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ACC PM 10/04/18
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Dems: No Evidence of Credible Threats Against EPA's Pruitt
Apr 10, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
Confidential security assessments in the Environmental Protection Agency show no evidence of specific, credible, physical threats against Administrator Scott Pruitt, despite claims that an "unprecedented" number of death threats justify his outsized security spending, according to a review by Senate Democrats. -
(ACC Mentioned) Disclosure Leads to Reformulation
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
California’s landmark cleaning products disclosure law, the Cleaning Products Right to Know Act, was enacted in September 2017, after negotiation produced a compromise protecting confidential business information (CBI). -
(ACC Mentioned) Amid Turmoil, Pruitt Takes Aim at Drinking Water Problems
Apr 10, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
As EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has fought to keep his job amid a mounting ethics scandal, he has pointed not just to his regulatory rollbacks as proof of his success, but also to his focus on drinking water safety. -
Furniture Flame Retardants in Focus
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Sean Milmo
The impact of flame retardants (FRs) on the environment and human health has had a high profile for decades because of their persistence, bioaccumulative, carcinogenic and suspected endocrine disrupting properties. -
NRDC Urges EPA To Craft Perchlorate Limit After Review Backs Model
Apr 10, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists are renewing their calls for EPA to craft a drinking water standard for the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate after a peer review panel found that the latest version of the agency's model to inform development of a health goal for the substance is "fit for purpose." -
From Talcum to Glyphosate: The Multi-Billion Dollar Battle to Define ‘Risk’
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Lucas Bergkamp
Last August, a California jury awarded plaintiff Eva Echeverria a total of $417m in compensatory and punitive damages in a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson (J&J). -
Endocrine Disruptors Are Changing the Socio-Economic Analysis
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tero Koski
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have been a hot topic in REACH authorisation lately. -
European Trade Associations Fear Potential MIT Restriction
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The paint and cleaning product industries have voiced fears that an expected restriction of methylisothiazolinone (MIT) under the EU's biocidal products Regulation (BPR) could push the preservative off the market. -
U.S. Saw Record Natural Gas Production in 2017
Apr 10, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
U.S. natural gas production reached record levels last year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, an increase that substantially boosted exports even as Texas, the largest gas-producing state, lost some of its momentum. -
U.S. E&Ps Practicing Capital Discipline Even as Activity Climbs Onshore
Apr 10, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
The global oil and gas industry has begun its second year of recovery, but capital spending only climbed last year by about half as much as originally budgeted, and it is poised to surge this year, according to a survey by Raymond James & Associates Inc. -
Exxon, Qatar in Talks on U.S. Shale Deal
Apr 10, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McFarlane and Bradley Olson
Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM +3.36% is in talks with Qatar over a partnership that could see the Middle Eastern nation owning U.S. gas, people familiar with the matter said. -
Oil Company Allies Say Climate Lawsuits Were Shopped Around
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
The oil industry is hitting back after being sued for climate damages by California cities and counties. -
FERC OKs 322,000 Dth/d Tetco Expansion Along Texas Gulf Coast
Apr 10, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
Late last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a certificate for Texas Eastern Transmission LP (Tetco) and Brazoria Interconnector Gas Pipeline LLC to move forward with their Stratton Ridge Expansion Project, designed to increase natural gas delivery capacity into the Texas Gulf Coast. -
Permian Pipelines Trade Hands in $1.75B Private Equity Deal
Apr 10, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
A private equity fund managed by Morgan Stanley is paying $1.75 billion in cash to buy big into Permian Basin pipeline assets. -
Okla. Cuts Disposal Volume Near Site of 4.6 Quake
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Oklahoma officials have ordered a sharp reduction of injection at an oil field waste disposal well in an area that was shaken by two relatively large earthquakes in three days. -
Well Emissions Spike Cancer Risk Nearby — Study
Apr 10, 2018 | Denver Post (In E&E Greenwire)
By John Ingold
Emissions from oil and gas wells can increase cancer risk for those who live nearby, according to a new study of sites in northern Colorado. -
Trump Wants Faster Permits. What About Climate Impacts?
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
Federal agencies will attempt to finalize environmental reviews for infrastructure projects within two years under a new process the Trump administration implemented yesterday. -
EPA Keeps Nitrogen Oxides Standard As Is
Apr 10, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has decided to keep the national standard for nitrogen oxides the same, according to a prepublication notice posted by EPA. -
Apple Goes 100% Green
Apr 10, 2018 | Bloomberg (In E&E Greenwire)
By Brian Eckhouse
Apple Inc. announced yesterday that its entire business now relies on clean energy, a milestone for the multinational tech giant. -
Nestlé to Make All Its Packaging Recyclable
Apr 10, 2018 | Reuters (In E&E Greenwire)
Nestlé SA said today that it intends to make all its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.
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Dems: No Evidence of Credible Threats Against EPA's Pruitt
Apr 10, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
Confidential security assessments in the Environmental Protection Agency show no evidence of specific, credible, physical threats against Administrator Scott Pruitt, despite claims that an "unprecedented" number of death threats justify his outsized security spending, according to a review by Senate Democrats.
Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wrote in a letter Tuesday that they have reviewed security assessments describing 16 purported threats against Pruitt. They include public protests, criticism of Pruitt's policies and other activities protected by the First Amendment.
The letter from Sens. Tom Carper of Delaware and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island urged the committee's Republican chairman to begin oversight hearings into Pruitt's unusual security precautions.
The Associated Press reported Friday that EPA has spent about $3 million on Pruitt's security measures, which included flying first-class and using a full-time security detail of 20 armed officers.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said last week there had been an "unprecedented" amount of death threats against him and his family. The EPA did not immediately return a phone message asking about threats to Pruitt.Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENTContinue reading the main story
President Donald Trump defended Pruitt in a tweet Saturday night, downplaying the ethical questions swirling around his embattled EPA chief. He added that Pruitt's security spending "somewhat more" than prior EPA chiefs, but said Pruitt had received death threats "because of his bold actions at EPA."
The Democrats said they found no records describing specific, credible threats against Pruitt. An internal EPA document recounted such threat as attempts by protesters to disrupt a speech and a post card sent to Pruitt that said: "CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL!!! We are watching you."Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main storyMorning Briefing
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The Democrats also obtained a Feb. 14 assessment from EPA's Office of Homeland Security Intelligence that concluded "EPA Intelligence has not identified any specific, credible, direct threat to the EPA administrator." The review said an earlier threat assessment by Pruitt's security team "does not employ sound analysis or articulate relevant 'threat specific' information appropriate to draw any resource or level of threat conclusions regarding the protection posture for the administrator."
The AP reported that Pruitt's concern with his safety came at a steep cost to taxpayers as his swollen security detail blew through overtime budgets and at times diverted officers away from investigating environmental crimes. Pruitt's 20-member full-time detail is more than three times the size of his predecessor's part-time security contingent.
Shortly after arriving in Washington, Pruitt, 49, demoted the career staff member heading his security detail and replaced him with EPA Senior Special Agent Pasquale "Nino" Perrotta, a former Secret Service agent who operates a private security company. Perrotta oversaw a rapid expansion of the EPA chief's security detail to accommodate guarding him day and night, even on family vacations and when Pruitt was home in Oklahoma.
Perrotta also signed off on new procedures that let Pruitt fly first-class on commercial airliners, with the security chief typically sitting next to him with other security staff farther back in the plane. Pruitt's premium status gave him and his security chief access to VIP airport lounges.
Pruitt has said his use of first-class airfare was initiated following unpleasant interactions with other travelers. In one incident, someone yelled profanity as he walked through the airport.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/10/us/politics/ap-us-trump-epa-security.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Disclosure Leads to Reformulation
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
California’s landmark cleaning products disclosure law, the Cleaning Products Right to Know Act, was enacted in September 2017, after negotiation produced a compromise protecting confidential business information (CBI). Many industry representatives issued celebratory statements when it was signed.
However, even its supporters realise the way the law interacts with Proposition 65 will effectively sharpen the older law’s teeth and force wholesale reformulation of cleaning products, industry experts said at a session of the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) recent GlobalChem conference in Washington, DC.
In addition, they said, the California law, and the prospect of other states following its lead, are causing industry leaders to consider pushing for a national disclosure law, much as they came to support TSCA reform in the interest of heading off varying state regulation of chemicals.
‘Real-life’ examples
Julie Froelicher, senior manager for regulatory and technical relations at Procter and Gamble, said the disclosure law was passed after a decade of attempts, as a result of a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature and companies like hers using ingredient disclosure as a competitive tool. The turning point, she said, was when NGOs began seriously considering the case for exempting CBI from disclosure.
The winning tactic, in Ms Froelicher’s view, was companies presenting case studies of innovative products being brought to market after vast investments in research, such as a Tide product that cleans in cold water. WD40 "did a great job" in explaining the importance of its product remaining a "secret source", while "a fragrance house explained that their whole business is innovative blends", she noted.
"The NGOs were really listening and trying to get past their personal feelings," Ms Froelicher said. "The real-life examples were starting to click with them." However, for many companies, CBI protection is less important than the way the new law intersects with Proposition 65.
Forcing reformulation
Prop 65 requires that employees and consumers be warned when they are exposed to a chemical that is listed by the state as "known" to cause cancer or reproductive harm. It does not require all chemicals to be individually named on labels and offers an exemption if the amount in a product is below levels specified by the state for that chemical.
The new law requires that cleaning product labels disclose all ingredients included on certain hazardous substance lists, among them all chemicals listed under Prop 65, with no minimum threshold. NGOs "would not budge" on this point, Ms Froelicher said.
Industry won a five-year delay in the effective date of this provision "to give companies time to reformulate out. As soon as you put a Prop 65 ingredient on the label, you have the bounty hunters coming after you," she said, referring to the law’s ‘private enforcement’ provisions.
Owen Caine, executive vice president for government relations and public policy at the Household and Commercial Products Association (HCPA), said this is a "tactical move" on the part of NGOs, which takes Prop 65 "where it was intended to go, getting companies to reformulate".
Requiring disclosure of Prop 65 chemicals without a minimum specified is the primary reason the ACC remained opposed to the disclosure legislation, said Karyn Schmidt, the organisation’s senior director of regulatory and technical affairs. "I think it’s a very dangerous precedent." The ACC is especially concerned that the approach could be extended beyond cleaning products, where reformulation is not possible. States following suit
Mr Caine said that five state legislatures are considering disclosure legislation for at least one chemical sector and it is likely to come up in others. Maryland is debating a law identical to California’s, though without the key five-year delay. And New York officials may be poised to use authority they already have under an old law to require online ingredient disclosure, as they have been "threatening" for more than a decade.
"If the idea of reporting down to 100ppm in your products made you squirm, in New York they are talking about 100 parts per billion or even 100 parts per trillion," he said.
Mr Caine added that it is especially worrisome when the debate moves from a legislative arena to that of regulation because it is more possible to open negotiations on legislation and "get a law passed where everyone is half happy with it". However, duplicative legislation "can be dangerous" - even differing reporting forms are a hardship for companies. If states "get different ideas about ingredient exposure, we have a problem," he said.
Shaming devices
Possible action by multiple states is one reason industry is weighing the idea of backing a national disclosure standard, presenters said. Another is growing pressure from NGOs and consumers.
Laws like Prop 65 are "a public shaming device" to push companies away from legal chemical products, said James Votaw, a partner at Keller and Heckman. And NGOs are increasingly "using the marketplace" to accomplish the same objective. Mr Caine agreed that companies were telling the HCPA about pressures from investors.
When the Mind the Store coalition released its first report grading companies on their chemical policies, he said, it listed eight companies, but only Walmart had a chemical management plan. "Within a year, those other seven companies had one in place."
When the battle is fought on the field of public opinion, it almost inevitably turns on hazard-based determinations, rather than those that are risk-based that consider actual exposure, Ms Schmidt noted. "I don’t think we have ever come up with a way to explain risk to the general public," she said.
Mr Caine predicted that "relief will be needed soon" and industry will come to support a national disclosure law, just as it eventually came to the table to discuss TSCA reform.
"Before we can ever get federal legislation, we have to answer some tough questions," he said. Industry needs to discuss what it thinks consumers and government have the ‘right to know’, how information should be provided, and how the science behind disclosure rules "should be validated".
https://chemicalwatch.com/65822/disclosure-leads-to-reformulation
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(ACC Mentioned) Amid Turmoil, Pruitt Takes Aim at Drinking Water Problems
Apr 10, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Annie Snider
As EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has fought to keep his job amid a mounting ethics scandal, he has pointed not just to his regulatory rollbacks as proof of his success, but also to his focus on drinking water safety.
Details are sparse, and critics wonder how much Pruitt can achieve in light of his parallel goal of shrinking the agency. But well before he was engulfed by negative headlines last week, Pruitt had outlined ambitious goals to update aging infrastructure and get dangerous chemicals out of drinking water — the kinds of things he says received too little attention from the Obama administration.
Pruitt leaned heavily on those plans in interviews with conservative media outlets in the past few days, as he defended himself from accusations that he had misused taxpayer dollars on first class travel and pricey office decor, and got a cut-rate deal on an apartment from a lobbyist friend.
"Lead in our drinking water: It’s a concern, a tremendous concern on the health risk to our children, the mental acuity levels of our children," he said in an interview with the Washington Times last week. "You would think that would be a major priority, right? It hasn’t been."
Pruitt brought together high-level officials from across the government last month to launch his "war on lead," and in May he will convene a nationwide summit of drinking water officials to address growing concern over contamination by chemicals used in Teflon and flame retardants.
Local drinking water agencies say they are glad to see Pruitt paying attention to some of their biggest challenges, but critics wonder how much he will actually get done, especially as the White House tries to slash his agency's budget.
“I’m cautiously optimistic at this point,” said Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. “Two of our big issues have been targeted by the administrator as being important issues. What the outcome is and what the actions are is still to be determined.”
So far, the White House has indicated that Pruitt should be able to accomplish his goals without any new money. In fact, EPA’s 2019 budget proposal would eliminate funding for its lead risk reduction program and grants to the states for dealing with the neurotoxin, while slashing research on water safety by more than a third. While Congress has shown little interest in following through with such deep spending cuts, critics say the administration's budget requests undermine Pruitt's pitch.
“Although publicly there’s a lot of talk about moving forward with improvements, basically the foundation upon which you would build stronger protections for drinking water — which are the research that’s needed and the program staff that are needed — they’re really being undermined,” said Erik Olson, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s health program.
President Donald Trump is standing by Pruitt, indicating that his future in the administration is likely safe for now. "Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars.... Scott is doing a great job!" Trump wrote in a tweet over the weekend.
It is unclear exactly what air and water "record" Trump was referring to, but it is likely too early to make such definitive claims. Only limited data on drinking water quality under the Trump administration is available, and air pollution has been declining for more than a decade. The White House did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
While Pruitt might find positive headlines in summits to discuss drinking water problems, the steps that could actually solve them offer few political wins.
Pruitt's most ambitious effort to date will come when he brings together officials from 56 states and territories for a summit to address growing drinking water contamination around the country by toxic chemicals known as Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, or PFAS. In a statement on the summit, Pruitt said EPA would provide "critical national leadership, while ensuring that our state, tribal, and local partners have the opportunity to help shape our path forward." But EPA has provided few additional details about the event, scheduled for late May.
Local outcries over PFAS began five years ago in hotspots like Hoosick Falls, N.Y., whose water was contaminated by the plastics industry, and are now spreading as the scope of the contamination has come to light.
The two most well-known substances, PFOA and PFOS, were used for years in Teflon, Gore-Tex, flame retardants and other water resistant products. They are linked with cancer, liver problems and low birth weight. Scientists say virtually everyone has at least trace amounts of the chemicals in their blood, and monitoring results show they are in the drinking water supplies of at least 15 million Americans, but many drinking water managers say they feel ill prepared to explain the risks to residents or offer solutions.
EPA in 2016 issued voluntary drinking water health advisories that drastically lowered the level at which it said the chemicals could pose a threat, but the agency has not issued any mandatory limits on their presence in drinking water. In fact, EPA has not regulated any new drinking water contaminant in more than 20 years, a testament to how difficult it is to impose costly new requirements on drinking water utilities.
In the absence of federal action, a number of states are moving ahead with their own drinking water limits for PFOA and PFOS, although public health advocates say that is no substitution for EPA regulation. They argue the whole point of the Safe Drinking Water Act was to prevent a patchwork of regulations.
Moreover, some states are powerless to do anything unless EPA does, said Sambhav Sankar, executive director of the Environmental Council of States.
“In those states, where state legislatures have done things like say you can’t pass any regulations tighter than EPA’s, those states are kind of hamstrung until EPA does something,” he said.
ECOS and the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators have both asked EPA for help with PFAS, although they haven’t decided whether they want the agency to write regulations, or just offer more research and guidance. But the National Rural Water Association is decidedly opposed to a mandatory limit, arguing that utilities are already committed to doing their best to eliminate the contaminant and shouldn’t face potential penalties if they fall short.
PFOA and PFOS are no longer manufactured in the U.S., but the chemical industry has resisted calls to regulate other PFAS that have been used to replace them, which are also cropping up in drinking water supplies and health experts warn might not be any safer. For instance, in North Carolina the DuPont spinoff Chemours Company dumped the PFAS GenX in the Cape Fear River near Fayetteville for years and has pushed back against efforts to curtail its disposal into the community’s primary drinking water source.
The FluoroCouncil, which is composed of companies making PFAS, including Chemours, said in a statement that it is “fully supportive of EPA’s efforts to evaluate these chemicals,” but cautioned that “these newer chemistries have been thoroughly reviewed by regulators who have relied on a robust body of scientific data showing these chemistries can be used safely.”
Pruitt has close ties to the chemicals industry, particularly the American Chemistry Council, which runs the FluoroCouncil. The acting head of Pruitt’s chemical safety office, Nancy Beck, was previously a top scientist for ACC. President Donald Trump’s nominee to head EPA’s chemical safety office, Michael Dourson, a former chemical industry consultant, withdrew from consideration last year after North Carolina’s two Republican senators refused their support, pointing to drinking water contamination in their state.
With his "war on lead," Pruitt is taking on an even higher profile crisis, after criticizing the Obama administration's response to the contamination of drinking water in Flint, Mich., in 2015 and 2016, when nearly 100,000 residents were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead.
Pruitt last month invited more than a dozen Cabinet secretaries and top-level officials to a meeting at EPA headquarters to develop a federal plan to reduce children’s exposure to lead. Attendees included HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and representatives from several other agencies.
Pruitt has said he wants to “eradicate” lead — which can inhibit children's brain development at any level of exposure — but there are no easy options available to him.
EPA has left open the option of requiring all lead piping to be removed as part of its plan to update the Lead and Copper Rule. But work on that update has been underway for more than a decade already, and the schedule to complete the work keeps slipping. A new rule is not expected until at least 2020, and regulators will have to sort through a host of additional issues by then on top of the question of whether to replace lead pipes.
The American Water Works Association estimates it would cost $30 billion to remove and replace all lead piping across the country. That’s on top of the roughly $1 trillion needed more broadly to replace aging and failing water infrastructure.
Not only is the federal government unlikely to come up with that kind of cash anytime soon — the Trump administration’s infrastructure proposal looked to private and local financing, not federal grants for improving drinking water infrastructure — but even if it did, it could probably only fund replacement of the public pipes, not the lead service lines and plumbing that are owned by homeowners. Furthermore, this type of partial replacement can actually make lead contamination worse in the near term, public health experts say, since the act of replacing water mains can shake up the remaining lead pipes, depositing the contaminant in drinking water.
Michael Keegan of the National Rural Water Association, which has pushed back on a mandate for full replacement, said that lead isn’t a widespread danger since most utilities are using corrosion control, and that scarce dollars for upgrades could be better invested in other projects.
“The reason not to mandate full lead pipe service line removal is because people don’t want it,” he said. “If there’s not a problem with lead in their water and they don’t feel that the expense of removing the lead service lines is going to have a commensurate public health improvement, they should be allowed to decide that.”
Critics are skeptical that Pruitt will take on the thorny issues involved in persistent drinking water problems and argue that Pruitt's much-touted meetings are more about headlines than about action. They say that the chemicals industry has a long history of running out the clock on drinking water regulation.
“Communities across the country are suffering now because of drinking water contamination,” New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a congressional leader on drinking water issues, said in a statement. If Pruitt is serious about protecting drinking water, Pallone said, he should update the Lead and Copper Rule and move forward with regulations for PFAS and other emerging contaminants.
“Instead of taking meaningful steps to address drinking water contamination all we have seen from him are delays and distractions,” Pallone said.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/04/amid-turmoil-pruitt-takes-aim-at-drinking-water-problems-451631
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Furniture Flame Retardants in Focus
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Sean Milmo
The impact of flame retardants (FRs) on the environment and human health has had a high profile for decades because of their persistence, bioaccumulative, carcinogenic and suspected endocrine disrupting properties. An additional concern that has gained prominence recently has been their capacity to kill and injure through toxic smoke, mainly generated by emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
"We have been advising our members as a matter of policy for the last three years that they should avoid using FRs mainly because of concerns about their environmental and health effects," says Roberta Dessi, secretary general of the European Furniture Industries Confederation (Efic).
"Now research has highlighted the dangers of toxic smoke from FRs. We had assumed that fire safety was increased with these substances. This is an important additional danger."
The growing number of studies questioning the effectiveness of FRs has led some to believe the risks outweigh their benefits. "The sector has big challenges at the moment," says Sander Kroon, regulatory affairs manager at ICL-IP Europe, a major producer of brominated FRs (BFRs). "We have got to be much more proactive and work together in defence of FRs."
The industry’s lobbying powers have been weakened by a split in its ranks. The European Flame Retardants Association (Efra), mainly representing BFRs and other halogenated products, has withdrawn from Cefic, while the Phosphorus, Inorganic & Nitrogen Flame Retardants Association (Pinfa), representing non-halogenated FR producers, has remained a sector group within it.
Efra has been disbanded, with the objective of creating a new group which will seek to shift the focuses away from the hazards linked to FRs. "The key issue is exposure not hazard," says Mr Kroon, one of the leading figures in setting up the new organisation. "The public is hearing too much about the dangers, as described mainly by NGOs, and not enough about the effectiveness of FRs."
For FR producers there is a pressing need to deal with growing hostility to FRs among customers sectors, particularly furniture manufacturers. The sector is one of the main consumers of FRs in both foams and fabrics.
In Europe, Efic has combined with other industry groups, like the European Bedding Industries Association (Ebia) and the European Federation of Building and Woodworkers, together with NGOs and firefighter trade unions, to form the Alliance for Flame Retardant-Free Furniture.
The alliance has just set up a website, which opposes the use of FRs, particularly as a result of a regulatory requirements for products like furniture and bedding to pass official ignitability and flammability tests before being put on the market. Instead, it favours greater use of smoke detectors, automatic sprinklers, self-extinguishing cigarettes and candles, and improved fire safety education.
Both sides of the debate need large, well-funded and resourced groups, because central lobbying is not enough. In Europe, even though testing protocols are drawn up at EU level, fire safety standards are initiated and enforced at member states under the subsidiarity principle and because of varying local conditions.
Elżbieta Bieńkowska, European commissioner for the internal market, told the European Parliament last September: "The EU should only undertake action if the objectives of fire safety cannot be sufficiently achieved by member states. Today, the Commission has no compelling proof that national regulations are not reaching this goal."
The EU’s only national furniture-specific fire safety controls are in the UK and Ireland, where products have to pass ignitability and flammability tests. Since the UK’s Furniture and Furnishings Regulations (FFRs) were introduced in 1988, fire deaths there have decreased, recently by up to 50 each year. The regulations are now under review, with the objective of maintaining existing fire safety levels but with reduced FR use.
In the US, where states require pre-market testing of products, flammability requirements have been eased, primarily to reduce the use of FR chemicals. In California, for example, upholstered furniture can now be sold without FR foam.
The increased attention being given to the issue of smoke toxicity may result in changes to testing protocols for furniture, bedding and other furnishing, so that post-combustion emission of toxic gases will have to be measured. This may cause complications, because levels of toxic emissions can depend on variables like ignitability, flammability, ventilations levels and the sizes of rooms in which the fires occur.
Analyses of smoke content has shown that the major hazards for building occupants are carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, because they cause relatively rapid asphyxiation. However, there are other acutely dangerous substances in smoke.
These include irritants like hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen bromide and nitrogen oxides, which can hinder breathing by causing swelling in the throat. Others include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), particulate matter (PM), acrolein, sulphur dioxide, formaldehyde, dioxins and furans.
"All smoke is toxic, with substances like PAHs and PM that have no links to FRs being a major cause of injuries and fatalities in fires," says Mr Kroon. "The priority is to protect occupants from the effects of all smoke by using FRs to give them more time to escape fires."
Another category of high-risk chemicals is those which increase the density of smoke. Some regulators prioritise controls on chemicals linked to smoke density because it is the main factor hampering escapes by building occupants from fires.
One major problem is a lack of data pinpointing the source of the toxic chemicals in smoke. Few countries have regulations or mandatory testing schemes for measuring emissions of toxic substances from specific products during fires. Studies, some stretching back to the 1970s, have identified polyurethane foams as a source of hydrochloric acid emissions, but there is still a shortage of data on their ignitability and flammability in different types of finished product and fire conditions.
A UK and New Zealand team of researchers headed by Professor Richard Hull of the Centre for Fire and Hazard Science at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, attempted to fill some of the knowledge gaps in a paper published late last year. One objective was to find out why fires in bedrooms, living rooms and dining rooms caused 71% of all fire fatalities in the UK in the years 2009-14 despite accounting for only 13% of all fires.
To investigate the post-combustion effects of FRs on toxicity levels and fire growth rates in burning furniture and furnishing, the researchers tested four different fabric-filling FR combinations in sofa-bed mattresses on steel frames:a UK-sourced fire retardant (UKFR) fabric and foam;a China-sourced FR fabric with the same foam as the UKFR;a fabric and foam without FRs for the mainland European market; and a UK-made woven cover fabric, including cotton, wool, cotton wool and polyester fillings, designed to comply with the UK FFRs.
They concluded that meeting the regulations without FRs provides the lowest level of fire hazard in terms of toxicity. Although fire toxicity is the main cause of death and injury from fires in the UK, with a disportionate number of fatalities from upholstery and bedding fires, the FFRs have disregarded it. As a result, there is an overreliance on FRs to meet furniture flammability regulations, the study claimed.
The researchers decided that, once ignition occurs, the presence of FRs has little effect on fire growth rates but instead has an adverse impact on levels of smoke toxicity. The best performing product in the large-scale tests in the study was the one made mainly of natural materials without FRs, they concluded.
However, the FRs industry and fire science academics have criticised the study, mainly for focusing in the wrong place. "Professor Hull and his team concentrated too much on burning behaviour, while attaching insufficient importance to ignition," says Peter Wragg, director of the UK-based Flame Retardant Textiles Network (Fretwork), which promotes discussion among specialists on critical technical issues in the sector.
Klaus Rothenbacher, a regulatory advisor at the International Bromine Council, told a Fretwork meeting in February that the paper did not consider at all how easily the materials in the study ignited. "Ignition is a fundamental parameter in fire safety," he said. "FRs are intended to inhibit or stop the combustion process at point of ignition. Every second counts—the first few minutes are critical."
In response, Professor Hull points to the scarcity of data on exactly how efficient FRs are in suppressing ignition and says that he believes that the study will be followed by more detailed studies focusing on this. "It was a proof of concept," he explains. "Obviously with a such a small range of materials we cannot claim it is representative of the whole market."
The study, which received a lot of media publicity after publication, especially in the UK, also briefly highlighted another increasingly prominent issue: damage to interior air quality caused by the relatively large amounts of FR dust prevalent in households with old furniture, where FRs have become detached from fabrics in upholstery, carpets and curtains.
Michael Warhurst of the UK-based NGO ChemTrust calls these pollutants "worrying", because the FRs are routinely found in dust and there is a risk of children ingesting them. NGOs have also been expressing concerns about FRs contaminating recycled materials when circular economies become more prevalent.
While regulators appears to be holding back in taking action on previously low profile issues like toxic smoke and interior air quality, they are making greater progress in tackling FRs long suspected of being major hazards to health and the environment.
The BFR hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) used in foams is being phased out globally as a persistent organic pollutant (POP), although the first of the specific use exemptions will not expire until November 2019. DecaBDE has now been officially scheduled for global phase-out after being listed as a POP under the Stockholm Convention. Other halogenated FRs are destined to be replaced by safer alternatives under REACH.
Echa is also investigating the safety of some phosphate FRs. In February, a public consultation ended on possible restrictions on the use of tris (2-chloro-1-methylethyl) phosphate (TCPP), tris (2 chloro-1-chloromethylethyl) phosphate (TDCP) and tris (2- chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP). Under its community rolling action programme (Corap), the agency now has proposed evaluations of 17 FRs, mostly phosphates.
"These reviews can be expensive for the industry," says Mr Kroon. "The more proposed evaluations are made, the more the industry has to spend on defending their products.through the collection of data." And, one might adds, with smoke toxicity likely to become a major safety issue, this expenditure will rise even further.
https://chemicalwatch.com/65818/furniture-flame-retardants-in-focus
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NRDC Urges EPA To Craft Perchlorate Limit After Review Backs Model
Apr 10, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad
Environmentalists are renewing their calls for EPA to craft a drinking water standard for the rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate after a peer review panel found that the latest version of the agency's model to inform development of a health goal for the substance is "fit for purpose."
"One of the many travesties in the failure to properly protect drinking water in the United States is EPA's decades-long inability to set an enforceable drinking standard for perchlorate, a chemical that harms the thyroid -- critical for normal growth and development -- and that contaminates drinking water systems serving over 17 million people in the U.S," Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said in an April 5 blog post.
Pointing to the peer reviewers' report, which EPA released April 5, Sass adds that the "expert panel has concluded that EPA should proceed to set a health-protective drinking water standard for perchlorate, even while expressing some concerns that EPA's approach may still be underestimating the health risks posed by drinking perchlorate."
Sass' comments come months after officials sought to reassure the agency's children's health advisory panelthat they will continue on their path toward regulating perchlorate, despite a public suggestion from one top official that raised questions in some stakeholders' minds.
Eric Burneson, director of Standards and Risk Management within EPA's office of ground water and drinking water, told the children's health panel that the agency had little choice but to issue a standard given its determination that perchlorate was eligible for regulation.
"What the statute says is that the agency having made a regulatory determination, has to proceed toward proposing and promulgating within that time frame. The statute doesn't envision the agency changing its mind" on a determination that a drinking water contaminant should be regulated, he said.
Now that the peer review panel has endorsed EPA's model, development of the standard -- the first since the Safe Drinking Water Act was revised in 1996 -- as well as a health goal, known as a maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG), is likely to proceed, though it will still be years before the agency is expected to adopt a standard.
"Overall, the panel agreed that the EPA and its collaborators have prepared a highly innovative state-of-the-science set of quantitative tools to evaluate neurodevelopmental effects that could arise from drinking water exposure to perchlorate. While there is always room for improvement of the models, with limited additional work to address the committee's comments below, the current models are fit-for-purpose to determine an MCLG," the peer reviewers said in a consensus statement.
The statement appears to largely reiterate statements that peer reviewers made during their meeting last January, when they appeared to deem it the best among a handful of imperfect options, even as some stakeholders suggested EPA return to an approach proposed years ago.
Most reviewers appeared to reject the alternatives of returning to a risk value that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) generated in 2007 or using two or three epidemiology studies published since 2013 as the basis for a new dose-response analysis. Two stakeholders who spoke at the Jan. 29-30 meeting in Arlington, VA, appeared to suggest that EPA should return to the NAS' reference dose to consider the possibility of a drinking water standard.
But most of the panelists appeared to prefer using the model to inform the analysis rather than any other option.
'Underestimate Risk'
Still, NRDC continues to have concerns that the modeling approach "may underestimate risk, particularly where exposures take place during early life development of critical systems, that could lead to neurobehavioral impairments. In setting a drinking water standard, EPA should use uncertainty factors (UFs) to address these limitations, and to ensure that vulnerable populations will be protected."
EPA scientists developed the biologically based dose-response (BBDR) model in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration following the 2013 recommendation from its Science Advisory Board that EPA use the novel model-based approach to provide the most scientific basis for a perchlorate MCLG, the first step in setting an enforceable drinking water standard. The recommendation, however, resulted in an approach that took far longer to develop than anticipated.
NRDC sued EPA in 2016, arguing that the agency had missed a statutory deadline for proposing an MCLG, following former Administrator Lisa Jackson's 2011 determination that perchlorate should be regulated. Under a settlement between environmentalists and EPA that laid out a series of deadlines for agency action, EPA was to have completed the peer review process for the BBDR model last October.
EPA had to explain to the court last fall that it had missed the October deadline "due to the complexity of unanticipated revisions to the BBDR model that were recommended by the first peer review panel. . . . Although time-consuming, EPA concluded that following these recommendations would result in a more scientifically rigorous model."
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/nrdc-urges-epa-craft-perchlorate-limit-after-review-backs-model
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From Talcum to Glyphosate: The Multi-Billion Dollar Battle to Define ‘Risk’
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Lucas Bergkamp
Last August, a California jury awarded plaintiff Eva Echeverria a total of $417m in compensatory and punitive damages in a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson (J&J). Her case was that the company should have warned consumers that studies had found an inconclusive correlation between ovarian cancer and talcum powder.
The case followed on from three other lawsuits that ended with the company owing over $300m in damages for failing to inform its customers. The Echeverria verdict was recently overturned, but J&J still faces talc-related lawsuits by 4,800 plaintiffs in the US.
In Europe, glyphosate came very close to being banned last December, based on one report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc) declaring it ‘probably carcinogenic’. This is, as Reuters reported, the only study suggesting glyphosate might be a human carcinogen, after decades of research and testing culminating in hundreds of studies and reports.
What is going on? Both Monsanto and J&J feel that they have science on their side. J&J argues that no link between talc and increased risk for ovarian cancer has been proved, citing studies that show no association between them. One of these followed women over a period of more than 24 years. The California jury, on the other hand, felt that even though no link has ever been proven, J&J should have warned consumers about the possibility of a risk.
Who defines risk?
The battle, then, is not about scientific facts. It is over the definition of risk and who gets to decide what a risk is. Increasingly, companies need to prove that their products will not cause harm under any circumstances. This ‘better safe than sorry’ definition of risk is also called the ‘precautionary principle’. For executives, it is new and uncharted territory - and treacherous at that.
Technological advances and our scientific models make it easier than ever to find potential risk. Just one example, where we formerly detected substances at parts per hundred, we can detect parts per billion. This makes it possible to find ‘hazardous’ substances almost anywhere.
Once we have identified a substance, we turn to scientific models to predict how hazardous it might be. For many, we assess risk through the so-called linear no-threshold (LNT) model, which measures how many people a substance kills at a certain concentration. If, say, concentration X kills ten people out of 1,000, then according to the model, at 0.1%, it will kill one person out of 1,000, at 0.01% one in 10,000, and so on.
The tricky thing is that the model assumes that at any exposure, however negligible, the substance will be lethal for someone somewhere. This renders the model of great strategic interest to activists.
Take a minor health risk with a low mortality, or a substance that is found only in very small concentrations. Now calculate the death toll for the population of the EU (500 million) or even the whole world (11 billion). Suddenly, thousands of lives hang in the balance.
Whether the LNT model is accurate is far from certain. But it is certainly politically useful: for a motivated activist group or researcher, it is not all that hard to ‘predict’ a few thousand dead Europeans or Americans per year.
Exploiting the gaps
Journalists and politicians do not know the assumptions behind the models they rely on to make headlines – and policy. Not many are aware of the peculiar accounting that the LNT model allows. That, however, does not stop the model from generating headlines and policies around the world.
Add to that the fact that it is notoriously hard to assess ‘long tail’ risks like climate change, endocrine disruption and nanotechnology, and small, remote risks like the ‘cocktail effects’ of chemicals, and it is easy enough to argue that they might have effects. After all, how can you prove that they will not? If you can think up the possibility of a potential hazard or risk, it exists.
The mainstream media has embraced this precautionary principle and seems to accept that societies should regulate health and environmental risks if there is the mere possibility they exist. As a result, simply imagining a risk can become indistinguishable from creating it.
Take talcum in the case of J&J. Somebody did a study on it and found no conclusive link between talc and cancer. But the fact that it was studied in the first place surely indicates that a scientist was worried? Does that not mean that the public should worry too? The conclusion of any study might be that it ‘does not exclude that a risk exists’.
Alarmist headlines about small or imagined risks can shift public perception overnight and may adversely affect corporate reputations and stock prices. They also often spark a political response. The first usually includes a grant for a research group to study and evaluate the risk. So, now we have more studies looking for risk. Should we worry more?
Science neutral?
It would be naive to assume that science is immune to this battle to define risk. Scientists, especially in controversial fields, are practically forced to choose between adopting the precautionary principle or being sidelined.
Already we see the toxicology field breaking up into two factions. In research into endocrine disruption, we see researchers aligning more closely with activists on some issues than with conventional academics. Similar developments are visible in climate change: scientists defend their precautionary models and openly advocate aggressive policies.
The feedback loop of activism, media, policy and science keeps getting stronger and stronger. In this dynamic, corporations face difficult, but critically important, decisions.
Will you wait to act until there is a scientific consensus on the risk associated with your product? Doing so opens you up to attacks by consumer watchdogs, activist groups and lawyers. They will accuse you of corporate irresponsibility and demand to know why you did not act sooner.
Or do you accept acting on risks that have not been proven? Will you hurt your business by putting warnings on your product about those that might not exist?
That will probably not sit well with the shareholders and the board. Worse, putting a warning on a product might make you an even more attractive target for legal action by activists and tort lawyers. ‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t’, as the old saying goes.
Black swans
In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, author Nassim Taleb explains that our models for understanding and measuring the world are woefully inadequate. He argues that statistical models underestimate the occurrence of ‘black swans’ – sudden, shocking, low probability, high impact events like the financial crisis or the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
His findings might well apply to Wall Street. But in fields like health and environmental hazards, we are reaching the point where overestimating the occurrence of black swans is a much greater problem than ignoring the possibility of their existence.
At that point, we are basing decisions on emotion, not on science and facts. When politics becomes ‘post-truth’, we rightly deplore that. When it happens in science, we should not accept it either.
The views expressed in contributed articles are those of the expert authors and are not necessarily shared by Chemical Watch.
https://chemicalwatch.com/65832/from-talcum-to-glyphosate-the-multi-billion-dollar-battle-to-define-risk
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Endocrine Disruptors Are Changing the Socio-Economic Analysis
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tero Koski
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have been a hot topic in REACH authorisation lately. Two substances of very high concern (SVHCs) with this property have been added to Annex XIV, since when the industry has struggled with the question of how risks arising from the use of EDCs should be monetised in the socio-economic analysis (SEA). This is a major issue, since one of the most crucial tasks of an application for authorisation (AfA) through the SEA route is to demonstrate that the economic benefits of using the substance outweigh the risks.
Previously, it was relatively straightforward to monetise the risks of using substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction (CMR), because the relationship between individual exposure and the incidence of a defined health effect was estimated quantitatively via willingness-to-pay estimates. The authorities have used the ratio resulting from comparing the monetised risk and benefit of continued use as a basis for deciding on whether to grant an authorisation, and the length of the review period.
Persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) substances and very persistent, very bioaccumulative (vPvB) substances are also subject to authorisation. Like EDCs, these both lack a clear quantification method and the monetisation of environmental impacts is not currently feasible. This makes it challenging to evaluate whether the benefits of use outweigh the risks.
The Committee for Socio-economic Analysis (Seac) published a brief guidance for the risk assessment of PBT and vPvB substances in 2016. Now, with the latest application date for the EDCs in Annex XIV looming, Echa and Seac have shed some light on monetising them.
This article introduces the risk assessment method Seac endorsed in its latest comments: semi-quantitative assessment with a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). CEA is a form of economic analysis which compares the monetary costs and non-monetary effects of different courses of action. This is where the cost of, for example, the non-use scenario is related to some non-monetary parameter, like kilograms of avoided emissions. The ratio of this is then derived to achieve the cost in terms of euros/tonne.
Impact on SEA assessment
Assessing the benefits of continued use of environmentally hazardous substances does not differ from other AfAs. This assessment is based on the non-use scenario, where the substance is no longer available for use, and its impacts on society and the applicant. These impacts (costs) are ordinarily unemployment and business losses in monetary terms.
With these groups of substances, however, it is very difficult to monetise the environmental risk arising from their use. Firstly, they can remain and accumulate in the environment over long periods of time. In the long-term, the effects of this accumulation are unpredictable, and exposure is difficult to reverse because ending releases will not necessarily result in a measurable reduction in exposure.
Secondly, deriving thresholds or dose-response relationships is extremely difficult for these substances. With current methods, it is problematic to establish a no-effect concentration for the environment. It is also quite difficult to estimate reliably how they behave in the environment and what the consequences of releases are.
Even without full quantification of risks, however, it is still possible to assess environmental risks. As the relevant guidance documents show, it is possible to use qualitative and semi-quantitative approaches, with the approach being case-specific. When the benefits of the continued use are significant and the emissions are properly controlled, a qualitative assessment may be enough.
In a more complex case, in-depth semi-quantitative analysis may be needed. This would include an assessment of the monetised benefits of continued use and quantified release estimates, complemented by qualitative information.
In practice, this means that a SEA assessing EDCs and PBT/vPvB substances would need to include several elements, including, among others: quantified releases; a qualitative description of the location of the releases;a qualitative description of the potential impacts of the releases; and a qualitative comparison of the benefits and risk of the continued use.
Applicants will also need to undertake a CEA, based on the emissions reduction and compliance costs related to the substance. To assess the proportionality of policy measures based on a CEA, there is a need for a benchmark: the decision maker wants to know if a specific level of cost (for example, per unit of emission reduction) should be considered as proportional or not.
The cost-effectiveness ratio can then be compared to a benchmark like previous studies on abatement or avoidance costs, or existing data on remediation or clean-up costs, etc., in order to conclude on the proportionality. From this, an opinion can be derived as to whether the regulatory action results in net benefits to society.
However, there are currently no standard benchmarks for evaluation that would lead to an acceptable level of cost-effectiveness or other indicator of benefits applicable to all EDCs and PBT/vPvB substances. As a result, Seac stated that the information provided in the application for authorisation will be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
Ways forward
If standard benchmarks could be established for each EDC and PBT/vPvB substance, it would greatly clarify how the SEA assessments and evaluation should be developed. There have already been investigations, but these are, currently, only initial attempts.
For example, the Free University of Amsterdam conducted a project to develop a benchmark for regulatory decision making-under REACH for PBT and vPvB substances. However, this resulted in a substantial evidence base in terms of cost-effectiveness data rather than any specific suggestion for benchmarks.
Another future possibility might be exploiting the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) as an environmental risk monetisation method, since it compiles accounts in physical and monetary terms. This is a statistical multi-purpose conceptual framework for understanding the interactions between the environment and the economy.
The SEEA system generates a wide range of statistics, accounts and indicators with many different potential analytical applications, and can be adapted to policy needs while at the same time providing a common framework, concepts, terms and definitions. In theory, it can give a monetary value for a physical unit of emissions to the environment.
In relation to EDCs, it is theoretically possible to monetise pollutants discharged into water bodies using the SEEA. Unfortunately, this framework is still in the conceptual and data collection phase. Finalising this approach before usable data is available could take years.
Conclusion
Substances with endocrine-disrupting properties are changing the conventional way of thinking how the SEA for AfAs should be prepared. In risk assessment, the main focus should be on environmental rather than human health impacts.
With the aforementioned deficiencies in full quantification of the environmental risk of using EDCs and PBT and vPvB substances, the proposed analysis method is a semi-quantitative assessment with a cost-effectiveness analysis.
With a euro/tonne ratio derived from CEA, it is in theory possible to assess the proportionality of an authorisation decision but in practice this depends on valid and robust benchmarks, which do not yet exist.
Despite not being definitive, Seac’s latest clarifications will help SEA practitioners unify authorisation application dossiers. Industry and the authorities should carry on investigating and developing more robust monetisation methods for the risk assessment of EDCs and PBT/vPvB substances. However, in the short-term it will also be necessary to develop robust benchmarks for these substance groups to allow transparent risk-benefit comparisons.
The views expressed in this article are those of the expert author and are not necessarily shared by Chemical Watch
https://chemicalwatch.com/65827/endocrine-disruptors-are-changing-the-socio-economic-analysis
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European Trade Associations Fear Potential MIT Restriction
Apr 10, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Tammy Lovell
The paint and cleaning product industries have voiced fears that an expected restriction of methylisothiazolinone (MIT) under the EU's biocidal products Regulation (BPR) could push the preservative off the market.
In February, the EU’s REACH committee voted to approve a harmonised classification of MIT as an allergen in mixtures like paint and detergents under the CLP Regulation. Products will have to be labelled when they contain more than 0.0015% of MIT.
This could lead to a concentration limit of 15 parts per million (ppm) on MIT under the BPR. The biocides and CLP Regulations are interlinked: the BPR refers to potential restrictions and bans on substances that have certain classifications, such as for skin sensitisation.
But because MIT is no longer effective at a concentration of 15 ppm, this would amount to it being "de facto banned" from the DIY sector, warned Christof Walter from the German Paint and Printing Ink Association (VdL).
Industry would be "heavy affected" by such a restriction, because MIT is "an essential tool to prevent the development of bacterial tolerance". The paint industry has warned before that a decreasing number of in-can preservatives, available for use in paints, is risking the development of resistant biofilms.
The VdL is urging authorities not to restrict MIT under the BPR.‘Disappearing preservatives’
The soap and detergents trade body, Aise, expressed similar concerns about an MIT restriction. Mohamed Temsamani, the organisation's head of external affairs, told Chemical Watch that it would "have disproportionate effects for the industry by essentially banning/disqualifying, under the BPR, one of the key in-can preservatives available on the market".
Although other active substances with the same efficacy exist, he said these were limited and could also be subject to classification.
The shrinking pool of available preservatives has long been a problem for industry – particularly the personal care sector which has faced a number of restrictions and bans over the last four years.
Mr Temsamani added: "This is yet another worrying signal that key substances are being phased out, or measures are taken which are essentially equivalent to a ban. The industry’s core substances used for preservation of products are disappearing one after the other without any solution being readily available."
His concern was echoed by Dr Walter, who said: "The very few alternatives are also under regulatory pressure, due to the automatism between the CLH process and the BPR. Hence, we fear that the future of water-based products is in danger if this process continues."
The Commission’s proposal for MIT's CLP classification is currently undergoing scrutiny by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. They can either veto it, or allow the Commission to adopt it.
https://chemicalwatch.com/65816/european-trade-associations-fear-potential-mit-restriction
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U.S. Saw Record Natural Gas Production in 2017
Apr 10, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Katherine Blunt
U.S. natural gas production reached record levels last year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, an increase that substantially boosted exports even as Texas, the largest gas-producing state, lost some of its momentum.
Gross withdrawals reached 90.9 billion cubic feet per day in 2017, the agency's highest volume on record. Marketed natural gas production, which does not include gas vented, flared, used for re-pressuring or removed during processing, also reached record levels.
Louisiana's gross withdrawals increased from 4.8 billion cubic feet per day to to 5.8 billion cubic feet per day, marking the largest annual gain of any state. And the Appalachian region, which includes the Marcellus and Utica shale fields in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, also saw substantial volume growth.
Texas, however, saw production volume decline from 22.2 billion cubic feet per day in 2016 to 21.7 billion cubic feet per day last year. But the state remained the nation's top producer, outpacing Pennsylvania's production by about 7 billion cubic feet per day.
Nationally, gross withdrawals increased for five consecutive months starting in July and reached a record monthly high of 96.7 billion cubic feet per day in December, the Energy Department reported. Marketed natural gas production set an annual record at 78.9 billion cubic feet per day.
Natural gas exports increased 36 percent amid the surge in production, making the nation a net natural gas exporter for the first time in nearly 60 years.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/U-S-saw-record-natural-gas-production-in-2017-12821212.php
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U.S. E&Ps Practicing Capital Discipline Even as Activity Climbs Onshore
Apr 10, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Carolyn Davis
The global oil and gas industry has begun its second year of recovery, but capital spending only climbed last year by about half as much as originally budgeted, and it is poised to surge this year, according to a survey by Raymond James & Associates Inc.
Exploration and production (E&P) companies worldwide took a hammer to their investments following the oil price slide in 2014, resulting in “austerity of unprecedented proportions,” said analysts Pavel Molchanov, J. Marshall Adkins, John Freeman and Praveen Narra. The team had predicted last year that 2017 global oil and gas capital expenditures (capex) would increase by more than 10%, led by an expected 50%-plus increase in U.S. public E&P spending.
However, based on a recently finalized capex survey, which encompasses about 70% of global upstream oilfield investment, “it now appears that 2017 public company global oilfield spending rose by a smaller-than-expected 5%,” analysts said. “With the recent surge in oil prices, 2018 global budgets are now projecting a 12% increase in global oil and gas spending.”
Unlike last year, when U.S.-centric E&Ps led the global spending recovery with a 52% surge in capex, this year appears to be more evenly distributed, with the large E&Ps following through on their promises to instill capital discipline.
“The big picture is that global spending is still down by nearly half from peak 2013 levels, and sustaining global oil supply growth will ultimately require further spending recovery, an uncertain prospect as more management teams take a cautious approach to capital allocation,” said the Raymond James team.
Even with an estimated 50% jump in cash flows last year, U.S. E&Ps overall only plan to raise 2018 spend by around 12%. The focus on free cash flow and the value over volume mantra isn’t “just lip service -- it is actually showing up in early budgets,” said the analysts.
If oil prices were to remain in the mid-$60s, there also may be room to raise capex through the year, since many budgets were set on an oil price forecast in the mid-$50s.
The Raymond James survey is not exact, as it only captures the publicly traded E&Ps in the United States, around 40% of the spend. Not included is spending by private operators and the majors/national oil companies.
“When we look at overall U.S. oilfield spending in 2018, we still expect a much more robust 40% increase in overall spending backed by a 60% increase in industry cash flows,” said the Raymond James team.
Using a “top down” analysis, capex estimates are based on oil prices, overall production and industry cash flow generation. A key assumption is that U.S. producers overall spend at least as much cash as they generate, and often more. “For the past two decades, this has been a very good assumption,” the Raymond James team said.
Based on the firm’s 2018 price deck, which is forecasting average West Texas Intermediate oil prices of $65/bbl, U.S. E&P cash flow generation should increase by around 60%, with capex up around 40% and the U.S. rig count increasing by 25% or higher.
Unlike 2017, when five of the 18 public companies in the survey’s U.S. subset more than doubled spending, none of the domestic E&Ps expect to increase capex by more than 100%, and only Permian Basin-focused Diamondback Energy Inc. is above 50%, according to Raymond James.
Following a series of recent meetings with U.S. E&Ps, Jefferies LLC analysts said the U.S. land rig count would eclipse 1,000 by the end of June. As a matter of fact, Baker Hughes Inc.’s weekly rig count issued last Friday showed that the United States ended the week at 1,003 active oil rigs, while the natural gas-directed rigs finished flat week/week at 194. The latest count marked the first time the domestic tally has surpassed the 1,000-rig mark since April 2015.
“We sensed that reloaded operator budgets have created enough demand visibility to allow for the U.S. land rig count to steadily rise above 1,000 in the second quarter,” Jefferies analysts said of their meetings. “We also sensed that land drillers are more willing to sign one-to-two year term contracts at current leading edge dayrates in a bid to lock in steady margins…
“Interestingly, E&Ps appeared a little surprised at the pace of total rig count growth, and we heard at least one example of concern that service costs could be higher than budgeted for if the rig count materially exceeds 1,000.”
Meanwhile, Oil & Gas Financial Analytics LLC founder Nick Cacchione, in a blog post for RBN Energy LLC, said with oil prices exceeding $60/bbl, margins should increase this year, giving the 44 major U.S. E&Ps he tracks an estimated $24.5 billion in incremental cash flow.
Cacchione pegged incremental capex for the U.S. E&P group at $2.3 billion this year, which leaves more than $22 billion in incremental free cash flow. A lot of cash is being returned to shareholders.
“We counted nearly $7 billion in new share repurchases, as well as another $710 million in newly announced dividend gains,” Cacchione said. “Part of the remaining free cash flow will be used to reduce some of the $184 billion in debt that remained outstanding at the end of 2017.”
In a deeper dive into 17 U.S. oil-weighted E&Ps, Cacchione also noted the “remarkable” financial discipline by domestic operators.
“Altogether, these oil producers are only allocating an additional $2.1 billion -- less than one-sixth of the $13.6 billion in additional cash flow -- to increased capital expenditures, resulting in a modest 9% boost in 2018 capex,” he said. “The remaining $11.5 billion in free cash flow will be reserved for strengthening balance sheets and rewarding shareholders through higher dividends and share buybacks.
“That’s noteworthy for an energy sector renowned for its financial profligacy in the emergence from downcycles over the last three decades.”
According to Cacchione’s calculations, oil-weighted domestic E&Ps plan to allocate more than half (55%) of 2018 capex to the Permian Basin, 13% to the Eagle Ford Shale and 9% to the Bakken Shale, with the remainder across other assets. Last year about 52% of total capex was allocated to the Permian and 12% to the Eagle Ford, while the Bakken also was at 9%. Capex in Oklahoma’s myriad reservoirs is seen declining to 2% of total spend, down from 3% in 2017.
It’s no surprise that most of the funds continue to West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, an area that is the most active for rigs and production.
“The Permian remains the center of the E&P and broader U.S. energy investment universe,” said the Jefferies team. “The depth of inventory at the low-end of the cost curve should continue to attract investment in upstream, midstream, and services,” offering operators “a differentiated growth, return and free cash profile relative to the other opportunities in shale.”
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113976-us-eps-practicing-capital-discipline-even-as-activity-climbs-onshore
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Exxon, Qatar in Talks on U.S. Shale Deal
Apr 10, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McFarlane and Bradley Olson
Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM +3.36% is in talks with Qatar over a partnership that could see the Middle Eastern nation owning U.S. gas, people familiar with the matter said.
The potential deal could lead to the state energy giant Qatar Petroleum investing in Exxon’s vast U.S. gas resources, extending from West Texas to North Dakota, according to the people, as both seek to deepen an already lucrative relationship each needs to face off current challenges. It could take the shape of a joint venture in which Qatar partners or invests in future wells with Exxon subsidiary XTO Energy, these people said.
Qatar wants to broaden its investments outside the Middle East and curry favor with Washington amid an economic blockade from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies. Qatar’s leader is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Exxon’s operations in Qatar are hugely profitable and it also needs Doha’s financial support and signoff to proceed on a massive $10 billion natural gas-export project in East Texas. The development is critical to allowing the company to find markets abroad for its U.S. gas bounty as prices come under pressure domestically.
For Exxon, the talks also underscore the challenge many Western companies face as they seek to navigate growing rifts in the Middle East, where several countries are embarking on multibillion-dollar global expansions to diversify their economies.
“The relationship between Exxon Mobil and its affiliation with Qatar is deep, symbiotic and of significant strategic importance,” said Ehsan Khoman, head of research for the Middle East and North Africa at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ. “From Exxon’s perspective, Qatar is by far its most significant international investment.”
The talks could still break down and no deal has been finalized, the people said. An Exxon spokeswoman declined to comment. Qatar Petroleum didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fate of the Golden Pass gas export facility in East Texas could hinge on a deal. The terminal is mainly owned by Qatar Petroleum, which has held off from agreeing to develop it with Exxon until it owns U.S. natural gas supplies.
“We are not going to proceed with that without upstream assets in the U.S.,” Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, QP’s chief executive, said in an interview.
While the world has been focused on rising U.S. oil production, gas output is also expected to hit record levels in 2018, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Exxon wants to triple its production in the red-hot Permian basin in West Texas and New Mexico to 600,000 barrels a day of oil and natural gas by 2025.
As gas production from the region begins to exceed existing pipeline capacity, natural-gas prices from the region have plunged this year. Some analysts say this may have a knock-on effect on oil production for many companies. In the Permian basin, most natural gas is produced as a byproduct of drilling for oil. In the past, producers could flare the gas, or burn it at the wellhead, but that practice is set to fallout of favor due to pressure from state regulators and environmental groups. As crude output from the Permian basin continues to boom, operators who cannot find a destination for their gas may have to curtail their growth plans. Many are racing to avoid that outcome now.
Qatar is already one of Exxon’s most profitable partnerships. The tiny country produces more than a quarter of the world’s liquefied natural gas. In 2018, Qatar will account for about 25% of Exxon’s after-tax cash flow and 16% of its oil and gas production, according to estimates from analytical firm GlobalData.
Outside of production in Qatar, Exxon and Qatar Petroleum have recently signed deals to explore for oil and gas off the coast of Cyprus and the two jointly bid for access to drilling rights in Brazil.
Qatar also is interested in investing in Exxon’s Mozambique operations, and the two have discussed the possibility of setting up a joint trading operation to market liquefied natural gas, according to people familiar with the matter.
But while Exxon is eager to strengthen its ties to Qatar, the company also wishes to keep options open with Doha’s antagonists. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have enforced an economic blockade against Qatar since June 2017 to try to pressure Doha to scale back its ties with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey.
Exxon has been in discussions with Saudi Arabia on potential partnerships, one of the people familiar with the matter said. It already is in the final stages of evaluating plans to build a petrochemical complex in Texas in a joint-venture with state chemical company Saudi Basic Industries Corp.
Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia wants to gain a foothold in U.S. shale, while Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with a number of U.S. technology, entertainment and energy companies last week to discuss possible investments.
For Qatar, owning U.S. gas assets is one way to court Washington. Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, is due to meet with President Trump Tuesday to discuss ways to strengthen ties between the two countries and advance common security and economic priorities, the White House said.
The departure of former Exxon Chief Executive Rex Tillerson as the U.S. Secretary of State has clouded the picture for Qatar, one person familiar with the matter said. While Mr. Tillerson played no role in discussions between Exxon and Qatar, he was seen as sympathetic to Qatar in its dispute with Saudi Arabia and its allies, the person said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-qatar-in-talks-on-u-s-shale-deal-1523358862?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=6
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Oil Company Allies Say Climate Lawsuits Were Shopped Around
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
The oil industry is hitting back after being sued for climate damages by California cities and counties.
The Manufacturers' Accountability Project (MAP), an oil industry supporter, demanded a swath of records from the municipalities that sued more than 20 oil companies. Citing a state public records law, MAP asked for paperwork, cellphone records, reports, memos, payments and other documents containing oil company names. They're also asking for city contracts with law firms working on contingency, a form of payment that awards a percent of what the firm is able to win.
MAP, an arm of the National Association of Manufacturers, said it wants to expose details of the eight lawsuits against oil companies filed by California municipalities.
"We really believe strongly in transparency. We think that taxpayers have a right to know what's behind these lawsuits," said Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of MAP. She added that "really what this whole effort is about is trial attorneys and politicians raising their public profile at the expense of manufacturers."
Imperial Beach, San Mateo, Marin County, Richmond, Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz County sued two dozen or more fossil fuel companies and trade associations in separate cases. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision is pending on whether to uphold U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Vince Chhabria's order sending those suits back to state court from federal court.
In other cases, San Francisco and Oakland have sued the five biggest oil companies: Chevron Corp., BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Those are with Judge William Alsup in the District Court for the Northern District of California.
MAP said it's getting involved because oil manufacturers are among those targeted by climate-related lawsuits. De la Torre would not say whether MAP gets funding from oil companies.
Asked what the group hopes to gain with its efforts, she said that "we really believe that these cases don't belong in the courts. We believe they belong with policymakers who can look at them from a broad spectrum."
City officials called it a bullying tactic.
"Instead of owning up to the liabilities and culpabilities of issues of climate change, they're carrying out a very specific and targeted campaign of me and others. That's very clear," said Serge Dedina, mayor of Imperial Beach. "This is part of the fossil fuel industry playbook."
Exxon Mobil also filed a court petition in Texas asking for the right to depose 16 people: Dedina and other California officials, including mayors, city managers and city attorneys. The filing is seen as a signal that Exxon might countersue. The company is based in Texas, whose laws allow companies headquartered there to seek protection against lawsuits.
It comes in the wake of a separate legal defeat for Exxon. The company filed suit to stop Massachusetts and New York attorneys general from investigating whether the oil giant knew about climate risks and didn't disclose them to shareholders. Valerie Caproni, a federal judge in Manhattan, said Exxon's request to halt the investigations was based on "extremely thin allegations and speculative inferences."
MAP struck back against that, too. In a blog, it said the investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) "is part of that expensive patchwork that politicians and plaintiffs' attorneys are perpetuating. We need less litigation, not more."Cases 'shopped ... around'?
MAP said attorneys handling the lawsuits "shopped them around" to multiple cities across the country.
Sher Edling LLP — which represents Imperial Beach, Marin and San Mateo counties, Richmond, Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz County — did not specifically respond to a question on how the firm connected with the cities and counties it represents.
"Each of our clients was working on climate change vulnerability assessments or adaption plans," Matt Edling, a partner at the firm, wrote in an email. "We have worked as counsel with local governments in California and around the country for decades."
Dedina in Imperial Beach said his city sued after completing a sea-level-rise vulnerability study in 2016. That analysis "led to conversations about how to pay for the adaptation that would be needed. I've been involved in conservation efforts for a couple decades and have lots of relationships in the area, one of whom suggested that we talk to Sher Edling."
The cities and counties have largely denied MAP's requests for documents. Brian Washington, county counsel of Marin County, said the records fall under the rules of attorney-client communications and can be kept confidential.
Not all of MAP's requests were rejected. San Francisco turned over its contract with law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, which represents Oakland and San Francisco. That contract said the firm would keep 23.5 percent of damages, plus certain costs. The remaining 76.5 percent would go to San Francisco for "abatement, adaptability, and other costs related to the global warming injuries at issue."
"They stand to gain a lot of money in these lawsuits," de la Torre said of the law firms. While the firms' percentage might not be as high as in other lawsuits, "the damages they're seeking are very high." Some of the suits claim that climate damages could amount to billions of dollars over several decades.
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro did not respond to requests for comment. On the issue of attorney fees, Dana McRae, county counsel for Santa Cruz County, which is represented by Sher Edling, said the cases are aimed at "ensuring that our taxpayers aren't on the hook for climate-change-related damages knowingly caused by these fossil fuel companies."
"Our outside counsel only gets paid if we prevail in court, so if MAP and Exxon are so confident that our lawsuits have no merit, let's just go to trial and see who is right," McRae said. "If MAP is really so concerned about attorney fees, they should start with the lawyers for Exxon and the other defendants. Those lawyers get paid for every six minutes they work, at rates that are upward of $1,000 an hour or more."Tom Steyer connection?
Several records requests ask for documents containing the name Tom Steyer, the San Francisco-area billionaire activist who has supported green causes.
Exxon's paperwork in the Texas court outlines what it claims is a connection between the oil suits and Steyer. It references a 2015 legal strategy document on suing oil companies from Pawa Law Group and attorney Matt Pawa. He's now a partner at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro. Exxon calls Pawa an "architect" of the strategy to sue oil companies for climate damages, in the vein of earlier suits against tobacco companies.
That 2015 memo by the Pawa Law Group was sent to two executives at Steyer's NextGen Policy — Chief Operating Officer Dan Lashof and attorney David Weiskopf. The Daily Mail first reported that connection in November 2017. The memo outlines how the cases could be filed in state court to avoid the federal precedent in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, which said that corporations cannot be sued for greenhouse gas emissions because EPA regulates them through the Clean Air Act.
Seeking climate damages from oil companies wasn't new for Pawa at the time. In 2004, he was one of the attorneys who sued to cap power plant emissions in the AEP v. Connecticut case. In 2008, he joined those suing in the Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. case. That suit sought damages from Exxon and 23 other energy companies for contributing to flooding that was forcing the relocation of an Alaskan Native tribe. The oil companies won.
Pawa declined to comment. A Steyer spokesman confirmed that Lashof and Weiskopf received the memo. The spokesman said that Steyer is not involved with the California lawsuits.
"Tom Steyer is not personally pushing the #ExxonKnew effort, though our teams on the ground did participate in rallies or events in the past to support our coalition partners," the spokesman said.
MAP's de la Torre said Steyer is named in the records requests because "it's just part of our fact finding. ... We want to continue to look into his involvement."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078557
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FERC OKs 322,000 Dth/d Tetco Expansion Along Texas Gulf Coast
Apr 10, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jeremiah Shelor
Late last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a certificate for Texas Eastern Transmission LP (Tetco) and Brazoria Interconnector Gas Pipeline LLC to move forward with their Stratton Ridge Expansion Project, designed to increase natural gas delivery capacity into the Texas Gulf Coast.
As part of the estimated $100 million Stratton Ridge expansion, Tetco would enable additional bi-directional flow on its system while leasing capacity on Brazoria’s intrastate system to allow for 322,000 Dth/d of additional firm transportation service to a delivery point near Stratton Ridge in Brazoria County, TX [CP17-56, CP17-57].
That delivery point is just upstream from Freeport LNG Development LP’s proposed liquefied natural gas export project, which is scheduled to begin service by 2019.
The Stratton Ridge project proposes constructing the new 12,500 hp Angleton Compressor Station in Brazoria County and a 0.5-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline between the Angleton compressor and Brazoria’s system, along with various other modifications and facilities.
Brazoria owns and operates 30.5 miles of intrastate pipeline running between Stratton Ridge in southern Brazoria County and Iowa Colony in northern Brazoria County.
Tetco’s system consists of 9,096 miles of pipeline stretching from Texas and the Gulf Coast all the way to markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Tetco and Brazoria, both subsidiaries of Enbridge Inc.-owned Spectra Energy Partners LP, filed in 1Q2017 for a certificate to build the Stratton Ridge expansion. The project is scheduled to enter service in the first half of 2019.
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/113977-ferc-oks-322000-dthd-tetco-expansion-along-texas-gulf-coast
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Permian Pipelines Trade Hands in $1.75B Private Equity Deal
Apr 10, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Jordan Blum
A private equity fund managed by Morgan Stanley is paying $1.75 billion in cash to buy big into Permian Basin pipeline assets.
Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners is acquiring Fort Worth-based Brazos Midstream and its pipeline network from Boston-based private equity outfit Old Ironsides Energy. The deal is through a Morgan Stanley investment fund called North Haven Infrastructure Partners II.
Brazos owns a network of pipeline, processing and storage assets in the Permian's Delaware Basin in West Texas, specifically in Reeves, Ward and Pecos counties.
The Permian is booming more than any other oil and gas region in the world and everything from acreage to pipelines located in the Permian's sweet spots are selling for premiums. With a lot of publicly traded companies skittish to overspend after the recent oil bust, a lot of new private equity money is flowing to help fill the void.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Permian-pipelines-trade-hands-in-1-75B-private-12818766.php
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Okla. Cuts Disposal Volume Near Site of 4.6 Quake
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Mike Lee
Oklahoma officials have ordered a sharp reduction of injection at an oil field waste disposal well in an area that was shaken by two relatively large earthquakes in three days.
A magnitude 4.6 hit on Saturday near Perry, in the north-central part of the state, according to U.S. Geological Survey data, and a 4.5 magnitude quake hit nearby yesterday morning.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission was already monitoring reports of ground shaking in the area and ordered the disposal operator to scale back its operation on Saturday, commission spokesman Matt Skinner said yesterday.
The commission told M M Energy Inc., which owns the disposal well between Perry and Covington, Okla., to cut back its injection by more than two-thirds, from 17,000 barrels a day to 5,000. Perry is about 70 miles north of Oklahoma City.
The commission also may take action to address a string of quakes west of Enid that's unrelated to the Perry quakes.
At least four more quakes of magnitude 3 or larger struck the state between Friday and yesterday, along with a magnitude 3.3 quake Saturday just north of the state line in Kansas.
Oklahoma has become a hotbed of earthquakes linked to the oil and gas industry. Researchers have shown that injecting the wastewater from oil production can reduce the friction in underground faults, causing them to slip.
Since about 2013, the Corporation Commission has issued about 30 orders affecting more than 700 disposal wells.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078545
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Well Emissions Spike Cancer Risk Nearby — Study
Apr 10, 2018 | Denver Post (In E&E Greenwire)
By John Ingold
Emissions from oil and gas wells can increase cancer risk for those who live nearby, according to a new study of sites in northern Colorado.
Yesterday, a state health official said more study is needed to back up those findings.
The Colorado School of Public Health study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that people living within 500 feet of an oil and gas facility exceeded U.S. EPA's lifetime excess cancer risk limit by eight times.
The research used 500 feet as a measuring tool because it's the minimum required distance in Colorado between new oil and gas wells and existing homes. It also found that risk could potentially increase less dramatically a bit farther away from the wells.
"The cumulative lifetime excess cancer risk increased with decreasing distance to the nearest facility," the study's authors wrote.
The study contradicts research from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which found little risk from living near oil and gas wells.
CDPHE Executive Director Larry Wolk said the most dramatic findings in the new study came for areas inside the 500-foot setback distance, adding that more testing is needed to figure out risks to communities.
"This report underscores the potential public health importance of the 500-foot setback and the need to collect more comprehensive air quality data in communities in close proximity to oil and gas operations," Wolk said in a statement.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078601
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Trump Wants Faster Permits. What About Climate Impacts?
Apr 10, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Zack Colman
Federal agencies will attempt to finalize environmental reviews for infrastructure projects within two years under a new process the Trump administration implemented yesterday.
The White House's "One Federal Decision" plan aims to hasten permitting for projects such as roads, bridges and water treatment facilities.
"Inefficient environmental review processes have led to unnecessary delays, depriving our communities of needed infrastructure projects," the administration said yesterday in a fact sheet.
The move comes as the White House struggles to get congressional traction for a comprehensive infrastructure bill, President Trump's top legislative priority this year. The White House wants to codify many of the changes it outlined in yesterday's executive order through legislation to ensure they outlast the Trump administration. The new policy merely sets a goal of finishing reviews in two years; the deadlines are not enforceable unless passed by law.
The policy would designate a lead federal agency to handle environmental reviews and call on agencies to work concurrently, rather than sequentially. Supporters say doing so would reduce duplicative processes and promote better coordination from the beginning.
"Environmental reviews are crucial to ensuring clean air and water, but it's possible and necessary for the reviews to be completed in a more timely manner," Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. "We welcome the administration's commitment to One Federal Decision and applaud it as a much-needed step in the process to modernize America's infrastructure."
Environmental groups, however, are concerned the process would remove opportunities for local and public input. That could be significant in terms of climate change, as the Trump administration's infrastructure blueprint was silent on whether it would evaluate the resilience to future challenges brought by rising temperatures, such as higher sea levels, heavier rainfall and more severe drought.
"President Trump's much ballyhooed infrastructure plan has been diminished to little more than an ideological attack on environmental safeguards," Scott Slesinger, legislative director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. "Local residents should have a say in the projects that will define their communities for decades to come. Short-circuiting that process won't help get new projects built. It's a scapegoat for this administration's failure to secure new funding."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078561
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EPA Keeps Nitrogen Oxides Standard As Is
Apr 10, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Alex Guillen
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has decided to keep the national standard for nitrogen oxides the same, according to a prepublication notice posted by EPA.
Pruitt’s decision was expected, and follows recommendations from EPA staff and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
“The current body of scientific evidence and the results of quantitative analyses supports his judgment that the current 1-hour and annual primary NO2 standards, together, are requisite to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, and do not call into question any of the elements of those standards,” EPA wrote in the notice.
The NOx standard was last reviewed in 2010. The Obama administration at that time set a new short-term standard of 100 parts per billion, averaged over one hour, that stands alongside an annual standard of 53 ppb that was set in 1971.
Nitrogen dioxide and other gases that are part of the NOx family are emitted by cars and other vehicles, as well as power plants, kilns and other industrial sources. NOx reacts with volatile organic compounds in the summer to produce smog, and high levels of nitrogen oxides aggravate respiratory diseases like asthma. NOx also contributes to acid rain and haze, as well as nutrient pollution in water.
WHAT'S NEXT: The rule will take effect 30 days after Pruitt's decision is published in the Federal Register.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Apr 10, 2018 | Bloomberg (In E&E Greenwire)
By Brian Eckhouse
Apple Inc. announced yesterday that its entire business now relies on clean energy, a milestone for the multinational tech giant.
The company's sites around the world are powered by 100 percent renewable energy, up from 96 percent a year ago. That includes retail stores, offices, data centers and other facilities in 43 countries.
The announcement came after Google said last week that it has enough clean energy to meet all its power needs.
Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives and a former U.S. EPA administrator during the Obama administration, said she thinks clean energy "will at some point become a requirement" for major retailers.
Apple is building 15 new renewable energy plants around the globe. Once those are operational, it will have 40 such plants and more than 1.4 gigawatts of clean energy capacity worldwide.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078607
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Nestlé to Make All Its Packaging Recyclable
Apr 10, 2018 | Reuters (In E&E Greenwire)
Nestlé SA said today that it intends to make all its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025.
The world's largest packaged foods company said it would encourage the use of plastics that are easier for consumers to recycle.
"We are working on changing the colors used for our plastic packaging. Lighter colors are easier to recycle," Nestlé sustainability expert Duncan Pollard told reporters on a call.
The announcement makes the Swiss food giant the latest company to commit to reducing plastic waste.
Starbucks last month unveiled a $10 million initiative to design a more eco-friendly coffee cup (Greenwire, March 22). And British supermarket chain Waitrose said today that it would ban disposable coffee cups from its stores by this fall.
"Plastic waste is one of the biggest sustainability issues the world is facing today," Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider said in a statement. "Tackling it requires a collective approach."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/10/stories/1060078619
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