Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 23/01/18
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Trump’s Former Chemical Safety Nominee Leaving EPA
Jan 23, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Trump’s former nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office is leaving his job at the agency. -
Pruitt Adviser Michael Dourson Heads for the Exit
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
Michael Dourson's time at U.S. EPA is coming to an end. -
A Prop. 65 Preview of the Year Ahead: PFOA, PFOS Top List of Chemicals That Will Require Warning
Jan 23, 2018 | Lexology
By Thomas S. Lee, Douglas A. Alvarez and Merrit M. Jones
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) top the list of chemicals for which a warning requirement will take effect in the coming year under California Proposition 65, which prohibits businesses from “knowingly and intentionally” exposing California consumers to a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm without first providing a “clear and reasonable warning.” -
CEO Says Company Working to Stop ‘Tide Pod Challenge’
Jan 23, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
Procter & Gamble says it’s working to stop the “Tide Pod challenge,” a social media-fueled trend in which teenagers eat single-load laundry detergent packets. -
Commissioner Glick Lays Out 4 Priorities for His Term
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Eliminating barriers in the nation's organized electricity markets to the deployment and integration of energy storage and renewable electric generation tops the list of priorities for Richard Glick as he settles into his tenure at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. -
The Greenhouse Gas Pruitt Worries About
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldmann
Scott Pruitt is one of the Trump administration's most aggressive critics of climate change science, but lately he's been talking about the dangers of greenhouse gas. -
Another City Sues Oil Companies for Climate Damages
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
Richmond, Calif., yesterday sued oil companies for damages related to sea-level rise, joining multiple cities and counties asking courts to punish fossil fuel businesses for climate change. -
Analysts Play 'Wait-and-See' on Frackers' Spending Pledges
Jan 23, 2018 | Wall Street Journal (In E&E Energywire)
By Bradley Olson
Investor pressure has extracted plenty of promises from shale drillers who say this year they won't spend more than they generate in cash, but some analysts harbor doubt that producers will constrain drilling in the face of higher prices. -
In Calif., Some Ask How Much Gas is Too Much
Jan 23, 2018 | Los Angeles Times (In E&E Energywire)
By Rob Nikolewski
California may be at the forefront of the nation's energy transition, but the prominence of natural gas in the state's makeup has led to a growing chorus of skeptics. -
Tanker Hauls Russian LNG to U.S.
Jan 23, 2018 | Financial Times (In E&E Energywire)
A tanker carrying the first-ever import of Russian-sourced liquefied natural gas to the U.S. is back on its way toward Boston, days after it stopped and turned back in the middle of the Atlantic. -
Kinder Morgan Opens New Ethane Pipeline in Ohio
Jan 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Kinder Morgan on Tuesday placed into service a 270-mile transnational pipeline system that capitalizes on Ohio's productive Utica shale play. -
Five Declared Dead in Oklahoma Rig Explosion
Jan 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
Five workers are believed dead, including one Texan, after an explosion ripped through a drilling rig in Oklahoma, triggering the nation's deadliest oil and gas incident in several years. -
5 Dead in Blast As Cause Remains Unknown
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee and Mike Soraghan
Three employees of one of the country's biggest oil and gas drilling contractors are among the five people who likely died yesterday in a natural gas well explosion here. -
Mountain Valley Pipeline Clears Another Regulatory Hurdle
Jan 23, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The federal government has approved preliminary construction for parts of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. -
PHMSA, FRA Announce Intent to Repeal Rule Requiring ECP Brakes on Rail Cars
Jan 23, 2018 | Safety+Health Magazine
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration are moving to repeal a 2015 requirement for electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on rail cars that carry large volumes of flammable liquids, according to a notice published in the Dec. 13 Federal Register. -
Fighting Climate Change? We’re Not Even Landing a Punch
Jan 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By Eduardo Porter
In 1988, when world leaders convened their first global conference on climate change in Toronto, the Earth’s average temperature was a bit more than half a degree Celsius above the average of the last two decades of the 19th century, according to measurements by NASA. -
Cleaning Up Columbia River Oil Spill Could Take Weeks
Jan 23, 2018 | Portland Oregonian (In E&E Greenwire)
By Anna Marum
Cleaning up a large oil spill in the Columbia River could take weeks, according to the Coast Guard.
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Trump’s Former Chemical Safety Nominee Leaving EPA
Jan 23, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
President Trump’s former nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) chemical safety office is leaving his job at the agency.
Michael Dourson was hired as a senior adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt last October after a fiery confirmation hearing. The hire angered Democrats, who accused Pruitt and Dourson of trying to do an end-run around the Senate's responsibility to confirm high-ranking government officials.
He withdrew from the confirmation process in December after a handful of GOP senators announced their opposition to him, dooming his nomination, but he stayed on in an advisory role.
Now, Dourson will leave that job in the coming weeks.
“We wish him continued success in his future endeavors,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.
Democrats vocally objected to Dourson, who worked as a toxicologist for two decades, throughout his confirmation process, citing his history of working on behalf of the chemical industries as an insurmountable conflict of interest.
Dourson's organization conducted chemical analyses for companies, industry groups, states and other clients, often publishing findings far more friendly to industry than other toxicology assessments.
“Never in the history of the EPA has a nominee to lead the chemical safety office had such deep ties to industry,” Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said at Dourson's October hearing.
“You’re not just an outlier on this science, you’re outrageous in how far from the mainstream of science you actually are,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The GOP currently has one a two-vote majority in the Senate, so any Republican opposition to nominees could doom them.
GOP Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) both came out in opposition, and a handful of other Republicans said they were leaning against him as well.
Dourson's departure was first reported by Politico.
Michael Dourson was hired as a senior adviser to Administrator Scott Pruitt last October after a fiery confirmation hearing. The hire angered Democrats, who accused Pruitt and Dourson of trying to do an end-run around the Senate's responsibility to confirm high-ranking government officials.
He withdrew from the confirmation process in December after a handful of GOP senators announced their opposition to him, dooming his nomination, but he stayed on in an advisory role.
Now, Dourson will leave that job in the coming weeks.
“We wish him continued success in his future endeavors,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.
Democrats vocally objected to Dourson, who worked as a toxicologist for two decades, throughout his confirmation process, citing his history of working on behalf of the chemical industries as an insurmountable conflict of interest.
Dourson's organization conducted chemical analyses for companies, industry groups, states and other clients, often publishing findings far more friendly to industry than other toxicology assessments.
“Never in the history of the EPA has a nominee to lead the chemical safety office had such deep ties to industry,” Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said at Dourson's October hearing.
“You’re not just an outlier on this science, you’re outrageous in how far from the mainstream of science you actually are,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
The GOP currently has one a two-vote majority in the Senate, so any Republican opposition to nominees could doom them.
GOP Sens. Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) both came out in opposition, and a handful of other Republicans said they were leaning against him as well.
Dourson's departure was first reported by Politico.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/370258-trumps-former-chemical-safety-nominee-leaving-epa
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Pruitt Adviser Michael Dourson Heads for the Exit
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
Michael Dourson's time at U.S. EPA is coming to an end.
Administrator Scott Pruitt's chemicals adviser — who had been nominated by President Trump to lead the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention — began working at EPA shortly after his Senate confirmation hearing last fall (E&E Daily, Oct. 18, 2017).
But Dourson's updated LinkedIn profile indicates he'll leave EPA by the end of this month.
His planned exit, which was first reported by Politico, wasn't entirely unexpected. In fact, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's top Democrat, Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, said EPA had suggested Dourson had already quit.
Michael Dourson @mdourson/Twitter
"I was told he has left the building," he told E&E News on Jan. 4.
As of today, however, Dourson still has a working EPA email address.
The agency didn't respond to questions about the exact timing of Dourson's departure or what he's been doing as part of the Trump administration for the past four months.
Dourson offered only a one-line description of his experience at the Trump EPA on LinkedIn, saying he "served as an advisor in toxicology and risk assessment associated with specific chemicals and issues."
In a statement, EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox touted Dourson's past credentials and pro bono work, adding that "we wish him continued success in his future endeavors."
Carper had led opposition to Dourson's nomination due to concerns about his past work for the chemical industry.
Dourson described the bruising confirmation process as "surprising" in a letter to Trump asking the president to withdraw his nomination after it became clear he lacked enough Republican support to clear a narrowly divided Senate (Greenwire, Dec. 13, 2017).
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071701
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A Prop. 65 Preview of the Year Ahead: PFOA, PFOS Top List of Chemicals That Will Require Warning
Jan 23, 2018 | Lexology
By Thomas S. Lee, Douglas A. Alvarez and Merrit M. Jones
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) top the list of chemicals for which a warning requirement will take effect in the coming year under California Proposition 65, which prohibits businesses from “knowingly and intentionally” exposing California consumers to a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer or reproductive harm without first providing a “clear and reasonable warning.” (Health & Safety Code § 25249.6, et seq.)
PFOA and PFOS are moisture resistant surfactants that have been used in a variety of consumer products to prevent stains and adhesion, including:Carpets,Outdoor clothing,Leather,Non-stick cookware (fluoropolymers), andPaper coatings used in food packing.
PFOA and PFOS were listed as reproductive toxicants on November 10, 2017, and California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Exposure has not established a safe harbor level for either exposure. Therefore, starting on November 10, 2018, companies with 10 or more employees that manufacture, distribute or sell products containing PFOA or PFOS will be required to provide a clear and reasonable warning for those products.
Companies that sell products containing either PFOA or PFOS in California without a Proposition 65 warning after November 10, 2018, are subject to potential civil penalties of up to $2,500 per day for each violation, as well as attorney’s fees for private enforcement actions.
A number of perfluorinated compounds are precursors to PFOA and degrade to PFOA in the environment via general biodegradable processes, exposure to water molecules, light, or oxidisation. PFOA and PFOS are also generated as degradation products of other perfluorinated compounds. This means that the chemicals may be present in consumer products which contained other perfluorinated compounds, but not PFOA or PFOS originally.
The listing by OEHHA is based on drinking water health advisories for both PFOA and PFOS issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), concluding that PFOA and PFOS cause reproductive toxicity. These health advisories are based on exposure from drinking water ingestion. They note that PFOA and PFOS are present in several municipal water supplies, so the use of municipal water during manufacturing and food processing may introduce these bio-persistent chemicals into consumer products that originally did not contain PFOA or PFOS.
Businesses that manufacture, distribute, or sell products in the categories identified above should determine whether their products require a warning based on the presence of PFOA and PFOS. Industry groups should also consider proposing MADLs to OEHHA for different exposure pathways.
The warning requirement takes effect in 2018 for a number of other chemicals that may be present in consumer products, including:Glyphosate has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on July 7, 2018. Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide and crop desiccant used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that compete with crops.Pentabromodiphenyl ether mixture [DE-71 (technical grade)] has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on July 27, 2018. It was used in the past as an additive flame retardant, especially for polyester foam commonly used in furniture. U.S. production and use was voluntarily phased out around 2004.N, N-Dimethlyformamide has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on October 27, 2018. Primarily used as an industrial solvent to process polymer fibers, films and surface coatings, to permit easy spinning of acrylic fibers, and to produce wire enamels.2-Mercaptobenzothiazole has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on October 27, 2018. Used in vulcanization of rubber.Tetrabromobisphenol A has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on October 27, 2018. It is a brominated flame retardant.Chlorpyrifos has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on December 15, 2018. It is an insecticide used primarily to control foliage and soil-borne insect pests on a variety of food and feed crops.n-Hexane has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on December 15, 2018. It is a solvent used to extract vegetable oils from crops such as soybeans, and as a cleaning agent in the printing, textile, furniture and shoe industries.Vinylidene Chloride (1, 1-Dichloroethylene) has been listed as a carcinogen; the warning requirement takes effect on December 29, 2018. Used in the production of polyvinylidene chloride copolymers, which are used in flexible films for food packaging.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=d5668d10-9ff3-4ab4-9b67-2c03e9a632c7
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CEO Says Company Working to Stop ‘Tide Pod Challenge’
Jan 23, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
Procter & Gamble says it’s working to stop the “Tide Pod challenge,” a social media-fueled trend in which teenagers eat single-load laundry detergent packets.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers warned last week that it had seen a spike in teenagers eating the detergent pods, which it says can cause seizures, respiratory arrest and even death.
CEO David Taylor called the trend “dangerous” and “extremely concerning” in a blog post Monday. He said the company is working with social media companies to remove videos of people biting into the detergent, and asked adults to speak with children about the hazards.
“Let them know that their life and health matter more than clicks, views and likes,” Taylor said.
In the first 15 days of the year, poison control centers said that they have handled 39 cases of intentional misuse among 13 to 19 year olds. Poison control centers handled 53 such cases for all of last year.
The pods have generally been hit a for Procter & Gamble Co., which also makes Crest toothpaste and Charmin toilet paper. The company posted quarterly revenue Tuesday of $17.4 billion and fiscal second-quarter net income of $2.5 billion. Its results topped Wall Street expectations.
P&G has faced safety issues with Tide Pods before. Shortly after it introduced the product in 2012, the company announced that it would create a double-latch lid to deter young children from accessing and eating the detergent packets. Some children mistook the brightly colored 1-inch pods for candy.
To deter teenagers, P&G released a 20-seond video of football player Rob Gronkowski earlier this month telling viewers not to ingest the pods.
“What the heck is going on people?” he said in the video. “Use Tide Pods for washing, not eating.”
A New York City pizzeria even launched “Pied Pods” because of the trend, offering rolls stuffed with cheese and pepperoni and topped with dyed cheese made to look like a detergent pod.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/ceo-says-company-working-to-stop-tide-pod-challenge/2018/01/23/a6f4f26c-005c-11e8-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html?utm_term=.6e53c7918b1d
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Commissioner Glick Lays Out 4 Priorities for His Term
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Rod Kuckro
Eliminating barriers in the nation's organized electricity markets to the deployment and integration of energy storage and renewable electric generation tops the list of priorities for Richard Glick as he settles into his tenure at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Glick is the former general counsel to Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was sworn in Nov. 29 to a term ending in June 2022 (Energywire, Nov. 29, 2017).
He laid out his top issues in a Friday podcast. Sitting down for a podcast, hosted by FERC media relations staff, has become standard practice for new commissioners at the agency in the past year.
Emerging technologies such as storage and solar "weren't very prevalent during times when the '90s market rules were established, and I think it's important that we go back and revisit some of those rules to determine whether they're acting as any barriers to the technologies," Glick said.
Glick also listed improving the process to approve applications for interstate natural gas pipelines as a priority. As FERC "is being called upon to consider an increasing number of these applications," Glick said, "they can have significant impacts on consumers, communities and the environment." He said FERC needs to consider whether its current "approach accurately assesses the public interest."
At the urging of Chairman Kevin McIntyre, FERC in December launched a sweeping review of its 18-year-old policy on how it evaluates applications for natural gas pipelines and ultimately acts on them.
"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," McIntyre said.
Glick on Friday was the lone dissenting vote in FERC's decision to approve the PennEast natural gas pipeline, awarding it a key permit that gives developers eminent domain authority.
He raised two major issues. Glick criticized FERC's acceptance of customer commitments from companies affiliated with the project's developers, saying those agreements "are not necessarily the result of an arms-length negotiation."
He also questioned the issuance by FERC of certificates with major conditions for construction that the developer has yet to meet, noting that the use of condemnation authority "comes with significant consequences for landowners whose properties lie in the path of the proposed pipeline."
The third item on Glick's radar at FERC will be the work of its Office of Enforcement. "We rely on competitive electric markets to establish just and reasonable rates, which is the right thing to do, I think. But it's incumbent on the commission to continue to ensure that these markets are truly competitive and not being manipulated," he said.
Lastly, FERC should do all it can to help the industries it regulates "to stay a step ahead of the growing threat of cyberattacks."
"You can't open up the newspaper today or turn on the television without hearing about the threat of cyberattacks upon our critical infrastructure, especially our critical energy infrastructure," he said.
Glick described his commissioner job as that of "an umpire in baseball calling balls and strikes" based on applicable statutes and the record developed in each proceeding.
The challenge for him and his fellow commissioners will be to avoid blocking the "dramatic transformation" occurring in the energy sector and protecting the public interest as that change happens, he said.
As to the recently issued order on grid resilience, where FERC gave electricity market operators 60 days to respond to a host of questions on aspects of resilience, Glick said "the commission made the right decision in rejecting the Department of Energy's proposed rule" that encouraged financial subsidies for some coal and nuclear plants.
"There simply wasn't any evidence in the record to demonstrate there were immediate threats to the resilience of the bulk power system, and certainly not to conclude we needed to subsidize uncompetitive generation that has its own resilience issues," Glick said.
After the market operators respond, "if the record demonstrates there's a problem, we should act. But if there's no threat that requires immediate action, the commission should move on to the many other matters that are very important that are pending before us," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071621
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The Greenhouse Gas Pruitt Worries About
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Scott Waldmann
Scott Pruitt is one of the Trump administration's most aggressive critics of climate change science, but lately he's been talking about the dangers of greenhouse gas.
Well, one greenhouse gas in particular: methane.
Like other conservatives in Washington, the EPA administrator has questioned basic climate science and said he plans to organize a debate on it this year, something many researchers fear will sow public confusion on an issue where there's already scientific consensus. Pruitt acknowledges the Earth is warming but casts doubt on the exact extent of humanity's influence. Shortly after being installed as the EPA administrator, he questioned whether humans are the primary drivers of climate change, rejecting the position of the vast majority of scientists.
But when it comes to methane, Pruitt has found common ground with climate scientists and environmentalists by calling the greenhouse gas a dangerous air pollutant.
It's an unexpected position coming from the administration official who was a driving force behind President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord. It's also one that straddles the interests of climate activists and the energy industry, which loses billions of dollars annually as a result of methane leaks.
During a December hearing in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Pruitt told Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) that he "absolutely" believed methane is a dangerous air pollutant.
"On March 9, you said that carbon dioxide is not a primary driver contributing to recent climate change and that, said differently, you said CO2 is not the only contributor to climate change," Peters said. He asked the EPA boss, "Do you agree that methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants?"
Pruitt's response: "Absolutely, absolutely." He added, "And are more potent, actually, than CO2. Methane is more potent than CO2, as you know, in that regard."
Last week, Pruitt spoke about the dangers of methane as a driver of climate change again. Pruitt also told a group of environmental activists, known as Moms Clean Air Force, that he believed methane is contributing to global warming, according to a member of the group at the private meeting.
Dominique Browning, the group's senior director, said Pruitt told her that more work is needed to regulate methane. He told her he wants to regulate methane along with volatile organic compounds, she said. Pruitt also told her that he was mostly concerned about the way the Obama administration wanted to control methane emissions.
"He said, 'Yes, methane is far more potent than carbon, and we haven't done a good enough job on methane,'" she said.
Browning said she could understand why Pruitt was so opposed to imposing regulations on industry, but would cheer any sort of significant action on methane.
"I don't care what the reason is; if he gets those leaks under control more quickly, I'm happy," she said.'Methane is very valuable'
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and scientists have determined that it is more dangerous when released into the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and is 25 times more potent during a 100-year period. It accounts for about 10 percent of humans' greenhouse gas emissions, according to EPA, and a significant amount leaks from hydraulic fracturing wells, where it is also flared off during the process. Some of the methane emissions are also natural, and the agricultural industry is a growing source of emissions, according to EPA. While the energy industry has painted natural gas as a much cleaner alternative to oil and coal, environmentalists point to methane as potentially wiping out those gains.
The Trump administration has targeted President Obama's attempts to regulate methane emissions. Since taking the helm of the agency, Pruitt attempted to suspend an Obama-era rule that would have restricted emissions on new oil and gas wells, although a court has blocked the suspension. Earlier this month, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Interior Department defended its decision to suspend key parts of the Bureau of Land Management's methane rule for a year. Earlier this month, EPA backed off a proposal to stay Obama-era methane regulations for new and existing landfills.
An EPA spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions about why Pruitt was mentioning controlling methane emissions.
Pruitt has touted his stewardship of EPA as being in partnership with industry. In a CBS interview this week, he said that "to achieve what we want to achieve in environmental protection, environmental stewardship, we need the partnership of industry."
Indeed, cutting down on methane loss could be a financial windfall for the energy industry. Methane loss costs the natural gas industry about $5 billion to $10 billion annually, according to NASA. At the December hearing, Pruitt said he wanted to incentivize the energy industry for reducing methane emissions but did not specify the nature of those incentives.
"Methane is very valuable," Pruitt said. "Companies don't like to flare methane because it can be captured and used in other ways. It's very marketable, if you will. So having a rule in place that incentivizes that and ensures that we approach it pursuant to the statute, I think, is something we should look at."
The energy industry supports regulating methane along with volatile organic compounds, as Pruitt has proposed, said Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. The industry opposed the Obama administration regulations but instead recently introduced a voluntary methane emissions reduction program, he said.
"Our counsel to this administration has been, 'We support appropriate regulation; we believe as methane emissions are continuing to go down, even as our natural gas production and consumption continues to go up,'" Gerard told E&E News last week in an interview. "That's a great success story. Why you'd want to go in and regulate something that's going in the right direction is beyond us. So yes, we support the appropriate regulation of methane coupled with our voluntary program. We think he'll continue to see that as it relates to methane."
Critics point out that Pruitt has not taken any significant steps to address climate change, while weakening dozens of regulations meant to address rising greenhouse gas emissions. Public schedules show Pruitt has mostly met with business groups, as opposed to environmental and public health groups. Late last year, he traveled to Africa to tout the United States' abundant natural gas resources.
Regulating methane can be a way to claim climate action even if Pruitt's actions are motivated by a desire to help the industry's bottom line, said John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Air Project.
"Methane is money; every time you lose methane, you're losing product, and so the oil and gas industry has a built-in incentive," Walke said. "They're not seeking no regulation; they're seeking regulation they can live with, and Pruitt can accommodate them on that score and cast it as beneficial for the climate at the same time it is beneficial because he's helping them save product."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071609
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Another City Sues Oil Companies for Climate Damages
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
Richmond, Calif., yesterday sued oil companies for damages related to sea-level rise, joining multiple cities and counties asking courts to punish fossil fuel businesses for climate change.
Richmond, located in the San Francisco Bay area city, is home to a Chevron Corp. refinery. The case, filed in California Superior Court in Contra Costa County, seeks damages from 29 oil, gas and coal companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Citgo Petroleum Corp. and ConocoPhillips. It names oil trade groups including the American Petroleum Institute, and companies based outside the United States, including Eni SpA in Italy and Repsol SA in Spain.
"With 32 miles of shoreline, more than any other city on San Francisco Bay, Richmond is at extreme risk from sea level rise," Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said in a statement. "We have two rail lines, 3,000 acres of public waterfront parks, vulnerable neighborhoods, two wastewater treatment plants, and a refinery, all subject to inundation. Sea Level rise is already affecting our long-term planning and will cost our community far more than any foreseeable resources we have to mitigate it."
Sea-level rise causes flooding of low-lying areas, erosion, salinity intrusion, higher risk of liquefaction during seismic events, and storm surges, Richmond said. He added that roadways, wastewater treatment facilities, residential neighborhoods, industrial areas, highways, rail lines, emergency response facilities and parks "have suffered and/or will suffer injuries due to sea level rise expected by the end of this century."
San Francisco, Oakland, San Mateo County and Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area; Imperial Beach in San Diego County; and Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County have sued oil companies. New York City just sued five oil companies for damages related to climate change (Greenwire, Jan. 10).
The Richmond suit claims that the oil companies "have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate. They have known for decades that those impacts could be catastrophic and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible."
They "engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats," it said, "discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt." At the same time, it said, they made money from "a massive increase in the extraction and consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas, which has in turn caused an enormous, foreseeable, and avoidable increase in global greenhouse gas pollution."
Chevron said in statements in response to the suits that it "welcomes serious attempts to address the issue of climate change, but these suits do not do that. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global issue that requires global engagement and action. Should this litigation proceed, it will only serve special interests at the expense of broader policy, regulatory, and economic priorities."
Exxon Mobil earlier this month signaled it might countersue California cities and counties that want oil companies to pay for sea-level rise damages. The Texas-based oil giant filed a petition in a district court in Tarrant County, Texas, seeking the right to gather information it could use in a countersuit (Climatewire, Jan. 9).
Exxon said it has been targeted as part of a conspiracy that emerged "out of frustration in New York, Massachusetts, and California with voters in other parts of the country" because of an inability to get the federal government "to adopt their preferred policies on climate change."
Oil companies also are seeking to move the cases to federal court (Climatewire, Oct. 25, 2017).
"The claims that plaintiffs sweepingly allege directly implicate uniquely federal statutes, regulatory policies, and core national interests like national security, international relations, and American economic prosperity," William Thomson, an attorney for Chevron at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, has said. He added that "it is our contention that the sorts of claims asserted here based necessarily on worldwide greenhouse gases are pre-empted under the Clean Air Act."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071663
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Analysts Play 'Wait-and-See' on Frackers' Spending Pledges
Jan 23, 2018 | Wall Street Journal (In E&E Energywire)
By Bradley Olson
Investor pressure has extracted plenty of promises from shale drillers who say this year they won't spend more than they generate in cash, but some analysts harbor doubt that producers will constrain drilling in the face of higher prices.
"These companies can say that, but will they follow through?" said Norman MacDonald, a vice president and portfolio manager at Invesco Ltd. "Given what oil prices have done in the past few months, the proof will be in the pudding."
Even with companies like Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Chevron Corp. pledging to cut back investment in drilling and operating wells, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the industry to beat its 1970 production record of over 10 million barrels per day.
That's partly because some 2017 drilling investments will start producing over the course of 2018. And frackers can save money by tackling a swollen backlog of nearly 7,000 wells that have been drilled but not yet fracked.
"Is this time going to be different? I think yes, a little bit," said Will Riley, who co-manages energy investments at Guinness Asset Management. "Companies will look to increase growth a little, but at a more moderate pace."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071625
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In Calif., Some Ask How Much Gas is Too Much
Jan 23, 2018 | Los Angeles Times (In E&E Energywire)
By Rob Nikolewski
California may be at the forefront of the nation's energy transition, but the prominence of natural gas in the state's makeup has led to a growing chorus of skeptics.
The decline of nuclear power has been a big part of that story. Following the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2012, natural gas went from generating about 45 percent of the state's energy to 61 percent in just a year. California's last nuclear reactor, Diablo Canyon, is on track to close in 2024.
Some say the state has gone overboard in its reliability plans.
Even as power plants planned to produce over 21 percent more electricity than the state would need by 2020, a new $2.2 billion combined-cycle facility — the 558-megawatt Carlsbad Energy Center — is slated for completion by year's end.
"We've been building up our gas-fire infrastructure at a rate that we could turn off every solar panel and every wind turbine right now and we wouldn't skip a beat," said Bill Powers, a San Diego-based engineer and consumer advocate.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071627
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Tanker Hauls Russian LNG to U.S.
Jan 23, 2018 | Financial Times (In E&E Energywire)
A tanker carrying the first-ever import of Russian-sourced liquefied natural gas to the U.S. is back on its way toward Boston, days after it stopped and turned back in the middle of the Atlantic.
The ship's French owner, Engie, said bad weather had interrupted its trip from the United Kingdom's Isle of Grain terminal to an LNG import facility in the U.S.
Wood Mackenzie's head of global LNG, Frank Harris, called the ship's trajectory unusual.
"Generally, if you load an LNG cargo, you're heading for a specific destination as quickly as possible," he said.
At least some of the gas on board the Gaselys came from Russia's Yamal export terminal, whose operator Novatek is off-limits to financing by U.S. interests under the terms of 2014 sanctions. Oil and gas from Russia have not been targeted for sanctions.
Engie said the purchase — on a spot basis, to supplement shipments from Trinidad and Tobago — had occurred in accordance with U.S. trade laws.
The delivery may have reflected New England's peculiar dependence on LNG shipments, since it has relatively few pipelines that ship gas from producers into the state.
Some Russian media outlets wrote that it belied the idea of a shale-powered U.S. energy dominance.
"This delivery completely contradicts the strategy of development of the American market," wrote Kommersant, a leading business newspaper.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071623
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Kinder Morgan Opens New Ethane Pipeline in Ohio
Jan 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
Kinder Morgan on Tuesday placed into service a 270-mile transnational pipeline system that capitalizes on Ohio's productive Utica shale play.
The Houston-based pipeline operator developed the $500 million Utopia system to deliver ethane products from eastern Ohio to Windsor, Ontario. The company has a long-term contract with Canada's NOVA Chemicals Corporation, which will use the products as feedstock for plastics production.
The system, which now carries 50,000 barrels per day, could be expanded to transport as many as 75,000 barrels daily.
RELATED: Kinder Morgan to move ahead with $1.7 billion pipeline
Kinder Morgan, which recently reported lower fourth-quarter earnings thanks to a one-time tax charge, is also eyeing the West Texas shale boom. The company plans to build a $1.7 billion gas pipeline from the Permian basin to the Corpus Christi area in partnership with two other pipeline companies.
Apache Corp., which has been highly active near Balmorhea, will be the primary customer. The project is expected to begin operating by October 2019.
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Kinder-Morgan-opens-new-ethane-pipeline-in-Ohio-12518124.php
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Five Declared Dead in Oklahoma Rig Explosion
Jan 23, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
Five workers are believed dead, including one Texan, after an explosion ripped through a drilling rig in Oklahoma, triggering the nation's deadliest oil and gas incident in several years.
The drilling rig is owned by Houston-based Patterson-UTI Energy, which employed three of the deceased. Patterson-UTI has grown into one of the nation's largest onshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, companies.
"At this time we have moved from a rescue mission to a recovery mission," said Pittsburg County sheriff Chris Morris at a Tuesday press conference. "They are waiting on the scene to cool down and be stabilized before we can go in."
The deceased include one from Forth Worth, three from Oklahoma and one from Colorado. They are Josh Ray, 35, of Fort Worth; Cody Risk, of Wellington, Colo.; and Matt Smith, Parker Waldridge and Roger Cunningham, all of Oklahoma. Ray, Smith and Risk were Patterson-UTI employees.
"Five people were tragically lost in the event," said Patterson-UTI Chief Executive Andy Hendricks. "Our focus right now is supporting the families. This has been a terrible tragedy and a terrible loss."
Patterson-UTI and the natural gas well operator, Oklahoma's Red Mountain, said they are working with local authorities and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate the accident.
"We want to know what caused this horrible event, but today is not the time for those questions," said Red Mountain spokesman Tony Say.
While Hendricks acknowledged Patterson-UTI has had other safety incidents in the past, he argued his company has ranked among the safest drillers in recent years.
The explosion cut through the Patterson-UTI rig just before 9 a.m. Monday. More than 20 people were working at the well site when the explosion occurred west of Quinton, about 100 miles southeast of Tulsa, authorities said.
Authorities said 16 people escaped the explosion without major injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital. The fire was extinguished Monday night.
The intense fire had prevented investigators from getting to the scene to confirm any fatalities. Authorities earlier searched the surrounding woods to see if anyone had fled into the area. Aerial footage showed several fires were still burning by midday Monday on the rig and much of the equipment had collapsed to the ground.
Patterson-UTI has about 25 drilling rigs active in Oklahoma, second only to Texas, where it has nearly 60 rigs in operation.
The incident occurred at the site of one of Patterson-UTI's more modern APEX 1500 rigs, described as a "light, safe, and efficient rapid deployment rig."
http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Five-declared-dead-in-Oklahoma-rig-explosion-12518112.php
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5 Dead in Blast As Cause Remains Unknown
Jan 23, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Mike Lee and Mike Soraghan
Three employees of one of the country's biggest oil and gas drilling contractors are among the five people who likely died yesterday in a natural gas well explosion here.
The men were identified after the drilling contractor checked a roster of employees at the site at the time of the explosion, Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said today at a news conference. The Oklahoma medical examiner hasn't been able to access the drill site because of safety concerns.
The five men believed to be dead are Josh Ray, 35, of Fort Worth, Texas; Matt Smith, 29, of McAlester, Okla.; Cody Risk, 26, of Wellington, Colo.; Parker Waldridge, 60, of Crescent, Okla.; and Roger Cunningham, 55, of Seminole, Okla.
Ray, Smith and Risk worked for Patterson-UTI Energy, based in Houston, which was drilling the well for Oklahoma City-based Red Mountain Energy. It wasn't immediately clear whom Waldridge and Cunningham worked for; oil and gas companies typically have a mix of several contractors working on a site at any given time.
Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris speaks to reporters at a press conference in Quinton, Okla., as Tony Say of Red Mountain Energy looks on. Mike Lee/E&E News
One other crew member, whose name hasn't been released, was treated at a hospital and released yesterday. He was among 17 crew members who walked off the site, abandoning vehicles, trailers and other equipment to the fire, local officials said.
Boots & Coots, a Halliburton subsidiary, was called in to fight the fire and shut off the well. The local fire department kept its distance throughout the day yesterday because of secondary explosions.
The fire was extinguished later yesterday afternoon. Aerial photos shot by local television stations showed the rig's towerlike derrick collapsed in a tangle of pipes and cables.
The site had not been deemed safe as of midmorning today, so the medical examiner and other government agencies hadn't been able to investigate the cause of the explosion. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will also investigate.
State regulators said the well was likely being drilled into the Woodford Shale.
The crew had been drilling for about 10 days and reached a depth of 13,000 feet, out of a planned 17,000 feet, Red Mountain CEO Tony Say said at a news conference. The site is just east of Quinton, about 100 miles southeast of Tulsa.
"Red Mountain is a mostly family-owned and -operated small company with highly skilled employees," Say said. "Our staff is absolutely devastated."
Patterson-UTI, with 7,000 employees, has a history of fatal accidents. A Senate committee called it "one of the worst violators of workplace safety laws" in 2008. The company lost 12 workers in the five years before the report was issued and has lost 10 employees since then (Energywire, Jan. 23).
Patterson-UTI CEO Andy Hendricks defended the company's record at the news conference.
"There have been cases in the past," he said. "Certainly, over the last few years, we've been one of the safest companies in the industry."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071709
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Mountain Valley Pipeline Clears Another Regulatory Hurdle
Jan 23, 2018 | AP (In The Washington Post)
The federal government has approved preliminary construction for parts of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. The 300-mile natural gas pipeline would also run through parts of southwestern Virginia if it’s fully approved.
The Roanoke Times reported Monday that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval was limited to work on access roads and construction yards in West Virginia. But it marked the first time the line met all requirements for preliminary construction anywhere along its proposed route.
FERC has yet to take a similar action for the Virginia section. It would pass through the Roanoke and New River valleys.
The preliminary greenlight was a step backward for pipeline opponents in Virginia. Legal challenges are pending. And at least two state agencies have yet to sign off on it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/mountain-valley-pipeline-clears-another-regulatory-hurdle/2018/01/23/1d71bd64-005b-11e8-86b9-8908743c79dd_story.html?utm_term=.99495e681e8b
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PHMSA, FRA Announce Intent to Repeal Rule Requiring ECP Brakes on Rail Cars
Jan 23, 2018 | Safety+Health Magazine
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Railroad Administration are moving to repeal a 2015 requirement for electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on rail cars that carry large volumes of flammable liquids, according to a notice published in the Dec. 13 Federal Register.
The requirement was mandated by Section 7311 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. However, PHMSA and FRA state that a Regulatory Impact Analysis revealed that the benefits of the ECP braking system requirement do not justify the costs. The analysis included audits by the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board and the Government Accountability Office. TRB stated that it was unable to make a conclusive statement about the emergency performance of ECP brakes compared with other braking systems, while GAO made costs and benefits recommendations based on the current economic environment.
“This review demonstrated that the costs of this mandate would exceed threefold the benefits it would produce,” PHMSA stated in a Dec. 4 press release.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), chair of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a press release that repealing the rule “puts sound science and careful study … over flawed guesswork used in 2015.”
In contrast, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) issued a statement Dec. 6 calling oil trains “rolling explosion hazards,” adding that, “as we’ve seen all too many times, it’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ oil train derailments will occur. Degrading oil train safety requirements is a huge step backward, and one that puts our land, homes and lives at risk.”
http://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/16597-phmsa-fra-announce-intent-to-repeal-rule-requiring-ecp-brakes-on-rail-cars
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Fighting Climate Change? We’re Not Even Landing a Punch
Jan 23, 2018 | The New York Times
By Eduardo Porter
In 1988, when world leaders convened their first global conference on climate change in Toronto, the Earth’s average temperature was a bit more than half a degree Celsius above the average of the last two decades of the 19th century, according to measurements by NASA.
Global emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to the equivalent of some 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year — excluding those from deforestation and land use. Worried about its accumulation, the gathered scientists and policymakers called on the world to cut CO2 emissions by a fifth.
That didn’t happen, of course. By 1997, when climate diplomats from the world’s leading nations gathered to negotiate a round of emissions cuts in Kyoto, Japan, emissions had risen to some 35 billion tons and the global surface temperature was roughly 0.7 degrees Celsius above the average of the late 19th century.
It took almost two decades for the next breakthrough. When diplomats from virtually every country gathered in Paris just over two years ago to hash out another agreement to combat climate change, the world’s surface temperature was already about 1.1 degrees Celsius above its average at the end of the 1800s. And greenhouse gas emissions totaled just under 50 billion tons.
This is not to belittle diplomacy. Maybe this is the best we can do. How can countries be persuaded to adopt expensive strategies to drop fossil fuels when the prospective impact of climate change remains uncertain and fixing the problem requires collective action? As mitigation by an individual country will benefit all, nations will be tempted to take a free ride on the efforts of others. And no country will be able to solve the problem on its own.
Still, the world’s diplomatic meanderings — from the ineffectual call in Toronto for a reduction in emissions to the summit meeting in Paris, where each country was allowed simply to pledge whatever it could to the global effort — suggest that the diplomats, policymakers and environmentalists trying to slow climate change still cannot cope with its unforgiving math. They are, instead, trying to ignore it. And that will definitely not work.
The world is still warming. Both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that global temperatures last year receded slightly from the record-setting 2016, because there was no El Niño heating up the Pacific, but were still the second highest on record.
Warmer and Warmer
While the world frets over President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, I would argue that the greatest impediment to slowing this relentless warming is an illusion of progress that is allowing every country to sidestep many of the hard choices that still must be made.
“We keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome,” said Scott Barrett, an expert on international cooperation and coordination at Columbia University who was once a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate diplomats in Paris didn’t merely reassert prior commitments to keep the world’s temperature less than 2 degrees above that of the “preindustrial” era — a somewhat fuzzy term that could be taken to mean the second half of the 19th century. Hoping to appease island nations like the Maldives, which are likely to be swallowed by a rising ocean in a few decades, they set a new “aspirational” ceiling of 1.5 degrees.
To stick to a 2 degree limit, we would have to start reducing global emissions for real within about a decade at most — and then do more. Half a century from now, we would have to figure out how to suck vast amounts of carbon out of the air. Keeping the lid at 1.5 degrees would be much harder still.
And yet, when experts tallied the offers made in Paris by all the countries in the collective effort, they concluded that greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would exceed the level needed to remain under 2 degrees by 12 to 14 billion tons of CO2.
Are there better approaches? The “climate club” proposed by the Yale University economist William Nordhaus has the advantage of including an enforcement device, which current arrangements lack: countries in the club, committed to reducing carbon emissions, would impose a tariff on imports from nonmembers to encourage them to join.
Martin Weitzman of Harvard University supports the idea of a uniform worldwide tax on carbon emissions, which might be easier to agree on than a panoply of national emissions cuts. One clear advantage is that countries could use their tax revenues as they saw fit.PhotoA coal-fired power plant in Kentucky. Attempts to embrace carbon capture as a climate strategy have collided with concerns about condoning the use of fossil fuels. CreditLuke Sharrett for The New York Times
Mr. Barrett argues that the Paris agreement could be supplemented with narrower, simpler deals to curb emissions of particular gases — such as the 2016 agreement at a 170-nation meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, to reduce hydrofluorocarbon emissions — or in particular industries, like aviation or steel.
Maybe none of this would work. The climate club could blow up if nonmembers retaliated against import tariffs by imposing trade barriers of their own. Coordinating taxes around the world looks at least as difficult as addressing climate change. And Mr. Barrett’s proposal might not deliver a breakthrough on the scale necessary to move the dial.
But what definitely won’t suffice is a climate strategy built out of wishful thinking: the proposition that countries can be cajoled and prodded into increasing their ambition to cut emissions further, and that laggards can be named and shamed into falling into line.
Inveigled by three decades of supposed diplomatic progress — coupled with falling prices of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries — the activists, technologists and policymakers driving the strategy against climate change seem to have concluded that the job can be done without unpalatable choices. And the group is closing doors that it would do best to keep open.
There is no momentum for investing in carbon capture and storage, since it could be seen as condoning the continued use of fossil fuels. Nuclear energy, the only source of low-carbon power ever deployed at the needed scale, is also anathema. Geoengineering, like pumping aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s heat back into space, is another taboo.
But eventually, these options will most likely be on the table, as the consequences of climate change come more sharply into focus. The rosy belief that the world can reduce its carbon dependency over a few decades by relying exclusively on the power of shame, the wind and the sun will give way to a more realistic understanding of possibilities.
Some set of countries will decide to forget Paris and deploy a few jets to pump sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to cool the world temporarily. There will be a race to develop techniques to harvest and store carbon from the atmosphere, and another to build nuclear generators at breakneck speed.
It will probably be too late to prevent the Maldives from ending up underwater. But better late than never.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/business/economy/fighting-climate-change.html
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Cleaning Up Columbia River Oil Spill Could Take Weeks
Jan 23, 2018 | Portland Oregonian (In E&E Greenwire)
By Anna Marum
Cleaning up a large oil spill in the Columbia River could take weeks, according to the Coast Guard.
Up to 4,200 gallons of oil could contaminate the river, the Coast Guard said. The amount of oil that has already leaked is unknown.
The oil sheen was first spotted Thursday near the Cannery Pier Hotel in Astoria, Ore. A 20-foot-long tank was found underneath a nearby pier.
Officials have yet to determine whether the tank is the source of the leak, said Alissa Flockerzi, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard. But the agency plans to contract with cranes to lift the tank out of the river as part of the cleanup process.
So far, the agency has not received any reports of an environmental impact from the spill, according to a news release.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/01/23/stories/1060071691
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