with IARC's classification and vehemently defends the safety of its products.
Bigelow is the No. 2 U.S. tea brand by retail value, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Company execs have dismissed the lawsuit's claims as "frivolous" and "illogical."
While the company's own tests also found glyphosate levels for dried tea, they are "far below" both the federal limit and the OCA's finding, R.C. Bigelow, Inc. CEO Cynthia Bigelow, told Bloomberg.
She said there's a difference between dry tea, which is what the OCA's claim is based on, versus a cup of brewed tea with water.
When the tea is brewed the level is "absolutely zero," Bigelow said.
But Cummins countered that the company "knows that health-conscious consumers will pay a premium for 'all natural' products believing those products are free of pesticides and other contaminants."
"Likewise, Bigelow knows that consumers who care about the environment will pay more for products they believe were produced using methods that don't harm the environment," he continued. "As a consumer education and advocacy group, it's our job to expose these false claims and force corporations to either clean up their products, or clean up their labels and advertising."
OCA is asking for an "injunction to halt Bigelow's false marketing and sale of the products," the lawsuit states.
Cynthia Bigelow told Bloomberg she does not expect the OCA's claims against her company's tea to hold up in court.
But a similar suit against General Mills Nature Valley granola bars survived a motion to dismiss, and is currently progressing through the courts.
https://www.ecowatch.com/bigelow-tea-glyphosate-2519130266.html
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In Alaska, State Leaders Take a Long-Awaited Victory Lap
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
On Wednesday, shortly after Congress passed a historic tax package permitting oil and gas leasing in part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a group of Senate Democrats and environmental advocates vowed to unseat the lawmakers who helped pass the controversial drilling proposal.
Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said the Democrats will use the vote to allow drilling in ANWR's coastal plain — along with the Trump administration's overall environmental track record — to defeat Republicans in the 2018 election cycle.
But that promise was an empty threat in Alaska, where state leaders and the oil industry have been fighting for almost four decades to allow oil exploration in the northeastern strip of the Arctic refuge.
Nearly every Alaska candidate ever to run for state or federal office — Democrat or Republican — has pledged to pave the way for oil rigs in ANWR. Until this week, however, the Alaskans were undercut by many Democrats and conservationists who consider the Arctic refuge coastal plain to be the holy grail of the environmental movement.
The recent successful vote for leasing in ANWR took on a nostalgic tone when Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) wore Incredible Hulk earrings to the Senate floor in honor of the late Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. Fondly known in Alaska as "Uncle Ted," Stevens was a fierce drilling supporter and traditionally wore an Incredible Hulk tie to important votes.
After the final vote, Murkowski predicted that drilling in the refuge could "fulfill the promises of our statehood and give us renewed hope for growth and prosperity."
"Alaskans can now look forward to our best opportunity to refill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, thousands of jobs that will pay better wages, and potentially $60 billion in royalties for our state alone," she said in a statement.
With passage of the tax bill, Murkowski, who authored the ANWR provision, is being heralded as a hero, and the entire Alaska Republican congressional delegation is taking a victory lap.
In Alaska, state Republican legislators and Gov. Bill Walker (I), bitter rivals on other state issues, stood shoulder to shoulder in praising Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Alaska Rep. Don Young for pushing the ANWR provision through Congress.
"Christmas came early this year with the passage of historic tax reform, coupled with the opening of the 1002 area of ANWR for responsible development," the Alaska state Senate majority said on social media. "These measures together will provide tax relief for American families, bring investment and jobs back to America, and ensure American energy dominance for generations."
Alaska Oil and Gas Association President Kara Moriarty predicted that leasing in the Arctic refuge "offers incredible potential for Alaska jobs, revenue and energy security."Long road still ahead
The tax bill is only the first step in the long road to oil production in ANWR's coastal plain, a 1.57-million-acre region also known as the 1002 Area.
Multiple environmental groups and members of the Gwich'in Steering Committee recently issued a statement vowing to defend ANWR in the "courts, in the corporate boardrooms and in Congress where, over time, we will seek to restore protections for this crown jewel of our National Wildlife Refuge System."
Moriarty and other oil industry leaders are primarily concerned about the green groups' threats to move the ANWR battle to the courts.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has said federal leases aren't likely to be auctioned in the 1002 area for another 10 years, during which time federal regulators will be working on environmental impact reviews and other permits. At each step, those federal decisions could be subject to legal challenge by the environmental groups.
Alison Wolters, upstream researcher for Wood Mackenzie's Canada/Alaska group, recently observed that potential developers will have to plan for expensive lawsuits and delays. "I think that any operator that's interested in ANWR would come up against some pretty serious roadblocks," she said.
Other industry analysts are warning that oil companies may be hesitant to bid for Arctic refuge leases due to the expense of drilling in the icy, remote Arctic; the lack of infrastructure in the region; and continued low oil prices.
They cite a recent oil and gas lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which drew only seven bids for the 900 tracks offered by the Bureau of Land Management. However, the industry is likely to be more interested in leasing in other parts of the NPR-A if Zinke follows through with plans to open more refuge lands to development.
Former U.S. Geological Survey Director Mark Myers noted that oil industry infrastructure is already in place a few miles west of the Arctic refuge at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Point Thomson oil and gas facility.
Meyers, who also served as Alaska's natural resources commissioner, predicted that this week's ANWR bill will spur oil companies to conduct a new round of 3-D seismic studies in the coastal plain.
In the meantime, the ANWR vote is certain to fuel questions about the amount of recoverable oil and gas available in the coastal plain.
Currently, little is known about the region other than some vintage 2-D seismic data collected in 1986 when a consortium of oil companies drilled a single well 15 miles from the village of Kaktovik. The results of that well are among Alaska's best-kept secrets.
In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a report calculating that the 1002 area, together with nearby Native lands and adjacent state waters, could hold between 5.7 billion and 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Now USGS is reassessing the region, reprocessing the decades-old seismic data and examining data collected on wells sunk just outside the Arctic reserve. That analysis is due for release late next year.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069717
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U.S. Eyes a Caribbean Market as Venezuelan Imprint Fades
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By David Iaconangelo
A Caribbean build-out of natural gas infrastructure fits the mainstream U.S. script for climate action. It also happens to gel with American geopolitical aims.
Since 2014, a State Department project has sought to bring together financing and expertise for Caribbean countries that want to launch renewable and natural gas projects. The point is to cut away at oil's dominance as a fuel source — a convention flavored with the legacy of hemispheric rivalries, given the Venezuelan origin of supplies.
For years, Caribbean nations could buy oil via a generous arrangement that combined a partial upfront payment with long-term, low-interest loans. And the policy's beneficiaries haven't forgotten. At an Organization of American States summit in June, for example, a group of nearly a dozen downed a resolution that would have condemned Venezuela for creating a parallel legislature to bypass the opposition-held National Assembly.
But as the Venezuelan economy has deteriorated and the flow of easy-credit oil waned, many islands have resolved to seek out alternatives.
"The U.S. has grown accustomed to asking for support from the Caribbean whenever they need a vote at the U.N. or at OAS. But the reality is that if you actually want to influence the Caribbean, they have to know you're actually interested in advancing their national interest," said Juan Gonzalez, who was an architect of the State Department's Caribbean Energy Security Initiative while serving as special adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden.
"Caribbean countries remember that Venezuela was there when they needed them. So the U.S. needs to think more long term in how to support the Caribbean, and the energy space is ripe to transform the picture," said Gonzalez.
Solar plants and wind farms in Jamaica and geothermal projects in St. Kitts and Nevis got support under the initiative. And in places like the blackout-plagued Dominican Republic, renewable projects have taken off well outside the spheres of the State Department.
But the most dramatic build-outs in the region have been for natural gas — a sign that a capital-intensive industry could eventually land on the shores of island nations seen as too small and too saddled with debt to support it.
"A lot of that is private-equity money looking at the opportunity and seeing that coal-to-gas or fuel-to-gas conversion is profitable," said David Goldwyn, president of energy consultancy Goldwyn Global Strategies LLC and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
In Jamaica, for instance, a country that not long ago was powered almost exclusively by oil, New York-based liquefied natural gas firm New Fortress Energy has pledged $1 billion in new projects, acting as both a fuel supplier and builder of infrastructure like a $265 million heat and power plant that broke ground in early December.
In a November report, energy analyst firm McKinsey pointed to Jamaica as a possible model for the creation of gas markets in other Caribbean countries. Other gas suppliers, they wrote, could build up terminals and delivery infrastructure.
The country wants gas power to shoulder much of the weight of its emissions-reduction goals: Its national energy policy calls for natural gas to provide 42 percent of its energy by 2030, with renewables making up 20 percent. Energy Minister Andrew Wheatley has put out an invitation for further gas investment, saying in an October speech that the government intended to "position Jamaica as the regional hub for natural gas."
Technological advances like smaller LNG tankers have made it more affordable for companies to carry out more modest deliveries of LNG, noted McKinsey.
And as new gas infrastructure sprouts, Republican legislators in both chambers are pushing bills that would speed up small-scale LNG exports to the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas.
Oil and gas state sponsors, along with Venezuela hawk Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), say the Energy Department's practice of expediting permits for those small shipments — effectively bypassing a review of each project's relevance to the national interest — should be made law.
Nations under U.S. sanctions would be excluded from the expedited process in the Senate version.
The measure, Rubio wrote upon its introduction in October, would "bolster our existing ties with Caribbean and Latin American nations while ensuring that bad actors in the region, including Cuba and Venezuela, do not reap its benefits."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069713
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McIntyre Era Begins at FERC with Pipeline Policy Review
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission yesterday launched a sweeping review of its 18-year-old policy on how it evaluates applications for natural gas pipelines and ultimately acts on them.
Chairman Kevin McIntyre announced the surprise move at the conclusion of his first meeting, which occurred 15 days after he was sworn in to the job he is slated to hold through June 30, 2023.
"We as a government institution owe it to all concerned to look at processes and policies from time to time," McIntyre said to explain the pipeline policy review.
"Much has changed in the energy world since 1999, and it is incumbent upon us to take another look at the way in which we assess the value and the viability of our pipeline application," he said.
"Let's dust off the existing playbook and take a fresh look at it and ask ourselves the really hard questions around 'is there any way we can improve this'?"
McIntyre's move to examine the 1999 Policy Statement on Certification of New Interstate Natural Gas Pipeline Facilities reflects a pledge he made during his Senate confirmation hearing to take a fresh look at all aspects of the agency's work.
The review is something Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur has also called for in recent months.
Commissioner Neil Chatterjee recently lamented the length of time it can take to approve pipelines. He noted that two East Coast pipelines approved by FERC in October — Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley — took 25 and 24 months, respectively, from the date of application to when certificates to operate were issued.
In recent remarks at a luncheon sponsored by the Natural Gas Roundtable, the then-chairman of FERC complained that "opposition to natural gas pipeline projects has become much more ideologically driven than it used to be."
"We are still evaluating what the format will be of this effort. But I guarantee whatever it is, it will be open and transparent and thorough and invite the views of all stakeholders," McIntyre said.
The review could include a notice of inquiry or a technical conference, he said.
As to pipelines currently under review at FERC, McIntyre said he "wouldn't expect [the review] to affect currently pending applications at all."
The review should not signal that he favors "any specific change" in how gas pipelines are handled by FERC, although he is "open to change," he said.
"You didn't hear any gripe from me about the current handling of the specific issues that are addressed in our policy today on processing infrastructure applications," McIntyre said.The grid proposal
McIntyre said the agency could act before Jan. 10 on a response to Energy Secretary Rick Perry's September directive that FERC consider changes in electricity market rules that could end up subsidizing certain coal-burning and nuclear power plants in the Midwest and East.
He expressed gratitude that Perry agreed to a 30-day extension of an original December deadline to act as helping to ensure resilience of the nation's grid. He said he has not spoken with Perry about the matter.
"I arrived here less than 48 business hours before the then-deadline was to be upon us for action, and I didn't regard it as realistic at all for me to try to get something done in that kind of a quick fashion," McIntyre said.
"I knew it would, of necessity, end up being slapdash, and that's not my style and not what the process deserves," he added. "I don't envision going back and asking for more time. Whether we'll need until the 10th, it's hard to say. I hope not."
McIntyre would not opine on Chatterjee's push for an interim step that would provide cash payments to coal and nuclear plants that are struggling to compete in the electricity markets because of low-price natural gas and renewables.
He also said, "I don't think it's going to be deemed necessary or appropriate" that he would recuse himself from whatever FERC decides to do because of his past work on behalf of FirstEnergy Corp. or Exelon Corp., two companies that own coal and nuclear plants.
In other action, FERC proposed a tougher standard on reporting cybersecurity incidents.
FERC wants the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to revise its Critical Infrastructure Protection Reliability Standards to improve mandatory reporting of cybersecurity incidents, including incidents that might facilitate future attempts to harm reliable operation of the nation's bulk electric system.
Also, FERC opened three investigations into the pricing of fast-start resources in three regional power markets. It found current practices may be unjust and unreasonable because those practices do not allow prices to accurately reflect the marginal cost of delivering power to customers.
The investigations will involve the New York Independent System Operator, PJM Interconnection and Southwest Power Pool.
McIntyre asked FERC staff how consumers might benefit from the FERC probes.
"Improved fast-start pricing can improve price signals, especially during tight or unexpected system conditions when the need for fast start resources is the greatest. In turn, this could support efficient investment in facilities and equipment," said Angela Amos, a FERC financial analyst who is joining McIntyre's staff.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069715
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2018 Prospects for LNG Heat Up
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Nathanial Gronewold
2018 could be a watershed year for U.S. natural gas exports.
U.S. liquefied natural gas exports are expected to increase sharply in 2018, with the United States closing out 2017 as a net gas exporter.
"The potential for LNG, not just for the U.S. but for the whole global industry, is enormous," said Charles Dewhurst, an energy market analyst at the consultancy BDO.
Gas is selling at a discount worldwide, but LNG produced from lower-cost U.S. shale gas formations is still at a comparative advantage. And there's plenty of it. U.S. gas in storage is ample.
Early next year, the East Coast will join the rising surge of LNG exports as Dominion Energy Inc.'s Cove Point LNG export project in Maryland begins shipping its first cargoes. Construction at the $4 billion site is now complete, and Dominion is in the process of commissioning and storing gas in advance of its liquefaction, the company reported Tuesday.
"All major equipment has been operated and is being commissioned following a comprehensive round of thorough testing and quality assurance activities," the company said.
With European countries looking for supplies, Maryland's LNG exports will find a market. But Russia is still vying for business. In November, Russia launched its Arctic Yamal LNG export project.
Still, Dewhurst said there are still strong indications that Europe is intent on diversifying the continent's gas supplies away from Russia, favoring other sources, especially U.S. LNG exporters.
"The U.S. in particular is in a prime position to meet that," he said.
Cove Point won't be alone next year. Along the Gulf of Mexico coast, Cheniere Energy Inc. will be exporting from a fourth liquefaction train at its Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana. A competing project, Freeport LNG in Texas, about two hours south of Houston, hopes to start shipping gas by the end of next year. And Cheniere is banking on shipping more LNG out of its development in Corpus Christi, as the company's schedule puts Corpus Christi LNG shipments on the market sometime in 2018.
Cheniere told investors last month that the company and the industry as a whole underestimated the growth in global natural gas demand during 2017. Demand ebbed in Latin America and Europe but surged in Asia.
Demand growth in China is particularly strong. Chinese authorities are pushing to use more gas to replace coal to improve the nation's dismal air quality. The transition has been abrupt and is causing problems in East Asia's LNG market, with would-be importers in Japan moving to re-export LNG shipments to China instead. Many in China are being left in the cold as the scramble for gas continues, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.
Experts say that China imports around 27 million metric tons of LNG per year. As authorities there continue to shift that nation's energy mix away from coal, forecasters are expecting China's LNG demand to rise sharply, though the pace of growth is in dispute.
Analysts at the energy practice of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP predict China's LNG imports will significantly increase in the coming years. They say that switching just 5 percent of China's power requirements to LNG would see the nation adding the equivalent of another Japan in demand. Japan is the world's largest LNG importer, buying at least 80 million metric tons per year.
Dewhurst said major LNG supply growth from Australia and Qatar, currently the world's largest LNG exporters, won't be nearly enough to meet Asia's growing appetite for LNG. Nearly all demand growth in Asia is expected to come from China and to a lesser extent India. Analysts say the world's largest importers, Japan and South Korea, could see waning demand in the coming years because of creeping economic stagnation, negative population growth, and reliance on nuclear power and renewable energy.
For future U.S. LNG sales markets, "China is an obvious one," Dewhurst said. "They are very power and resource hungry, and continue to be. They are striving to produce energy domestically, now primarily through renewables, but they are very far short of meeting their internal demand, so LNG is a great solution for them."
Still, few are expecting a price surge for natural gas globally or domestically. U.S. LNG exporters will find customers but will likely be forced to sell at much lower prices than in the past. With several other LNG export platforms moving quickly to join the fray, global LNG is expected to be a buyers' market.
"The rise of natural gas demand continued during 2017, but it was overshadowed by continued low-cost supply growth from a number of regions, such as the United States, causing global pricing to remain relatively low," Deloitte energy research lead John England explained in a recent note.
"While the long-term growth of natural gas and LNG still seems likely," he said, "the economics of investment in LNG is more challenging than ever as long-term oil-linked contracts are replaced by shorter ones, based on a variety of natural gas indices, as buyers exert more leverage in the market."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069751
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Kinder Morgan Gives Go-Ahead for Permian Gas Project
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Jenny Mandel
Kinder Morgan Inc.'s Gulf Coast Express pipeline yesterday won an official green light from developers, laying the groundwork for construction to start next year on the $1.7 billion, 500-mile natural gas project.
Kinder Morgan has a 50 percent interest in the project and will build and operate the pipeline, which is slated to carry up to 1.92 billion cubic feet per day of gas from the Permian Basin to Agua Dulce, Texas. Denver-based DCP Midstream LP and Houston-based Targa Resources Corp. each holds 25 percent equity stakes.
Dubbed the GCX project, the Gulf Coast Express pipeline is geared to carry natural gas from the backlogged Permian formation to refineries and markets along the Texas coast.
Kinder Morgan says about 85 percent of the pipeline's capacity has been committed under long-term binding agreements with Apache Corp. and Pioneer Natural Resources Co., as well as with each of the three developers. It says it expects the remaining capacity to go under contract early next year.
As an intrastate pipeline, the project is not regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But permitting it will involve participation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers, as well as the Railroad Commission of Texas, Texas Historical Commission, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and Texas General Land Office, a spokeswoman for Kinder Morgan said. There are also potential consultations with Native American tribes, she added.
The spokeswoman said the company will begin acquiring rights of way for the project early next year. Kinder Morgan aims to begin construction in the first quarter of 2018 and put the pipeline in service in the second half of 2019.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069719
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Aramco Eyes U.S. Shale Acquisitions
Dec 22, 2017 | The Wall Street Journal (In E&E Greenwire)
By Sarah McFarlane and Summer Said
Aramco is exploring two separate acquisitions in U.S. shale, in what would be a watershed for Saudi Arabia and global markets as a whole.
The Saudi state oil firm has begun talks with Houston LNG developer Tellurian Inc. about either acquiring a stake or buying its fuel. It has also looked into buying assets in the Permian and Eagle Ford shale fields.
A hand in U.S. shale would mark a first for Aramco, which doesn't import or produce any oil or gas extracted outside Saudi Arabia. It might also make Aramco more attractive to investors, as it prepares for its initial public offering, and give it a better understanding of a U.S. industry that has eroded Saudi dominance.
"From a historical standpoint, it's striking," said Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. He added that it was "a reminder of how dramatic the impact of the shale revolution has been"
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069709
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Alaska Reserve Could Hold 8.7B Barrels of Oil — USGS
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Margaret Kriz Hobson
The U.S. Geological Survey today announced that the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska could hold a whopping 8.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 25 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, remarkably more resources than scientists predicted just seven years ago.
By contrast, the 2010 report concluded that a scant 900 million barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil could be found across the vast, 22.8-million-acre reserve, the nation's largest single block of public land.
That assessment was based on oil industry data indicating that the petroleum reserve's southwestern lands held more natural gas than oil.
The new USGS assessment is based on three oil discoveries that have been announced over the last two years.
Those leases, held by ConocoPhillips Alaska, Armstrong Energy LLC and Caelus Energy LLC, could hold more than 2.3 billion barrels of oil.
Scientists say those finds indicate the potential for large untapped oil accumulations in rock formations known as the Nanushuk and Torok formations.
However, the report warned that the estimates are associated with large ranges of uncertainty, a reflection of the immature stage of exploration for the geological formations.
The new assessment comes at a time when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is considering rewriting the management plan for NPR-A to allow oil and gas development in regions that are now off-limits due to their environmental importance.
The current integrated activity plan, issued in 2013, protects almost half the reserve for wildlife habitat and subsistence hunting. But oil companies are pushing for access to several key areas, particularly a protected region in the northeastern NPR-A known as the Teshekpuk Lake special area.
In preparation for drafting a new integrated activity plan, the Bureau of Land Management this summer asked the public to comment on which NPR-A lands should be available for oil leasing, including territories that are protected under the 2013 management plan.
In response, regulators received tens of thousands of widely varying comments, with some recommending even more aggressive land preservation policies, while others called for the entire petroleum reserve to be opened to oil drilling.
Meanwhile, the oil industry has shown limited interest in the NPR-A lands now available for exploration. Early this month, the federal government offered 1.4 million acres of petroleum reserve lands for oil and gas leasing — all of the lands currently open for development.
However, only seven bids were received, all of them from ConocoPhillips Alaska. In total, the company spent $1.1 million for 15,000 acres of lands adjacent to its existing oil operations in the reserve.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069807
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TSA to Expand Gas Pipeline CyberSecurity Oversight
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr and Blake Sobczak
The Transportation Security Administration has refreshed a 6-year-old set of pipeline security guidelines after lawmakers voiced concerns about its oversight of cybersecurity threats to natural gas networks, officials confirmed this week.
TSA said the new document, completed last month but still under review, will capture an "objective benchmark" of pipelines' cyber readiness by borrowing from a step-by-step security framework published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2014.
The changes do not include mandatory cybersecurity rules for gas companies. As the U.S. power grid increasingly relies on gas-fueled generation, regulators at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. have pressed for the gas industry to follow the same binding cybersecurity standards that apply to the high-voltage power grid.
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein defended her agency's voluntary approach, noting that it "continues to achieve desired results in protecting pipeline infrastructure."
The natural gas industry remains firmly opposed to mandatory federal cybersecurity rules, industry groups said in response to queries from E&E News. The industry also doesn't favor comprehensive voluntary benchmarking of the gas sector's cyber readiness, an issue raised this year by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The oversight of pipeline cybersecurity was raised by the outgoing Obama administration's Energy Department, which called for an audit of companies' defenses.
Industry groups cite new measures taken this year to strengthen defenses against cyber and physical attacks, such as agreements to share more cyberthreat information with the electric power sector.
Gas industry representatives also took part for the first time in the GridEx IV training exercise last month, which tested participants with a set of simulated cyber and armed assaults on U.S. electric networks. In the midst of the event, the "attackers" shifted targets, suddenly hitting compression stations that maintain flows of natural gas to power plants, factories and heating customers.
The inclusion of the natural gas infrastructure in the top-level biennial grid "war games" came at the end of a year of increased concern about the security of gas networks and other critical infrastructure sectors.
"We still don't have the metrics needed to measure the relative cybersecurity of our pipeline systems," Cantwell said at a Senate hearing in April, in an exchange with Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive of the American Gas Association. Cantwell asked McCurdy to work with the committee staff in exploring benchmarks.
Asked about that request, McCurdy cited "progress toward raising the overall cybersecurity readiness of our industry" through information-sharing efforts and best practices.
"Safety is a core value and our top priority," he said in a statement this week. "Our experience in this area has taught us that a proactive, collaborative, public/private partnership approach to cybersecurity more effectively supports a robust cybersecurity posture than a static regulatory checklist."
Representatives of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and the American Petroleum Institute did not specifically address the benchmarking question in response to E&E News emails.
"Pipeline operators use a number of tools and resources to assess and evaluate their security practices, including but not limited to the INGAA Control System Cyber Security Guidelines for the Natural Gas Pipeline Industry" and government voluntary best-practices guidelines, INGAA said in a statement. "In using these tools, operators strive for continuous improvement of their security practices," it said.
Adding the NIST Cybersecurity Framework into the mix could press pipeline operators to draft a "profile" of their defense capabilities, keying in on five areas: identifying cyberthreats, protecting against them, detecting hackers, and responding to and recovering from incidents.
How the framework will be applied and reviewed in practice remains to be seen. A special E&E News report in May found that TSA was critically understaffed in fulfilling its cybersecurity oversight responsibility for the gas pipeline network (Energywire, May 25).
Cantwell and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asked the Government Accountability Office in July to make an assessment of the cyber and physical security protections for natural gas, oil and other hazardous pipeline infrastructure, and gaps in policy that require attention. The GAO has not completed the work.
However, another GAO report this month found that TSA does not always align its surface transportation inspections — a category that includes gas pipelines — with the results of its risk assessments. The report declined to specify whether pipelines were one of the high-risk modes identified by TSA analysts, citing national security sensitivities.Finding a baseline
Power companies subject to the federal cyber regulations are given confidential NERC compliance audits by grid reliability coordinators. ReliabilityFirst Corp., which oversees 230 power industry companies and organizations in the Mid-Atlantic and eastern Great Lakes regions, said audits don't provide fail-safe assurance of top-level cybersecurity readiness, but they provide a baseline for assessments.
"Although compliance alone does not guarantee secure operations, an entity's failure to maintain baseline CIP compliance may be indicative of an entity struggling to ensure the security of its system," ReliabilityFirst said.
"The bottom line, I think we're seeing a maturation, seeing the [power] companies getting stronger in understanding the emerging threats and implementing programs to meet those challenges," Jason Blake, ReliabilityFirst's vice president and general counsel, told E&E News. "It's still developing. We don't want to open up the champagne too soon" (Energywire, May 17).
Threats of cyberattacks on all critical infrastructure sectors continue to increase in sophistication, experts agree.
Yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a proposed rule that would direct NERC to expand rules for mandatory reporting of cybersecurity incidents, to gain better warning against complex campaigns.
As the rules now stand, regulated utilities are required to report only attacks that succeed in disrupting or compromising critical operations.
The proposed rule would also require reporting of probes, surveillance scans and other intrusions that had no immediate impact, and attacks that did not succeed.
Researchers and utilities in the electric sector are working on a new system of voluntary cybersecurity benchmarks, of the kind Cantwell has asked about, that could be applied in the gas sector, its developers say.
Called the "Cyber Security Metrics for the Electric Sector," the 2-year-old research project is a high priority for the Electric Power Research Institute, said EPRI's Matt Wakefield, one of the project's leaders.
The goal is to use a detailed survey of utility cybersecurity policies and practices to quantify each participating company's performance and create an industrywide benchmark, Wakefield said.
"When one [utility] implements a new cyber security solution that costs $500,000, how can the value of the investment be correctly quantified? When a policy was changed to enforce more complex passwords, what is the incremental security value achieved through the change?" EPRI asked in a description of the project.
"Prior to this EPRI project, little had been done in the electric utility industry to gather and quantify measurable, relevant information in the cyber security area," EPRI said. "Systematically gathered historical data provide utilities with essential information for establishing realistic cyber security policies while identifying optimal security investment strategies. This study confirms the need for a set of metrics based on real-world data."
The project's promise is that a large response from utilities would create a baseline in each of the question areas, so that a utility could not only see where it performed well and not well, but also compare its results with industrywide averages.
The combination of looking at overall protection — threats, detection and response — will give a bigger picture of where the investments [in security] need to be, Wakefield said. More than 100 survey questions cover those three areas, including the number of confirmed cyber intrusion attempts per month and, among those, how many required human intervention; how many employees have access to cyber-sensitive systems; and the number of threat-hunting investigations per month, all related to a utility's size.
Some results are likely to be revealing. One utility that took a pilot test got a score of 6.2 out of 10 on questions measure its cybersecurity protections. "Their response was, 'I thought we would be better than that,'" Wakefield said. On the other hand, he said, "6.2 might be off-the-charts great." That won't be known until the data are available and analyzed.
Fourteen large U.S. utilities are testing the survey or participating in the project's working group. Documenting their experiences is a major goal for 2018, Wakefield said.
"Next year is going to be a key year, and we need a lot of success in improving how we collect the data and showing the value of the project. It would be nice to have some successes," he added.
Next year is also an opportunity to reach out to other infrastructure sectors, like gas, he said. Some of the EPRI program participants operate both electric power and natural gas systems, but at this stage, the gas side is not involved, Wakefield said. "I have not engaged personally with any of the pipeline organizations," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069743
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Interior Halts National Academies Study of Safety Program
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Nathaniel Gronewold
The Interior Department has ordered independent scientists to stop a study on its offshore drilling safety and inspection program, prompting condemnation from the researchers and advocacy groups.
Interior issued a directive earlier this month to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that research on offshore oil and gas safety be halted for 90 days.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement confirmed that Interior issued the halt-work order to the National Academies on Dec. 7. Interior will determine within the 90 days whether to lift the order or terminate the study.
The National Academies object to the move. "The National Academies are grateful to the committee members for their service and disappointed that their important study has been stopped," officials said in a statement.
The research project is titled "Review and Update of Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Offshore Oil and Gas Operations Inspection Program." Participants held a meeting Oct. 26 to discuss the safety and environmental management systems, or SEMS, developed following the fatal 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and oil spill, the worst in U.S. history.
BSEE spokeswoman Karla Marshall said in an email that the 90-day suspension is meant to ensure that National Academies researchers aren't duplicating work already underway within Interior. BSEE is constantly evaluating SEMS and other offshore safety and inspection programs along with the Coast Guard. The National Offshore Safety Advisory Committee (NOSAC), which includes BSEE and the Coast Guard, held its most recent public meeting in Houston on Dec. 12-13.
"As BSEE moves forward with implementing a risk-based inspection program to strengthen and improve its existing inspection program, the NAS study was paused by BSEE to allow time to ensure that there are no duplicate efforts," Marshall said. "The addition of a risk-based inspection component to BSEE's inspection program is focused on increasing the safety of offshore oil and gas operations. The work to develop the risk-based component is being done within BSEE and ongoing investigations will not be impacted."
Such ongoing investigations include a multiagency study into the catastrophic failure of subsea equipment bolts, a problem that could risk another oil spill. Regulators said at the recent Houston meeting that an initial draft report on the bolt failure investigation should be released by February. The National Academies are spearheading that investigation.
In addition to the academies' objection, other groups decried Interior's decision as an example of heavy-handed government intrusion into independent scientific research. It marks the second time Interior moved to stop National Academies research. In August, Interior ordered them to stop studying the health effects of living near coal mines in Appalachia, a decision the National Academies are still protesting as they seek possible private funding to continue investigating.
The Sierra Club's Gabby Brown said in an email that the move to stop the offshore SEMS program review was "concerning as they're about to release a plan to further expand offshore drilling." Sources say Interior's new proposal for a five-year offshore leasing program will likely be released for public comment in January.
The Union of Concerned Scientists was harsher in its condemnation of Interior's move. "This decision is an attack on science and an abdication of DOI's responsibilities," that organization said.
"As we saw from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, where 11 people lost their lives, offshore oil and gas operations come with significant risks to workers and to ocean ecosystems," Andrew Rosenberg, director of the UCS Center for Science and Democracy, said in a statement. "The Department of the Interior, whose job it is to make sure offshore drilling is safe, should welcome a serious investigation into the best way to carry out that job, especially as the administration pushes to expand drilling even further in the Atlantic and the Arctic. Instead, they're blocking research into the risks."
Federal regulators acknowledge that offshore safety has much room for improvement, more than eight years after the Macondo deepwater well blowout.
At the recent NOSAC gathering in Houston, BSEE and Coast Guard officials said they were determined to step up inspections of offshore oil and gas platforms and drilling rigs. Speakers said they are still encountering offshore crews who are alarmingly ill-prepared for another emergency, with some workers unable to properly maintain and launch lifeboats, while others didn't know how to operate fire suppression equipment (Energywire, Dec. 14).
BSEE and Coast Guard representatives at the meeting said that they held a record number of joint inspections in 2017, and that they may exceed that number in 2018.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069795
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Complications for Conservatives' Climate Wish List
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender and Scott Waldman
President Trump's conservative supporters took some knocks this week on the climate change front.
The effort to have a "red-team, blue-team" public debate on mainstream climate science is on hold for now, U.S. EPA is signaling plans to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, and top administration officials aren't showing an appetite to try to unravel the Obama-era endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, which underpins EPA's climate rules. Toppling that finding is the holy grail for some conservatives who want to make it as difficult as possible for Trump's successor to reconstruct climate rules similar to those the current administration is working to dismantle.
But some conservatives pushing for drastic reforms say they aren't sweating it — yet.
"In my view, this is just year one, and you don't have to win every battle or start every battle simultaneously; sometimes it's better to sequence what you do and win things that are winnable first and build on those," said Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Among the wins for the right this year are Trump's announcement that the United States will exit the Paris climate accord and EPA's proposal to ax the Clean Power Plan, President Obama's signature climate change rule.
Lewis said conservatives are also particularly optimistic about the administration's rapid pace to roll back government regulations, which the administration has described as more than 20 rules removed or challenged for every one added. Lewis said the repeals are just the "tip of the iceberg."
Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told lawmakers during a hearing that he hoped his agency could kick off a red-team climate science debate as early as January. But after a White House meeting last week involving top Trump advisers and EPA officials, that idea has been "put on hold," a source familiar with the meeting told E&E News (Climatewire, Dec. 15).
H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow on environmental policy for the conservative Heartland Institute, is among those advocating for a red team. He's still optimistic.
"We heard they were about to do something, then we heard it's been put on hold," he said. "I heard that same back-and-forth before Trump pulled us out of the Paris climate accord.
"In the end, it always comes down to Trump. His people are going to make recommendations, and he is the final decider on these issues," Burnett said. "I'm not convinced that they're going to not go forward with the red-team, blue-team concept." He added, "I'd like to see it more immediate," but Trump is "going to make those decisions on his timeline."
The president has privately expressed support for the red team, but there's infighting about how or whether it should happen (Climatewire, Dec. 11).
Lewis said there's some disappointment among conservatives that the Trump administration hasn't yet taken on the endangerment finding, which could be used by a future administration to build back the climate regulations Pruitt is now removing. But he thinks such pessimism is misplaced, because there are plenty of other areas where regulations can be targeted in the next year. Some of those changes could even have a greater impact, he said, such as a replacement of the Clean Power Plan.
"There are some folks on our side who are too pessimistic about that, unless we win on the endangerment finding, all is lost or will be soon," Lewis said. "I think that's not the case; we can still win some important victories that are durable. We may not win everything."
This week, EPA released a notice asking for comment on a possible replacement for the Clean Power Plan. The agency indicated that it may not replace the rule at all, but the administration appears to be leaning toward a replacement that's much narrower than Obama's regulation. Many business groups have opposed the Clean Power Plan, but want the Trump administration to put something in its place. EPA said last week in a regulatory planning document that it plans to release a proposed replacement rule in June 2018.
"I don't want a rule to replace it; I think it's stupid to have a rule to replace it," said Burnett. "It's not clear to me that they've really thought it through that much."
Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who directed Trump's EPA transition team, said he isn't worried about the administration's recent moves on climate change.
"There are various ways to accomplish the same things," he said.
As for the Clean Power Plan replacement, Ebell said the notice leaves EPA with options, even though it appears as though the administration favors an "inside the fence line" replacement rule that targets emission reductions at individual facilities.
"I don't think the way they've gone about it so far precludes going farther than an inside-the-fence rule," Ebell said. "I don't think it precludes replacing the so-called Clean Power Plan with no rule at all." He added, "They've invited comments, so let's see how persuasive we can be."
The Trump administration has delivered, or largely delivered, on its environmental and regulatory promises, said Pat Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the libertarian Cato Institute.
He said his hope for next year is that Pruitt will expand on his recent decision to force out members of EPA's science advisory boards who receive grants from the agency. That could result in greater changes than the ones Pruitt has brought to the agency over the last year, he said. He expects regulatory rollbacks and changes at EPA to happen at a slower pace in 2018 because the agency will focus on the harder issues to tackle, such as the endangerment finding. That's reflective of Pruitt's careful and lawyerly pace, Michaels said.
"I think if they chose to really go into depth before they make a strong decision one way or another on important things like the endangerment finding, it might appear to be slow, but it seems to me the action plan is deliberate and careful," he said. "I mean, you certainly don't hear Pruitt making wild statements, and does he tweet?"
Pruitt does have an official EPA Twitter account, which is often used to recap agency announcements and post photos of his activities. He has about 43,000 followers. Trump has about 45 million Twitter followers.
Some of Trump's critics, meanwhile, see the administration's latest moves as an indication that conservatives are unlikely to get all they're asking for.
John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean air program, said the administration is faced with an endangerment finding "that would prove impossible to overturn in the courts due to overwhelming scientific support, a need for CO2 regulations for power plants that flows from that endangerment finding and a lot of political posturing and flailing in the face of those first two realities."
Of a public climate science debate — which Pruitt has suggested could be aired on television — Walke said that "it's unclear to outside observers why there is an impasse over the red-team, blue-team reality-TV charade. Are there adults in the White House who recognize how foolhardy it is? Is it safe to fall back on inaction in December until decisions are made in the new year?"
"We don't know the answers to those questions," he said, "but so long as there are rational minds and smart lawyers in the administration — which there are — who understand that the endangerment finding will not be overturned successfully, then the red-team, blue-team exercise is just a political charade for the far right."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069761
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EPA Weighs GHG Rule, Wants Public Input
Dec 22, 2017 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Charlie Passut
Days after unveiling a blueprint for rolling back several Obama-era regulations into 2018 and beyond, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is considering a future rule to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing power plants, and it wants public input into what its role -- and the role of state regulatory agencies -- should be.
In an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) issued Monday, the EPA said that while it has proposed an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the agency also "continues to consider the possibility of replacing certain aspects of the CPP in coordination with a proposed revision." Public input would get to the heart of "what the EPA should include" in a future proposed rulemaking, "including comments on aspects of the states' and the EPA's role in that process."
The Trump administration first targeted the CPP last March, when the president issued an executive order calling for, among other things, a review of the CPP. EPA followed up with an announcement in October that it would ultimately repeal the CPP. Last week, a biannual plan listing hundreds of rules in various stages of rulemaking at many federal agencies, including the EPA, showed a final rule to repeal the CPPis set for next October.
Trump, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, GOP and energy industry allies have been critical of several actions taken during the Obama administration on climate change, including the use of the "social cost of carbon" methodology for crafting regulation. They have also taken issue with the Obama regime using a 2007 court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, as the basis for regulating GHG emissions, specifically, through Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act.
According to the EPA, 150 entities have filed legal challenges to the CPP, including 27 states, 24 trade associations, 37 rural electric cooperatives and three labor unions.
"Consistent with our commitment to the rule of law, we've already set in motion an assessment of the previous administration's questionable legal basis in our proposed repeal of the CPP," said Pruitt. "With a clean slate, we can now move forward to provide regulatory certainty.
"Today's move ensures adequate and early opportunity for public comment from all stakeholders about next steps the agency might take to limit GHG from stationary sources, in a way that properly stays within the law, and the bounds of the authority provided to EPA by Congress."
EPA plans to accept public comments on the ANPRM for 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112840-epa-weighs-ghg-rule-wants-public-input
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Supreme Court Poised to Decide on Whether to Hear Key Air Act Appeal
Dec 22, 2017 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss & Stuart Parker
The Supreme Court could decide as soon as Jan. 5 whether to take up either of two high-profile Clean Air Act cases that EPA has urged it to reject, including one testing whether courts can enforce the agency's duty to review air policies' effects on jobs, and another over states' ability to use preexisting “contingency measures” to meet air quality standards.
Recent docket entries for the contingency measures case Arizona v. Sandra L. Bahr, et al., and the jobs review case Murray Energy, et al., v. EPA note that both have been calendared for the high court's Jan. 5 conference -- its first meeting in 2018 to consider pending petitions for certiorari.
Orders accepting or rejecting the cases could come as early as that afternoon, though the justices often wait for the following Monday -- which would be Jan. 8 -- to release their decisions.
Both appeals involve citizen suits under the Clean Air Act that EPA opposed in district and circuit courts. EPA is hoping to preserve an appellate victory in Murray, but is also opposing high court review of Arizona even though it and the state were on the losing end of that case -- a move Arizona claims is a strategic ploy to contain the effects of an adverse ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and not risk a nationwide decision that would call existing air cleanup plans into question.
Arizona's case tests whether states can rely on preexisting “contingency measures” aimed at meeting federal air quality standards, or whether they must craft entirely new pollution controls.
In the suit, Arizona is asking the high court to review a decision by the 9th Circuit that bars considering such early steps as contingency measures. The appeals court founds that steps Arizona has already taken to mitigate coarse particulate matter, such as paving dirt roads, cannot satisfy the air law requirement for contingency steps that must apply when certain deadlines to attain national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) are missed. Arizona says this serves as a “perverse incentive” for states to delay measures to clean up the air.
At the appeals court level, EPA supported Arizona against the litigation, brought by Arizona citizens, but has declined to support the state's cert petition. The agency claims that the case is an unsuitable vehicle for high court review and the 9th Circuit decision does not present any “unmanageable practical difficulties.”
But Arizona disagrees, asserting a circuit split with the 5th Circuit over that court's 2004 ruling in Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) v. EPA. In that case, the 5th Circuit allowed contingency measures to meet ozone NAAQS to stand, under slightly different circumstances.
Arizona in a Dec. 18 brief in Bahr says the case warrants review because of the circuit split, but also because of the great significance of states' efforts to meet NAAQS. The state says that more than 24 state implementation plans from 15 states have employed early implemented contingency measures.
The state argues that EPA's true goal in changing its position is to restrict the application of the 9th Circuit's ruling to the part of the country under that court's jurisdiction, in line with the agency's “regional consistency” policy. The 9th Circuit covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The policy allows the agency to pursue different policies in different judicial circuits. Leaving the 9th Circuit ruling in place would avoid the possibility of an adverse ruling for EPA by the high court with nationwide application, Arizona alleges.
Jobs Reviews
Meanwhile, in Murray, coal sector plaintiffs are hoping the Supreme Court will overturn a 4th Circuit decision that held the air law's jobs-review duty to be too broad to enforce through a citizen suit, which it said is meant for “discrete” responsibilities instead of programmatic ones.
The companies say EPA has long neglected its statutory duty under section 321(a) of the air law to perform “continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result” from air rules and their implementation, and is seeking a court order forcing it to conduct those studies, with an enforceable deadline.
While Murray is hoping that the studies will bolster its push for deregulation, a ruling for the coal firms could also be useful to environmentalists who could sue EPA over what they see as an unlawful pattern of regulatory rollbacks, rather than targeting discrete, individual actions. For instance, Department of Justice environment chief Jeffrey Wood said in comments to reporters earlier this year that EPA is continuing to fight the suit in part because if Murray succeeds the precedent would provide a new tool for environmental groups to block the administration's agenda.
A federal district judge backed Murray's claims, but that decision was overturned when a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit held that the air law was so vague on when and how EPA should perform those studies that the mandate cannot be enforced through citizen suits.
Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Henry Floyd said EPA has “considerable discretion in managing its Section 321(a) duty. The agency gets to decide how to collect a broad set of employment data, how to judge and examine this extensive data, and how to manage these tasks on an ongoing basis. A court is ill-equipped to supervise this continuous, complex process."
Murray and its allies are saying that the 4th Circuit's decision unduly limits citizen suits and allows EPA to escape the jobs-review mandate indefinitely, but the agency has countered that allowing citizen suits over vaguely defined mandates like section 321(a) would force judges to micro-manage its operations, contrary to the intent of Congress.
Moreover, EPA recently declared that it will pursue a jobs study voluntarily. However, Murray continues to press the suit, saying that it will only be satisfied with an enforceable deadline instead of a voluntary commitment.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069803
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Lawmakers' Cap-and-Trade Proposals Unveiled
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Greenwire
By Debra Kahn
Oregon lawmakers are gearing up to enact a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases later this winter that would be compatible with the regional market already underway in California and Canadian provinces.
Yesterday, state lawmakers released fleshed-out proposals for a market that would reduce businesses' emissions 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2035.
Gov. Kate Brown (D) and Democratic legislative leaders, who control the state House and Senate, have labeled the legislation a priority for next year's shortened session in Salem, the state capital (Climatewire, Nov. 29). They intend to discuss the bills at a Jan. 10 hearing, ahead of the state's monthlong legislative session that begins Feb. 6. The cap-and-trade market would begin two to three years after a bill is passed.
Observers are optimistic that Oregon has laid the groundwork to pass a bill in 2018. Expectations are lower for neighboring Washington, where Gov. Jay Inslee's (D) existing greenhouse gas regulations were dealt a blow last week by a court decision limiting his executive authority (Climatewire, Dec. 20). Inslee said he would work to pass a carbon tax in his state's two-month legislative session, which begins Jan. 8.
"It's definitely fair to say that Oregon is really well-situated to get this done," said Noah Long, legal director for Western energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Washington, I'd say, has a steeper hill to climb for a short session."
The bills are largely modeled on California's system, with some variations around the amount of allowances that are distributed to businesses for free and the amount of carbon offsets that would be permitted to substitute for allowances. They reserve the first 15 percent of auction proceeds annually for a "just transition" fund for workers in affected industries. Another 60 percent would go to disadvantaged communities that suffer disproportionately from direct pollution and are projected to cope poorly with climate change.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069755
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It's Almost Over. Here's What Happened in '17
Dec 22, 2017 | E&E Climatewire
By Zach Colman
Well, we did it. We're about to make it through 2017.
To say some unexpected things happened this year is an understatement.
Who would have thought coal would rebound to have one of its best years in recent memory? Or that a guy who sued U.S. EPA 14 times would be running it? Or that of the nearly 200 countries in the Paris climate accord, only the United States would signal its intent to leave?
Those drastic changes to the trajectory of climate politics are having some unforeseen consequences.
States are now asserting their climate bona fides and other nations have doubled down on their resolve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — at least in rhetoric and commitments. When natural disasters hit the United States this summer, society and media began asking tough questions about the role of rising temperatures. And career bureaucrats, perhaps emboldened by sentiment in the streets, have pushed back against what they see as abuses of power.
So lots happened this year. Now we're tying a bow on it just in time for the holidays. Below are five big themes in energy, environment and climate.
Coal first!
Coal was dead. The war was lost.
Then President Trump and a fortuitous forecast came.
"Certainly what's happened to coal, the rebound I would say, and the support from the administration is one of the most significant energy stories we've seen in the past couple years," said Luke Popovich, a spokesman with the National Mining Association.
Popovich said the administration's posture has given the industry hope. But he acknowledged much of coal's surge is owed to forces beyond the White House's control. Demand in Asia has boomed at just the right time for Trump.
That said, the administration has taken action to support coal's uptick.
Early on, the administration reversed a rule issued late in former President Obama's second term that tightened regulations on coal mining that polluted waterways. It gutted the Clean Power Plan, Obama's signature domestic climate change policy that targeted a 32 percent reduction in power plant carbon dioxide emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. It also ended a moratorium on leasing coal on federal lands while simultaneously scrapping a rule that sought to end a practice that some said allowed companies to pay less than their fair share of royalties on mined federal coal.
And, perhaps most audaciously, the Energy Department has floated a proposed rule to incentivize coal and nuclear power plants for keeping fuel stored on site to bolster grid resilience. Critics have labeled this the most brazen attempt to aid coal, saying the idea is a solution in search of a problem.
"It's a huge bailout for the coal and the nuclear industry in which we've been fighting against for many years now," Nick Loris, an energy economist at the Heritage Foundation, said in a recent interview.
Isolation
After helping shepherd the Paris climate accord into being, the United States is now an international pariah after Trump said he would leave the global pact. While the United States can't officially leave the agreement until November 2020, other nations have given Trump the cold shoulder.
The coolness runs so deep that French President Emmanuel Macron didn't invite Trump to the One Planet Summit in Paris to mark the two-year anniversary of the accord. As nations met there, the Trump administration telegraphed its plan to form a pro-coal bloc of nations called the "Clean Coal Alliance" — coming on the heels of a Trump administration event at the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany, that promoted coal, natural gas and nuclear — shoving a proverbial finger in the eye of those assembled in Paris.
At the same time, states have stepped up to fill the White House void. Democratic Govs. Jerry Brown of California and Jay Inslee of Washington have become synonymous with U.S. climate policy. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg also has taken a more prominent role. And Trump's anti-climate swagger has ricocheted by reinforcing the resolve of other nations.
"There are now governors, premiers and mayors as well as corporate leaders in our country and across the world who are carrying forward their climate commitment really without regard to what Donald Trump is saying," Daniel Esty, a professor of forestry and environmental studies at Yale University, said in a recent interview. "And I really think that's the great strength of the structure of the Paris Agreement. And that no matter what Trump and his team in Washington say, the people of America will move forward."
Nature
Devastating hurricanes and wildfires have wrought untold destruction and death from the West Coast to the West Indies. In Puerto Rico, much of the island is still without power. In California, residents there are still breathing toxins thrown into the air by raging wildfires. In Texas, people are trying to put their lives and their homes back together.
Most climate scientists avoid linking specific incidents to climate change, but they contend that a warmer planet makes those occurrences likelier. The Trump administration and many Republicans, though, have been unwilling to discuss the fingerprint of climate change in these events.
At the same time, his team has pursued policies that would increase greenhouse gas emissions and threaten ecosystems through measures to expand fossil fuel production. The opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the pristine Alaska wilderness that's been a battleground on environmental campaigns for four decades, underscored the lengths to which Trump and the GOP have embraced their energy production push.
The broader public has engaged the conversation in a sort of reckoning with how our planet is changing in response to rising temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions. The National Climate Assessment, a study produced by the federal government published in November, confirmed that humans are overwhelmingly responsible for recent warming.
And yet the Trump administration, despite issuing numerous scientific reports that document a planet riven by climate change, has refused to make those links.
"The President's continued intransigence on climate change, especially in light of these monster storms, is more likely to convince people that the President is out of touch with reality than it is to convince people that the changing climate is no big deal," Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication, said in a recent email.
Silence
Even as natural disasters tore through the nation, Trump officials refused to answer questions about whether climate change played a role.
At EPA, a political official sorted through grants looking for the word "climate." The agency has barred some government scientists from speaking about climate change research at conferences.
The Interior Department intervened to ensure two specific officials wouldn't accompany Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on a trip to Glacier National Park out of fear climate change would emerge as a discussion topic. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke berated a national parks employee for tweeting about climate change.
Climate change has disappeared from social media accounts across most of the federal government. Websites make nary a mention of it. Climate data have been moved around or hidden altogether.
But still, the Trump administration is producing climate change studies, even if it would rather avoid publicizing them.
"If there was an alternative explanation [for climate change], we would have found it by now," Don Wuebbles, a University of Illinois atmospheric scientist who led a special science report for the most recent National Climate Assessment, said in a recent interview. "The fact is there isn't another explanation."
Scott Pruitt
From the moment of the EPA administrator's confirmation, it was clear Scott Pruitt would be taking the agency in a very different direction from his predecessor.
Known primarily for his prior lawsuits against the agency he was selected to lead, Pruitt made it clear EPA would no longer push for climate action. To many, it's an abdication of authority over a defining environmental problem. To conservatives, though, it's a refocusing on core agency responsibilities (read: not greenhouse gas emissions) and restraining government intervention.
"Previous administrators have been the token moderate Republican," said Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. "It's been someone who's less focused on core Republican principles, if you will. President Trump certainly broke the mold when he nominated Scott Pruitt, but symbolically and substance-wise, there couldn't have been a better pick."
Pruitt played a key role in orchestrating Trump's decision to step away from the Paris accord. He has publicly proclaimed doubts about the extent of humans' effect on global warming and recruited staff and consulted outside groups who shared his views. He banned scientists who received EPA grants from participating on agency advisory boards — some replacements have been critical of mainstream climate science.
Regulatory changes have been plentiful, the most notable being the shearing of the Clean Power Plan. EPA began delaying implementation or seeking comment on changes to a host of climate regulations on power plants, automobiles, trucking, landfills, and the oil and gas industry. Some have questioned how much Pruitt's EPA was enforcing the regulations still on the books.
Even with all this activity, the agency was still limited in its actions during the administration's first year. There have been numerous reports of conflicts between new political appointees and career staff. By the end of the year, EPA headquarters still had only four Senate-approved political appointees, along with the administrator, to enact the administration's new focus.
"I would be the last one to say EPA is perfect and we shouldn't try to reform it, make government work better," Bill Ruckelshaus, EPA's first-ever administrator under President Nixon and then again under President Reagan, said in a recent interview. "But we're not trying to do that. We're trying to dismantle government."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/12/22/stories/1060069731
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