Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 1/2/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) 7 Ways to Save on Food
Jan 1, 2018 | Palestine Herald-Press
Food is a necessity and an expense that simply cannot be avoided. A 2012 Gallup poll found that Americans reported spending $151 on food per week -
Election Year Politics Leaves Low Expectations for Energy Policy
Jan 2, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
Ethanol mandates, energy tax credits and EPA funding are among the issues fighting for attention as Republicans begin their second year with unified control of the government. -
The Trump Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings
Jan 1, 2018 | New York Times
By Binyamin Appelbaum and Jim Tankersley
A wave of optimism has swept over American business leaders, and it is beginning to translate into the sort of investment in new plants, equipment and factory upgrades that bolsters economic growth, spurs job creation — and may finally raise wages significantly. -
Researchers Tout Safer Alternative to Potentially Deadly Paint Stripper Chemical
Jan 2, 2018 | CBS
An alternative to a potentially deadly chemical found in common paint strippers is facing hurdles to reach consumers. CBS News' Anna Werner reported last month on the deaths of dozens of people who used methylene chloride. The EPA indefinitely postponed a ban on that chemical last month... -
US EPA Reports Receiving 51 PMNs in October
Jan 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US EPA received 51 pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) in October. -
Eu Gives Go Ahead to Three Authorisation Applications
Jan 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has granted authorisations for three substances, two chromates and a solvent. The decisions, taken on 15 December, were all for listed substances of very high concern (SVHCs) under REACH Annex XIV. -
Free Trade Has Been a Boon for Energy Independence
Jan 1, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Merrill Matthews
As turbulent as Donald Trump’s political career has been thus far, he has always been consistent about two things: First, that the U.S. should aggressively pursue energy independence; second, that the U.S. is getting short shrift on its trade deals... -
Proposed Changes to Offshore Drilling Rules Raise Safety Questions
Jan 1, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Ted Mann
The Trump administration’s proposed changes to offshore oil-drilling rules are raising fundamental questions over whether safety regulators at the Interior Department should also be concerned with promoting oil and gas production.
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(ACC Mentioned) 7 Ways to Save on Food
Jan 1, 2018 | Palestine Herald-Press
Food is a necessity and an expense that simply cannot be avoided. A 2012 Gallup poll found that Americans reported spending $151 on food per week. Around one in 10 said they spent $300 or more per week, and those with higher incomes tend to spend more on weekly food bills than people who earn less.
Compounding high food bills is the fact that people tend to waste food. According to the American Chemistry Council, roughly 80 billion pounds of food are thrown out every year in the United States. Britons throw away around seven million tons of food and drink per year, says BBC Good Food.
Saving money on food may seem challenging, but it doesn't have to be. With some smart strategies, individuals can reduce their food budgets and still have enough to eat.
1. Store food properly. Pay attention to the correct ways to store food, including promptly refrigerating or freezing items to prevent spoiling.
2. Do your own work. Prepackaged, presliced, or preportioned foods take longer for manufacturers to prepare, and those costs are passed on to consumers. Separating foods oneself and putting them into manageable portions may take a little time, but the savings for consumers could be considerable.
3. Buy in bulk when it makes sense. Bulk warehouse stores can make it easier to stock up on essentials. But they also can entice people to buy items they really do not need. Consumers should only purchase items that make fiscal sense or ones that cannot be purchased elsewhere for less. Always compare the price per weight or per unit when shopping.
4. Stock up on staples. Be on the lookout for sales on items used frequently, particularly staples that can be stored away. Watch for low prices on coffee, oils and canned goods, stocking up when such items go on sale.
5. Embrace dried and canned beans. Beans offer filling fiber and protein for relatively little cost. They also can be added to meat or vegetable recipes to bulk up dishes.
6. Plan ahead. Planning ahead can save big bucks. Peruse sales before leaving the house and spend time visiting a few different stores to save more money. Make use of store coupon apps to preload savings that can be used at checkout.
7. Explore frugal recipes. Skipping meat or other expensive items once in awhile can help reduce food bills. Save expensive items for treats, which can make you appreciate them that much more. The same concept can be used for dining out.
It is relatively easy to save money on the cost of food when consumers make a commitment to being more frugal.
http://www.palestineherald.com/community/ways-to-save-on-food/article_131255fc-ee79-11e7-9e36-eb31f7089816.html
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Election Year Politics Leaves Low Expectations for Energy Policy
Jan 2, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
Ethanol mandates, energy tax credits and EPA funding are among the issues fighting for attention as Republicans begin their second year with unified control of the government.
But first, Congress has less than three weeks to avoid a government shutdown. Passing a yearlong spending bill by Jan. 19 will be lawmakers' top priority, and President Donald Trump has lofty plans for a major infrastructure bill to follow his first significant legislative achievement, the tax law he signed last month.
Republicans have some ideas about overhauling major environmental statutes and grand compromises, but it remains to be seen whether any turn into actual policy victories.
Momentum for heavy legislative lifts tends to wither during election years — not to mention if the political climate worsens for Republicans — and several senior GOP lawmakers weren’t able to articulate specific goals for 2018.
“Let’s get through this year first,” Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso said when asked before the holiday break what his committee hoped to accomplish in the coming year.
As Congress settles in, here’s six things to look for from lawmakers on the energy and environment front this year.
1. Pursuit of a 'win-win' grand RFS compromise
Oil- and coal-state Republicans start 2018 engaged in talks with the White House in hopes of reaching a grand bargain that would rein in high prices of credits needed to comply with the Renewable Fuel Standard, while maintaining the integrity of the underlying program. Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are seeking a deal on behalf of refiners in their states, though Cruz’s initial pitch to the White House of capping the biofuels credits, also known as Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, at 10 cents per gallon, landed with a thud.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, an ally of biofuels producers, plans to meet with several senators on the issue after the holidays, but he was unwilling to tip his hand. “I don’t want to talk about it, because we’ll be negotiating in the press,” Grassley told POLITICO. Some observers remain skeptical such a “win-win” agreement can be found, noting similar efforts have come up short multiple times previously. "Corn-state stakeholders still lack a compelling reason to come to the table," Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, said.
It’s a high-stakes battle for both sides. Last fall, Cruz placed a hold on USDA nominee Bill Northey, who’s expected to play a key role in negotiating this year’s farm bill, and continues to block him even after meeting Trump on the issue. But the Texan halted the nomination only after Sen. Joni Ernst temporarily blocked EPA air chief Bill Wehrum’s nomination and won concessions from the agency not to make changes to the RFS. With their narrow 51-49 margin in the chamber this year, small blocs of oil- or corn-state Republicans could wreak havoc on their own party’s agenda this year if they don’t get their way.
Negotiations over potential RFS reform continue in the House as well where House Energy and Commerce Environment Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus hopes to move some sort of legislative package this year. But, in spite of months of behind-the-scenes talks about the issue, he said reaching agreement would remain an uphill climb. “It’s hard. It’s always been hard,” he told POLITICO. “It’s just, how many things can you juggle at one time?”
2. More agency funding fights
Congress left town after passing a short-term spending patch for federal agencies through Jan. 19, but they’ll have to almost immediately figure out where to set spending levels for EPA and the departments of Energy and Interior. The Trump administration pushed deep cuts to those agencies in its fiscal 2018 budget, but even most congressional Republicans seemed cool to many of those such as trimming EPA by an additional third. More than 40 Senate Democrats sent a letterurging the removal of any anti-environmental riders from spending legislation back in December, so look for a similar push to emerge this month as well.
Senate Appropriators have released legislation covering EPA and Interior that would spend $32.6 billion in fiscal 2018, roughly $5.3 billion above what the administration requested. House lawmakers cleared their $31.4 billion version back in September as part of a broader spending package, H.R. 3354 (115). Both measures avoid the deepest cuts by Trump but contain riders deemed unworkable by Democrats.
3. Tax extenders and energy legislation
Before breaking for the holidays, Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch unveiled legislation extending or expanding just about every energy credit imaginable. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady vowed to explore a strategy for moving the extenders package early this year but comes starting off as “the chairman who doesn't want to do extenders.”
The Senate bill contains a smorgasbord of renewable energy credits long sought by various industries. Chief among them are a nuclear tax credit extension, an expansion of the carbon capture tax credit and the biodiesel blenders credit. But the package would also extend incentives through 2018 for biodiesel blenders, cellulosic biofuel producers, fuel cells, energy efficient homes, energy efficient commercial buildings, small wind, two-wheeled electric scooters, solar water heaters, geothermal heat pumps, and coal production on Indian land.
4. Infrastructure packaging
Trump plans to start off the year pushing a lengthy statement of infrastructure "principles" that’s expected to call for as much as $200 billion in federal spending over the next decade. Surface transportation and water infrastructure authorization laws are set to expire next year, providing a possible starting point for a legislative push. And some see that as an opportunity to advance energy priorities.
“It’s a good context to revisit things like siting, permitting, certainly some of the export terminal issues,” Rep. Kevin Cramer, who advised Trump on energy issues during his campaign, told POLITICO.
Others see the still-evolving infrastructure package as a moment to push new investments in drinking water infrastructure, as well as efforts to address coastal erosion.
5. New nomination dynamics
With Republicans' Senate majority falling to 51-49 once Alabama Democrat Doug Jones is sworn in, confirming Trump's nominees will get even tougher. Just two GOP defections would kill a selection (and just one Republican “no” would force Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie). “Whether it’s any of our [nominees] or just generally, when you’ve got a closer margin some of these are perhaps going to be a bit more difficult,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Lisa Murkowski said.
There will likely be several early tests of whether Republicans can hold their caucus in line to approve controversial nominees. Chief among them will likely be Kathleen Hartnett White’s selection to run the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Democrats forced the Senate to return her nomination to the White House at the end of the year, forcing the process to start anew. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins has already expressed concerns about her dismissal of climate science, and Democrats believe they may be able to convince other GOP senators to buck the nominee too.
Renominating White also could complicate things for Andrew Wheeler, who has been nominated to be EPA deputy administrator. "If the administration wants to continue to push hard on [White's] nomination, I think it makes progress on Andy Wheeler more difficult," top Senate EPW Democrat Tom Carper said before the holidays.
6. More ambitious energy or environmental bills?
Republican chairmen talked an ambitious agenda of environmental statute overhauls last year, but it remains to be seen whether they turn that lofty rhetoric into actual legislation this year. Furthest along the path is House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop, who has already unveiled a broad overhaul of the Antiquities Act and intends to tackle a Land and Water Conservation Fund bill as well. Senior House Energy and Commerce member Joe Barton has been working on a DOE reauthorization package, but his unexpected retirementannouncement may pump the brakes on those efforts.
Across the way, Barrasso vowed to overhaul the Endangered Species Act as chairman and held a number of hearings on the topic last year, so is expected to produce some sort of legislation along this year. But it’s worth noting none of these efforts have included Democratic participation, which would be needed to get any of the measures out of the tightly-divided Senate.
Murkowski and ranking member Maria Cantwell unveiled their energy legislation, S. 1460 (115), in June that is nearly a carbon copy of a version that garnered more than 80 votes last Congress, and the Alaskan vowed to make moving it an early priority of 2018. “That’s first up because we’re ready to go,” Murkowski told reporters before the holidays. Across the Capitol, Bishop is pushing his own bill, H.R. 4239 (115), which he expects to be “on the floor in the first part of January” so both chambers “can actually go to conference on it.”
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/01/election-year-politics-leaves-low-expectations-for-energy-policy-256148
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The Trump Effect: Business, Anticipating Less Regulation, Loosens Purse Strings
Jan 1, 2018 | New York Times
By Binyamin Appelbaum and Jim Tankersley
A wave of optimism has swept over American business leaders, and it is beginning to translate into the sort of investment in new plants, equipment and factory upgrades that bolsters economic growth, spurs job creation — and may finally raise wages significantly.
While business leaders are eager for the tax cuts that take effect this year, the newfound confidence was initially inspired by the Trump administration’s regulatory pullback, not so much because deregulation is saving companies money but because the administration has instilled a faith in business executives that new regulations are not coming.
“It’s an overall sense that you’re not going to face any new regulatory fights,” said Granger MacDonald, a home builder in Kerrville, Tex. “We’re not spending more, which is the main thing. We’re not seeing any savings, but we’re not seeing any increases.”
The applause from top executives has been largely reserved for the administration’s economic policy agenda. Many chief executives have been publicly critical of President Trump’s approach to social and cultural issues, including his response to a white nationalist march over the summer in Charlottesville, Va., that turned deadly and his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. Two of the business advisory councils that Mr. Trump assembled in the nascent days of his presidency disbanded after executives grew concerned about his public remarks on the violence in Charlottesville.
There is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to growth. Regulatory proponents say, in fact, that those rules can have positive economic effects in the long run, saving companies from violations that could cost them both financially and reputationally. Cost-benefit analyses generally do not look just at the impact of a regulation on a particular business’s bottom line in the coming months, but at the broader impact on consumers, the environment, public health and other factors that can show up over years or decades.
But in the administration and across the business community, there is a perception that years of increased environmental, financial and other regulatory oversight by the Obama administration dampened investment and job creation — and that Mr. Trump’s more hands-off approach has unleashed the “animal spirits” of companies that had hoarded cash after the recession of 2008.
Some businesses will essentially be able to get away with shortcuts that they could not have under a continuation of Obama-era policies. The coal industry, for instance, will not have to worry about a regulation, overturned by Congress and Mr. Trump, that would have protected streams from mining runoff.
Brett Hartl, the government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Trump administration might avoid big-splash regulatory rollbacks this year and instead would make it harder for federal agencies to block business expansion.
“It’s not going to be sexy things like ‘We’re killing the Clean Power Plan,’” Mr. Hartl said, referring to the Obama-era rule aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. “But you can make it systematically harder for an agency to do the right thing.”
Only a handful of the federal government’s reams of rules have actually been killed or slated for elimination since Mr. Trump took office. But the president has declared that rolling back regulations will be a defining theme of his presidency. On his 11th day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order “on reducing regulation and controlling regulatory costs,” including the stipulation that any new regulation must be offset by two regulations rolled back.
That intention and its rhetorical and regulatory follow-ons have executives at large and small companies celebrating. And with tax cuts coming and a generally improving economic outlook, both domestically and internationally, economists are revising growth forecasts upward for last year and this year.
Even before it became clear that Republicans would pass a major tax cut, capital spending had risen significantly, climbing at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent during the first three quarters of last year. Surveys of planned spending also show increases.
Mr. Trump bragged in a news conference last month that he has rolled back 22 regulations for every new one — 67 deregulatory actions, versus three new regulations. Often in conjunction with the Republican Congress, his administration has canceled several rules approved at the end of the President Barack Obama’s term, including a regulation on limiting mining debris in streams, a requirement that broadband providers obtain permission from customers to collect and use online information, and a ban on plastic bottles in national parks.
Administration officials said last month that, since January 2017, federal agencies have delayed, withdrawn or made inactive nearly 1,600 planned regulatory actions. Further rollbacks will affect financial services as well as energy and labor rules, among others.
And Mr. Trump has appointed outspoken critics of regulation to lead several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The evidence is weak that regulation actually reduces economic activity or that deregulation stimulates it. But business executives are largely convinced that the cost of complying with rules diverts money that could be invested elsewhere. And economists see a plausible connection between Mr. Trump’s determination to prune the federal rule book and the willingness of businesses to crank open their vaults. Measures of business confidence have climbed to record heights during Mr. Trump’s first year.
“The notion that deregulation unleashes growth is virtually impossible to find in the data,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “What does matter is this idea that confidence matters. If their expectations about the future are positive, then it does make a difference.”
Businesses acknowledge that the most important reason for their increased optimism is the simple fact that the domestic economy continues to expand, with few clouds on the horizon.
Better yet, the world’s major economies all are growing for the first time since the financial crisis. Confidence among European manufacturers hit a high in more than a decade, according to European Commission data that goes back to 1985, even without tax cuts or less regulation.
In Japan, now in the middle of its longest period of growth since the early 1990s, the central bank said corporate investment was exceeding its expectations, and it raised its forecast.
“The fundamental backdrop here is that this is a global synchronized expansion lifting everyone’s spirits, from Tokyo to New York,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pa. “The entire global economy is on one page for the first time in over a decade. We’re all moving in sync and that has everyone feeling good, not just here but across the globe.”
The low unemployment in the United States may also be prompting increased spending, just as it did in the 1990s, as corporations invest in technology to make workers more productive, or replace them entirely. Wendy’s is adding self-service kiosks at 1,000 restaurants.
But business executives say the Trump administration deserves credit. Mr. MacDonald said home builders have benefited from the killing of regulations written by the Obama administration, including a rule that broadened the definition of wetlands, which could have restricted home building in certain areas. The National Labor Relations Board also reversed a decision that made builders more responsible for the working conditions of their contractors’ employees.
In some industries, the administration’s actions will allow companies to engage in activities they might not have been able to otherwise; electric utilities, for example, might be able to invest in upgrading power plants that run on fossil fuels, thanks to a promised rollback of Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan to fight climate change.
The Business Roundtable, a corporate lobbying group in Washington, reported last month that “regulatory costs” were no longer the top concern of American executives, for the first time in six years. Mr. Zandi said that regulation was still the top concern in Moody’s survey of business confidence, but that it was rapidly losing ground to concerns about the availability of labor.
The National Association of Manufacturers’ fourth-quarter member surveyfound that fewer than half of manufacturers cited an “unfavorable business climate” — including regulations and taxes — as a challenge to their business, down from nearly three-quarters a year ago.
Some industries have seen particularly clear changes in fortune. The Trump administration has reversed a number of environmental protections that would have imposed significant costs on energy companies. Mr. Trump’s appointees to the Federal Communications Commission voted last month to repeal so-called net neutrality rules, which treated internet services as a regulated industry, like power lines, and prohibited broadband providers from charging for faster internet service or from blocking or slowing some websites.
That decision helped prompt Comcast to announce that it would invest more than $50 billion in infrastructure over the next five years.
The banking industry, in particular, has been buoyed by a relaxed approach to financial regulation as the Trump administration moves to ease many of the postcrisis rules put in place to prevent another financial meltdown. The Treasury Department has issued a series of reports calling for sweeping changes to rules required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, and a council set up to designate firms that pose risks to the financial system is in the process of removing those companies from heightened federal oversight.
Mr. Trump has also installed individuals who have publicly questioned the need for many of the postcrisis rules in major policy roles, including at the Federal Reserve and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Bank stocks have been on a winning streak and ended 2017 up more than 15 percent, according to the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index.
“There has been some regulatory fixes for a lot of industries, and they would tell you that matters a lot,” said Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, who also leads the Business Roundtable. “It’s just hard to do a direct correlation. It doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
The confidence is translating to industries that have not, as of yet, seen any obvious benefit or policy changes.
“We have spent the past dozen years or longer operating in environments that have had an increasing regulatory burden,” said Michael S. Burke, the chairman and chief executive of Aecom, a Los Angeles-based multinational consulting firm that specializes in infrastructure projects. “That burden has slowed down economic growth, it’s slowed down investment in infrastructure. And what we’ve seen over the last year is a big deregulatory environment.”
Mr. Burke said he expected the actions to speed future projects for his company, though he declined to offer details, citing competitive risks.
The White House sees its efforts as having their intended effect. Mr. Trump boasted about his deregulatory efforts last month at an event where he stood in front of a small mountain of printouts representing the nation’s regulatory burden and ceremonially cut a large piece of “red tape.”
The chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, said in an interview that the administration’s freeze on new regulations, in particular, appeared to have buoyed confidence. Though he cautioned that it could take years of research to pin down the magnitude of the effects, he said deregulation was “the most plausible story” to explain why economic growth in 2017 had outstripped most forecasts.
“Our view is, the ‘no new regulations’ piece has to be more powerful than we thought,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/us/politics/trump-businesses-regulation-economic-growth.html
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Researchers Tout Safer Alternative to Potentially Deadly Paint Stripper Chemical
Jan 2, 2018 | CBS
An alternative to a potentially deadly chemical found in common paint strippers is facing hurdles to reach consumers. CBS News' Anna Werner reported last month on the deaths of dozens of people who used methylene chloride. The EPA indefinitely postponed a ban on that chemical last month, proposed by the Obama administration.
Now, researchers say if the industry won't come up with a safer product, they will. Activists like Mike Schade, who runs the Mind the Store consumer campaign, is pushing for retailers to take the existing methylene chloride-based products out of their stores to protect consumers.
Schade is petitioning retailers to take paint strippers containing the toxic chemical off the shelves."The science is clear, these chemicals are dangerous," Schade told Werner. "They're literally deadly for workers and consumers."
Workers like Wendy Hartley's 21-year-old son Kevin who was found unconscious by his older brother. He, like dozens of others, died in an entirely preventable accident: overcome by methylene chloride fumes in the paint stripper he was using while on the job refinishing a bathtub in April last year.Manufacturers acknowledge the dangers, but say there are no good substitutes for methylene chloride paint strippers.
"We think it's very unfortunate that anyone has died as a result of the product, but there is a need for the product," said industry lobbyist Faye Graul.
But researchers in Massachusetts say that answer isn't good enough.
"It's one of the most toxic and dangerous chemicals that anyone is using today," said professor Michael Ellenbecker.
He directs a program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell which works to come up with alternatives to highly toxic chemicals. His team, working with students, came up with an alternative paint stripping chemical."Our substitute costs about the same, a little bit more than methylene chloride," Ellenbecker said. "It works and it's safer."
Research manager Greg Morose demonstrated how the chemical works using a test board painted with several coats and baked at high temperatures to simulate real-life conditions. Each solvent is applied to a different circle. The methylene chloride-based strippers bubble up the paint, making it easy to remove. The team's new solvent also worked.
They say they did it by sorting through a database of existing, much less toxic solvents and then came up with a new combination they say works just as well. The project took them less than a year.
"We just looked at what was available, put them together in a new way and came up with a much safer solution," Ellenbecker said.
"My hope is that this gets on the shelves of retailers as soon as possible. It's ready to go," Morose said.
That might seem simple, but they are already encountering opposition from at least one major methylene chloride products manufacturer. Company WM Barr argued to the EPA that the university's new solvent could have its own problems of flammability and toxicity and that Barr's own tests of the combination proved it doesn't work well enough.Morose says they used the wrong ratio of the solvent.
"So of course it wouldn't work," he said. "There's been a lot of inertia to, you know, maintain the continued use of methylene chloride. It's been used for 70 years in products."
"That's their message, that's their mantra, so if someone comes along who's outside of the industry and says here's a perfectly good alternative….Their immediate response is it can't be true," Ellenbecker said.
The university researchers told CBS News they are conducting further tests to prove it's much less hazardous and they say that's the point of their research: to come up with alternatives that don't carry the same risks.
The industry told us it thinks new warning labels it's proposing can be effective in preventing further deaths from these products. But many experts and researchers say labels won't address the problem because many consumers and workers don't pay enough attention to them.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/researchers-find-safer-alternative-paint-stripper-chemical-methylene-chloride/
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US EPA Reports Receiving 51 PMNs in October
Jan 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie A Miller
The US EPA received 51 pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) in October.
In all but 15, the name of the manufacturer or importer was withheld as confidential business information (CBI), according to a notice published in the 2 January Federal Register.
The agency announced in December that it had received 165 new PMNs in September. In previous months, there were: 42 in August; 49 in July; 36 in June; 22 in May; and 58 in April.
The EPA also received 22 notices of commencement (NOCs) in October, compared with 13 in both September and August and 20 in July. This represents a significant drop from last spring, when 115 NOCs were received in May and 152 in April.
The agency is accepting comments on the October submissions until 1 February.
https://chemicalwatch.com/62770/us-epa-reports-receiving-51-pmns-in-october
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Eu Gives Go Ahead to Three Authorisation Applications
Jan 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
The European Commission has granted authorisations for three substances, two chromates and a solvent. The decisions, taken on 15 December, were all for listed substances of very high concern (SVHCs) under REACH Annex XIV.
They are:
· sodium dichromate, granted to Gruppo Colle for use as a mordant in wool dyeing with dark colours. The review period will expire on 15 December 2021;
· ammonium dichromate, granted to Veco for use as a photosensitive component in a polyvinyl alcohol photolithographic lacquer system for the production of mandrels, used in nickel electroforming processes. The review period ends on 21 September 2024; and
· 1,2 -dichloroethane, granted to GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences for use as an emulsifying solvent in the manufacture of porous particles for beaded chromatography and cell culture media. The recommended review period is 12 years and will expire on 22 November 2029.
EU member states approved the applications, at the REACH Committee meeting on 27 September.
EU member states approved the applications, at the REACH Committee meeting on 27 September.
https://chemicalwatch.com/62763/eu-gives-go-ahead-to-three-authorisation-applications
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Free Trade Has Been a Boon for Energy Independence
Jan 1, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Merrill Matthews
As turbulent as Donald Trump’s political career has been thus far, he has always been consistent about two things: First, that the U.S. should aggressively pursue energy independence; second, that the U.S. is getting short shrift on its trade deals, including the North American Free Trade Agreement.
As the administration moves to modernize Nafta, however, it should remember that free trade with Canada and Mexico is vital to securing America’s energy independence in the long run.
North America now leads the world in energy production, largely because the U.S. has become the No. 1 producer of crude oil and natural gas. This outcome was by no means obvious when Nafta became law in 1993. But by creating a free-trade zone for energy, the agreement helped all three countries’ energy sectors flourish.
In 2016 the three North American economies produced a total of 22 million barrels a day of crude oil, associated liquids and biofuels, according to the Energy Information Administration, with 14.9 million barrels coming from the U.S. Saudi Arabia produced 12.4 million barrels a day and Russia 11.2 million. The fourth-largest producer, China, has less than half of Russia’s production.
When it comes to natural gas, the numbers are even more skewed toward the U.S., which produced 27.1 trillion cubic feet in 2015 compared with Russia’s 21.1 trillion. Third-ranked Iran extracts one-quarter of what the U.S. produced. Canada comes in fifth, after Qatar. Altogether, North America produced about 33.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2015.
But these solid figures, dominated by U.S. production, should not obscure an important point: Each of the three North American economies, and its energy sector, depends on the other two.
Canada and Mexico need the U.S. to buy their excess crude oil, and the U.S. needs its neighbors to cover its own shortfall. According to the EIA, the U.S. consumes about six million more barrels of crude oil and related products a day than it produces. The U.S. imports about three million barrels a day from Canada, its largest energy trading partner. Although total Mexican crude-oil production has been declining, Mexico still exports about 688,000 barrels a day to the U.S. With U.S. technology and investment, Mexican production and exports could be significantly higher—perhaps enough, together with Canada, to close the U.S. gap.
Canada depends heavily on U.S. refineries, especially in the Midwest and on the Gulf Coast, which specialize in processing Canada’s heavy crude. Mexico also depends on the U.S. to refine its crude, which Mexico buys back as gasoline and diesel.
Another important result of Nafta is that more natural-gas pipelines are being built so the U.S. can help Mexico turn to cleaner-burning natural gas for its electricity generation. In 2016 the value of U.S. energy imports from Mexico was $8.7 billion, while U.S. energy exports to Mexico were $20.2 billion, for a positive energy trade surplus of $11.5 billion, according to the EIA. While most economists don’t put much stock in international trade balances, the Trump administration cares a lot about them, and under Nafta the U.S. energy sector has a positive trade balance with Mexico.
Nafta’s elimination of virtually all tariffs on energy-related goods has greatly enhanced North America’s energy potential, but there is still room for improvement. A modernized Nafta should include a labor provision that allows workers in the oil and gas industry to travel to any of the three countries, especially in emergencies. Mexico needs U.S. technology and assistance to modernize and expand its energy sector, while the U.S. might need more workers in oil fields in places like West Texas.
A modernized Nafta should also recognize the threat that could emerge for North America if other major energy exporters tried to punish the U.S. for its foreign policies. Such an agreement might give Nafta countries preference for oil and gas purchases if, say, Iran blocked U.S.-bound tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Free trade in energy across North America has transformed the industry, putting the continent on track to self-sufficiency while boosting economic growth for all three countries, especially Mexico. And if Mr. Trump really wants to reduce the flow of illegal aliens to the U.S., a thriving Mexican economy is the best way to do it.
Energy independence for the U.S. alone is still years away. But thanks to free trade, energy independence for North America is within our grasp. A modernized Nafta can help make that goal a reality very soon.
Mr. Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-trade-has-been-a-boon-for-energy-independence-1514822901
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Proposed Changes to Offshore Drilling Rules Raise Safety Questions
Jan 1, 2018 | Wall Street Journal
By Ted Mann
The Trump administration’s proposed changes to offshore oil-drilling rules are raising fundamental questions over whether safety regulators at the Interior Department should also be concerned with promoting oil and gas production.
Mr. Trump’s appointees have begun to take steps to ease rules put in place in the years after 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, when a blowout on an offshore drilling rig, coupled with the failure of critical safety equipment, killed 11 workers and triggered the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement on Friday published proposed revisions to a production safety rule that was passed after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Wall Street Journal has reviewed another proposal from BSEE, not yet made public by the agency, to roll back another Deepwater Horizon-related rule, to yield costs savings of more than $900 million for the industry over 10 years.
The proposed changes explicitly put the agency in the role of promoting private interests in the drilling business. The production safety systems rule “moves us forward toward meeting the Administration’s goal of achieving energy dominance without sacrificing safety,” BSEE director Scott Angelle said in a statement Friday. “By reducing the regulatory burden on industry, we are encouraging increased domestic oil and gas production while maintaining a high bar for safety and environmental sustainability.”
Oil-industry groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, the Offshore Operators Committee and the National Ocean Industries Association, have backed many of the proposed changes in correspondence with BSEE.
Former industry regulators, however, are expressing concerns. When the BSEE was created, as part of a package of reforms to the Interior Department that followed the 2010 spill, the new agency wasn’t intended to promote oil production, these former officials say. The Obama administration split apart BSEE’s bureaucratic predecessor, separating the government officials responsible for ensuring that offshore oil and gas producers operate safely from those who lease offshore oil fields and those who collect proceeds for the Treasury.
“BSEE’s mission is not to expand domestic production,” said Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor who helped reorganize the BSEE for the Obama administration and served as its first director. “This has been a sea change in BSEE’s direction, away from careful prudent regulation and toward being a compliant cheerleader for industry.”
The well-control proposal deletes an existing requirement that the agency confirm that the amount of pressure drillers propose to use in a new well is “safe.” The proposal would also relax requirements to have backup plans in place for so-called blowout preventers, which seal off a well-pipe in the event of an accident. And the proposal would amend the standard applied to pressure tests on a well—the same test failed by safety equipment in the Deepwater Horizon case—requiring only that a test indicate that equipment could withstand a surge in pressure, not “show” that it could do so.
Mr. Angelle has long been an outspoken advocate for the drilling industry, frequently lobbying regulators, including Mr. Bromwich and his successor at BSEE, Brian Salerno, for rule changes. Mr. Angelle was acting lieutenant governor of Louisiana when he led efforts to oppose the temporary drilling moratorium put in place after the Deepwater Horizon spill, and later ran unsuccessfully for Congress and governor.
Mr. Bromwich said in an interview that it was too soon to begin changing the rules, which were the result of “painstaking” negotiation with industry and took effect only in 2016. “There is no doubt in my mind that loosening these regulations, taken together with other aspects of the administration’s approach, significantly increases the risk of a catastrophic accident,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/proposed-changes-to-offshore-drilling-rules-raise-safety-questions-1514750730
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