Preview Newsletter
ACC PM 24/04/18
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets End Q1 On a Good Note, ACC Says
Apr 23, 2018 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes ended the first quarter on a good note, increasing 0.4 percent in March after a 0.3 percent gain in February and a 0.1 percent gain in January. -
(ACC Mentioned) Scott Pruitt’s New Science Transparency Rule May Seriously Backfire
Apr 24, 2018 | ThinkProgress
By Natasha Geiling
Today, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to announce a proposed rule that would severely limit the kinds of science that could be used in the agency’s rulemaking process. -
Pruitt to Unveil 'Secret Science' Effort Today — Sources
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Scott Pruitt is expected today to unveil his plans to restrict science used by EPA, multiple sources told E&E News. -
Scott Pruitt’s Other Toxic Legacy: Voter Cynicism Scott Pruitt’s Other Toxic Legacy: Voter Cynicism
Apr 24, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Keith Gaby
When my organization opposed the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year, we believed his policies would endanger America’s kids. -
Embattled EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Faces Public Grilling This Week as GOP Support Erodes
Apr 24, 2018 | CNBC
By Tom DiChristopher
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reports to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a pair of hearings on his agency's 2018 budget proposal, but the embattled Trump deputy is likely to face as many questions about his personal conduct as EPA's spending priorities. -
(ACC Mentioned) Rollout of Lautenberg Law Divides Senators Who Championed It
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A conservative and a liberal stood side by side in June 2016 as President Obama signed into law the senators' hard-fought compromise legislation to overhaul the nation's bedrock chemical safety law for the first time in its 40-year history. -
US EPA, Health Canada and Echa Collaborate on Testing Alternatives
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Scientists from regulatory agencies across the world will soon publish the first results from a series of joint case studies, set up to increase the use of new approach methodologies (NAMs) for chemical prioritisation, screening and quantitative risk assessment. -
Nap Mats at Some Seattle Child-Care Centers Contain Potentially Harmful Chemicals
Apr 24, 2018 | The Seattle Times
By Sandi Doughton
Afternoon naps are a time-honored tradition in many child-care centers, as toddlers snuggle up on soft mats to drowse, daydream or fidget. -
Canada Adds LPGs to Toxics List
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
Canada's government has added two categories of liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) to schedule 1 of the country's Environmental Protection Act (Cepa) – its list of toxic substances. -
NGOs Urge Member States to Support REACH Nano Amendments
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A group of NGOs has written to EU member states, urging them to support proposals to amend REACH annexes for nanomaterials and to restrict carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) substances in textiles. -
EU Adopts EDC Criteria for Plant Protection Products
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The European Commission has officially adopted the revised criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plant protection product (PPPs). -
U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Legality of Patent Review Process
Apr 24, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Andrew Chung
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday gave its stamp of approval to a government review process prized by high technology companies as an easy and cheap way to combat "patent trolls" and others that bring patent infringement lawsuits. -
U.S., Cheniere Rewrite Safety Order After LNG Leak
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Cheniere Energy Inc. has finalized an agreement with U.S. regulators that eliminates some deadlines for the company to complete an investigation into the causes of a ruptured storage tank at its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export facility in Louisiana. -
BLM Appeals Court Order Nixing 'Untethered' Methane Rollback
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration is heading to a federal appeals court to challenge a February ruling that briefly revived Obama-era standards for methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. -
Southern Co., Oil Interests Launch Lobbying Coalition
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Southern Co. has joined BP PLC, Chevron Corp. and other oil interests in the launch of a coalition promoting carbon capture, utilization and storage. -
S&P: LNG Buyers in the Driver's Seat Until Demand Surges
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
Global markets for liquefied natural gas are likely headed for volatile swings moving into the next decade, when growing LNG surpluses give buyers the upper hand over producers at least until the mid-2020s, analysts with S&P Global Inc. said yesterday. -
FERC Order Tightens Cybersecurity Standards
Apr 24, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
FERC is tightening up security standards for laptops and access controls for certain “low-impact” parts of the grid. -
Train-Stopping System Misses Mark in Test Runs on LIRR
Apr 24, 2018 | Newsday
By Alfonso A. Castillo
The failure of positive train control to stop a Long Island Rail Road train during a recent test run in Port Washington has further set back the LIRR’s efforts to have the federally-required crash prevention technology in place throughout its system by the end of the year, MTA officials said. -
Dems Question Pruitt Over Centralizing Water Pollution Authority
Apr 24, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A pair of Democratic lawmakers is questioning Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt about a memo that gave him new authority to make certain determinations over water pollution standards. -
Gore on 'Turning Point' for Climate Change, Trump, Pruitt
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Arianna Skibell
Former Vice President Al Gore said he sees an impending "turning point" for climate action in this country, much like other social movements.
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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Specialty Chemical Markets End Q1 On a Good Note, ACC Says
Apr 23, 2018 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins
The American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) reported that U.S. specialty chemicals market volumes ended the first quarter on a good note, increasing 0.4 percent in March after a 0.3 percent gain in February and a 0.1 percent gain in January. All changes in the data are reported on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. Of the 28 specialty chemical segments monitored by ACC, 18 expanded in March, 9 markets experienced decline and one featured no change. During March, large market volume gains (1.0 percent and over) occurred in cosmetic chemicals, foundry chemicals, and oilfield chemicals, ACC pointed out.
The overall specialty chemicals volume index was up 4.2 percent on a year-over-year (Y/Y) 3MMA basis. The index stood at 111.6 percent of its average 2012 levels. This is equivalent to 7.69 billion pounds (3.49 million metric tons). On a Y/Y basis, there were gains among twenty-one market and functional specialty chemical segments. Compared to last year, volumes were down in seven segments, according to the ACC data.
Specialty chemicals are materials manufactured on the basis of the unique performance or function and provide a wide variety of effects on which many other sectors and end-use products rely. They can be individual molecules or mixtures of molecules, known as formulations. The physical and chemical characteristics of the single molecule or mixtures along with the composition of the mixtures influence the performance end product. Individual market sectors that rely on such products include automobile, aerospace, agriculture, cosmetics and food, among others.
http://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-specialty-chemical-markets-end-q1-on-a-good-note-acc-says/?printmode=1
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(ACC Mentioned) Scott Pruitt’s New Science Transparency Rule May Seriously Backfire
Apr 24, 2018 | ThinkProgress
By Natasha Geiling
Today, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to announce a proposed rule that would severely limit the kinds of science that could be used in the agency’s rulemaking process.
The changes — which would ban the use of any underlying data that isn’t available publicly — have been previously proposed by conservative lawmakers like Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and champions of deregulation like Steven Milloy, a former consultant for the tobacco industry who has argued that air pollution is not a public health threat.
But the new standards could also have the unintended consequence of limiting the kind of industry data that the EPA can use in its rulemaking process — making it more difficult for Pruitt and his political appointees to rubber stamp rules favorable to industry.
Politics-driven ‘secret science’ initiative isn’t going over well with EPA staff
Scientists fear that Pruitt’s new science standards will severely limit the kinds of public health studies that the agency can use when considering new rules, because many large-scale public health studies rely on anonymous data. That data is, by law, kept anonymous due to patient privacy policies — though the studies are still subject to the same kinds of peer-review process as studies that use publicly available data.
Limiting public health data could be a double-edged sword for Pruitt and his political allies, however, because it could ban the use of data that could be favorable to industry.Advertisement
“The thing about the health data is that it works both ways,” Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, told ThinkProgress. “Health data can show that something does have an impact and it can also show that something doesn’t have an impact.”
But limiting the kind of science that the EPA can use to only publicly available data won’t just impact public health studies — it will also potentially have a chilling affect on the kind of data that industry is willing to submit to the agency for rulemaking.
That implication has already spooked some political appointees within the agency, who have internally expressed concern about how industry might respond to the changes.
According to a report published last week by Politico, Nancy Beck — Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and former staffer for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the chemical industry’s main trade association — raised concerns as far back as January of this year that the new requirements would impose serious burdens on the chemical industry.
“The directive needs to be revised,” Beck wrote, explaining that pesticide registrations require “a huge amount of data to be submitted to the agency” and that requiring that data to be publicly available would “be incredibly burdensome” and “not practical.”Advertisement
Beck also worried that requiring public data could disrupt registration for chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Under an update to TSCA passed in 2016, the EPA has to make an affirmative finding that a particular chemical does not pose a threat to human health before approving it for use. To make that assessment, the EPA often relies on proprietary data provided by the company — data that the company likely doesn’t want made public, from a product, patent, or intellectual property perspective.
Facts don’t match Scott Pruitt’s vision, so Pruitt is changing the facts at the EPA
According to the UCS’s Rosenberg, the new standards could potentially also limit the kinds of industry data that the agency could use in cost-benefit analyses, which the agency typically conducts for large-scale regulations.
Does requiring publicly available data mean that companies will be forced to make their accounting and book-keeping public for cost-benefit analyses conducted by the agency? And, if companies are reluctant or unwilling to make that information available, will that mean the agency is unable to conduct a cost-benefit analyses, potentially undermining a regulation’s chance of surviving scrutiny by a court?
“This whole thing makes very little sense from an industry standpoint and from a public health standpoint,” Rosenberg said.
It’s unclear what the final proposed rule will look like, and it’s possible that it will include a special kind of carve out for confidential business information. But including such an exemption could open the rule up to legal challenges, allowing critics to argue that letting companies keep their data private — while forcing public health studies to publish anonymous data — qualifies as “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore violates the Administrative Procedures Act.
“We believe the whole argument is nonsense,” Rosenberg said. “They are making this big argument about how you should show all your raw data and analysis, but where is the analysis that this is necessary?”
https://thinkprogress.org/epa-secret-science-proposal-industry-impact-53543f76f551/
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Pruitt to Unveil 'Secret Science' Effort Today — Sources
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Robin Bravender
Scott Pruitt is expected today to unveil his plans to restrict science used by EPA, multiple sources told E&E News.
The EPA administrator is slated to release an order requiring that all underlying data used in scientific studies affecting regulations be made public. The move fulfills a long-standing wish of some conservatives who argue that EPA has been relying on "secret science" when crafting rules.
Pruitt's announcement is scheduled for 2 p.m. at agency headquarters, according to someone familiar with the event. Conservative supporters of the initiative are expected to be among those attending.
The EPA chief has previously hinted at his plans to conservatives and in media interviews, but the agency hasn't released specifics. In a recent closed-door meeting with conservatives gathered at the Heritage Foundation, Pruitt told attendees he would release his plans by April 24, according to someone who attended the meeting.
EPA's press office did not respond to a request for comment.
The "secret science" initiative has long been championed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, whose attempts to overhaul EPA science through legislation have failed.
Smith's staff has been coordinating with Pruitt on the effort, according to emails released last week under a Freedom of Information Act request (Climatewire, April 20).
Those emails also show that EPA staff wanted to have the program rolled out by the end of February and that at least one political staffer internally warned about problems the new policy could pose for industry.
Holding the rollout now might offer Pruitt a welcome distraction from headlines surrounding alleged ethical lapses. Pruitt heads to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify in back-to-back House hearings. Bloomberg reported yesterday that White House officials are urging Republicans and conservatives to scale back their defense of the embattled EPA boss.
EPA last week sent a proposed rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget with the announced purpose of "strengthening transparency and validity in regulatory science" (Greenwire, April 20).
The expected overhaul has alarmed critics, who say it would threaten public health and environmental protections by preventing EPA from using all available data. Many scientific studies rely on data that can't be made public for reasons like patient privacy concerns or industry confidentiality.
Smith and others who have pushed for science reforms at EPA argue that data influencing rules should be more transparent.
Steve Milloy, who served on Trump's EPA transition team, has pushed for the agency to stop issuing regulations unless the underlying scientific data are made public.
He declined to discuss today's EPA event, but said, "If I was going to be there, I would be very excited." He said of the effort, "I look at it as one of my proudest achievements. The reason this is anywhere is because of Steve Milloy."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079891
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Scott Pruitt’s Other Toxic Legacy: Voter Cynicism Scott Pruitt’s Other Toxic Legacy: Voter Cynicism
Apr 24, 2018 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Keith Gaby
When my organization opposed the confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year, we believed his policies would endanger America’s kids.
But even we didn’t know his legacy would be almost as much about inspiring cynicism as about increasing pollution.
When Pruitt first took office, we knew he was an ambitious ideologue for weaker environmental protections, and far too close to lobbyists. But he seemed, at least, to be focused on his public mission as he defined it.
It turns out, we were too optimistic about Scott Pruitt.A litany of ethics violations
His actions at the EPA, and what has now been revealed about his past in Oklahoma, show a man who believes public office is an opportunity to live a more lavish lifestyle.
He sees favor-trading with lobbyists as the way government should operate – whether it’s apparently taking a $100,000 discount on a house from a telecom lobbyist, or using connections to get his electricity turned on before other citizens in a blackout. Or leasing a deeply discounted Washington condo from the family of a lobbyist as they discuss official EPA business.
All of this reinforces popular pessimism about government and politics that, ironically, helped Donald Trump get to the White House. Pruitt is now making things worse.Not your typical public servant
Our EPA chief is perfect fodder for the easy negativity of political commentators and late-night comedians. His corruptions, small and large, are executed with such clumsy obviousness they would never be let out of the writers’ room on Scandal or House of Cards.
It’s all deeply frustrating because Pruitt is actually the exception, not the rule. His predecessors, under Democratic and Republican presidents, were almost all honorable, humble and capable public servants.
Most EPA administrators, and most public servants, are nothing like Pruitt.
Pruitt took over from Gina McCarthy, an honest, direct and public-spirited expert in her field who worked for Republican governors and a Democratic president. Most EPA administrators, and most public servants, are nothing like Scott Pruitt.
There has, of course, always been some level of cynicisms about government, and there’s no question it has grown in recent decades. But there is a difference between imperfect institutions and wholesale disregard for ethical behavior.
Pruitt gives the worst cynics all the ammunition they need to abandon principle and, remarkably, some people at the top still don’t seem to care.As Congress ignores infractions, Americans watch
In Congress, many members are straining to look the other way as Pruitt’s ethical transgressions continue. They can’t seem to hear questions about the lobbyist’s condo, the misuse of public funds or the appointees brought directly from lobbying groups.
And they fail to see that in a democracy you can’t ignore the behavior of public officials in an attempt to get the policy outcomes you want – you only undermine citizens’ faith in government.
Pruitt’s actions have also been tolerated by his boss, whose list of ethical transgressions seems nearly endless and may help explain why he’s allowed Pruitt to stay in office.
The question now is how badly the corruption, opportunism and infractions of the Trump administration – and subsequent neglect by many in Congress – will further erode public trust in our government.
The good news is that many young people have also chosen to channel their frustration into activism. From the Defend Our Futurecollege students working for a healthier climate, to the March for Our Lives high school kids pushing for rational gun laws, some young people are – thankfully – spurning the example of their elders.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2018/04/24/scott-pruitts-other-toxic-legacy-voter-cynicism
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Embattled EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Faces Public Grilling This Week as GOP Support Erodes
Apr 24, 2018 | CNBC
By Tom DiChristopher
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reports to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a pair of hearings on his agency's 2018 budget proposal, but the embattled Trump deputy is likely to face as many questions about his personal conduct as EPA's spending priorities.
Since the hearings were announced, revelations about Pruitt's rental of a Washington apartment linked to an energy lobbyist have sparked a near-daily trickle of reports detailing alleged ethics abuses and lavish spending that have put the EPA chief's political future in peril.
In just the last few weeks, Pruitt has been accused of retaliating against EPA staff, arranging official trips to fulfill his personal travel whims and orchestrating pay raises for aides in defiance of the White House. The number of investigations into his conduct has expanded to five, and the government's top watchdog determined last week that the agency violated the law by installing a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in Pruitt's office.
The hearings could be a make-or-break moment for Pruitt, who has already sat through a combative Fox News interview that reportedly bruised his standing in the administration. Pruitt goes before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Environment in the morning and the Committee on Appropriation's subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies in the afternoon.
The appearances present a rare opportunity for Democrats, who vilify Pruitt for leading President Donald Trump's efforts to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations and casting doubt on the scale of humanity's role in climate change.
Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce plan to use much of their time to grill the administrator on the recent accusations.
"Again and again, Administrator Pruitt has abused his position for personal and political gain, including a sweetheart apartment rental from a lobbyist and a litany of wasteful taxpayer-funded indulgences in first-class flights, personal security, office and official vehicle upgrades, and massive raises for his political friends," said New York Democrat Rep. Paul Tonko, ranking member of the Environment subcommittee.
"His subsequent denials and attempts to justify some of these ethics violations seem to have been complete fabrications," he told CNBC in an email.
Tonko was among four Democratic Congress members who requested that Pruitt be put under oath during the testimony in a letter to Republicans, who hold the majority.
Republicans are the wild card
For Republicans, the hearings present something of a tightrope walk. The GOP rails against government waste but also views Pruitt as a key figure in Trump's deregulation agenda. Conservative lawmakers are also likely loathe to see the administration's reputation sullied by another spending scandal ahead of midterm elections.
The White House may have made that balancing act less perilous. It has reportedly instructed conservatives not to defend Pruitt too stridently.
Just five House Republicans have joined 170 Democrats in calling on Pruitt to step down, but there are other signs that GOP support is eroding for the EPA chief.
Three Senate Republicans on Monday called for hearings on Pruitt's conduct.
Trump has oscillated between non-committal statements — at one point saying, "I hope he's going to be great" — to an adamant defense of Pruitt on Twitter.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
While Security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at EPA. Record clean Air & Water while saving USA Billions of Dollars. Rent was about market rate, travel expenses OK. Scott is doing a great job!3:03 AM - Apr 8, 201875.9K50.6K people are talking about this
Still, the White House is leading its own investigation into Pruitt.
Another probe has been opened by Trey Gowdy, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee.
On Monday, Democratic lawmakers sent new evidence to Gowdy showing the head of Pruitt's security tapped a business associate to conduct a security sweep of Pruitt's office, which was found by an internal review to have been "very basic and cursory" and inadequate to clear the office for discussing or transmitting classified information.Mounting ethics questions
Questions about EPA spending under Pruitt date back to last fall and resurfaced this winter, but have gained seemingly unstoppable momentum in recent weeks.
At the heart of the investigations is whether Pruitt violated federal rules by renting a Capitol Hill condo owned by the wife of prominent energy lobbyist Steven Hart. An EPA watchdog initially determined the arrangement did not violate federal gift-giving rules, but he later clarified that he did not have enough information to clear Pruitt of wrong-doing.
This past weekend, Politico revealed Hart and Pruitt met in an official capacity while Pruitt was still occupying the apartment, despite their earlier assertions to the contrary. Hart's firm, Williams & Jensen, also had business before the EPA.
Pruitt's claim in the Fox News interview that he did not know who went behind the White House's back to approve pay hikes for two of his long-time aides is also contested. EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson has since taken responsibility, but Republican whistleblower Kevin Chmielewski told lawmakers the decision was "100% Pruitt himself."
Chmielewski, a former Trump campaign staffer, is one of several EPA employees Pruitt allegedly pushed out for challenging his spending habits. Multiple investigations are looking into expenses accrued by Pruitt for first-class flights, trips home to Oklahoma and his unusually large private security detail.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/24/embattled-epa-chief-scott-pruitt-faces-grilling-as-gop-support-erodes.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Rollout of Lautenberg Law Divides Senators Who Championed It
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
A conservative and a liberal stood side by side in June 2016 as President Obama signed into law the senators' hard-fought compromise legislation to overhaul the nation's bedrock chemical safety law for the first time in its 40-year history.
Today, Louisiana's David Vitter is out of Congress, lobbying for the chemical industry that long supported him, and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who remains in the Senate, is battling his former legislative partner over the implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act reform they championed.
Their quick retreat from common ground to familiar opposition positions is an indication to policy experts that the TSCA reform deal was an extraordinary agreement that would be impossible to make today — and one which is now being viewed very differently by the lawmakers who pushed to enshrine it in law.
With his party now in control of EPA and the Congress that oversees it, Vitter thinks that Administrator Scott Pruitt is doing a great job putting into practice the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act — the law named for the longtime New Jersey Democratic senator who championed TSCA reform until his death in 2013.
Former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) stands in his Washington, D.C., Mercury LLC office in front of a framed vote roll and photo of President Obama signing Toxic Substances Control Act reform legislation into law in 2016. Corbin Hiar/E&E News
"I'm very encouraged," Vitter said earlier this year in the offices of Mercury LLC, the public affairs firm in Washington where he works part-time. Vitter now spends most of his time in Louisiana, where he does legal work for the Ridgeland, Miss.-headquartered law firm Butler Snow LLP and lives with his wife Wendy Vitter, a U.S. district court judge nominee, and the youngest of their four kids.
"TSCA implementation is a big challenge, but I think they're clearly taking it seriously," Vitter said of EPA. His tiny office in a former boiler factory includes framed copies of the Lautenberg law vote roll, New Orleans Times-Picayune stories on his electoral victories and other mementos from his 18 years in Congress.
After a failed bid for governor, Vitter left the Senate last January. A month later, he joined Mercury and began lobbying for the American Chemistry Council and other clients (Greenwire, April 6, 2017).
The chemical industry group paid Mercury $100,000 last year for advocacy work, according to disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics, a money-in-politics watchdog group. Vitter, who cannot legally begin meeting with his former Senate colleagues until 2019, was one of three lobbyists at the firm on that account.
ACC spent a total of more than $7.4 million on 66 lobbyists last year. In addition to Vitter, its advocacy roster included influential figures like Dimitri Karakitsos, who helped craft TSCA reform as a senior Republican aide on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Mike Catanzaro, who joined the Trump White House in February 2017 and returned to K Street last week (Greenwire, April 17).
Vitter credits EPA's success at rolling out TSCA reform, as he and his clients see it, to the clear directions he and Udall provided for the agency to follow.
"When we were working on TSCA, I was all for being quite specific and prescriptive whenever we could be in the statute. Now I'll be honest with you, one of the reasons I wanted to do that is I thought there was a very good chance there would be a left-of-center administration implementing it," he said. "But I think that's a very good model for whoever is implementing it."
There is no disputing that EPA is on track to put in place the four "framework rules" included in the Lautenberg law, the last of which was proposed earlier this year (Greenwire, Feb. 8).
But the Environmental Defense Fund — the green group that most strongly supported the TSCA reform package — is dismayed by the Trump administration's move to scale back the reach of key rules for prioritizing and evaluating the risks of chemicals. It is one of several groups that is now suing EPA over the standards (E&E News PM, Aug. 14, 2017).
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) at his desk in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington. Corbin Hiar/E&E News
Udall, who before coming to Congress spent nine years as New Mexico's attorney general, thinks environmentalists are likely to prevail in court.
"Administrator Pruitt and the Trump EPA are trying to undermine the integrity of the new law," he said earlier this month in his Capitol Hill office.
"TSCA was there to look at the big picture and do the broadest possible reviews [of chemicals], and really they're moving in the opposite direction of the science today," he said. "What you look at is the combined, long-term, even low-level exposures resulting from multiple uses, and that's not what they're doing."
Udall agrees with Vitter about the merits of the law they passed together. But he and other environmentalists argue EPA isn't just misinterpreting TSCA reform, the agency is effectively disregarding it.
"The law provides a strong road map for broad assessments and reviews of all the chemicals that are out there. They are not following that road map," he said behind a desk covered with papers about TSCA reform. "The courts are going to really give them a good, strong slap in the face and say, 'You're not utilizing this law to protect public health, you're in fact using it to take a more industry friendly approach.'"
As ranking member on the Appropriations subcommittee that controls EPA's budget, Udall is doing everything he can to keep its chemicals efforts from getting what he considers too far off track. In that role, he has blunted EPA budget cuts sought by the White House and protected the Integrated Risk Information System, an independent chemical testing program that was at risk of shutting down and having its staffers report to Nancy Beck, a former ACC executive (Greenwire, March 22).
Along with Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Udall is also pushing a resolution of "no confidence," calling on Pruitt to resign immediately. In recent weeks, the administrator has been engulfed in scandals related to his use of a lobbyist-owned condo and his spending on travel, security, office furniture and raises for political appointees (Climatewire, April 9).
The "sense of Congress" measure criticizes the administrator for allegedly "helping polluters at the expense of the health, safety, and livelihood of millions of people of the United States" and the "undermining of basic ethics." It has been endorsed by more than 170 Democratic lawmakers but is unlikely to by itself sway Pruitt or his boss, President Trump.
"We've done legislatively and appropriations-wise what we can do, but [Pruitt] is still like a bull in a china shop over there, busting everything up," Udall said.
He's particularly concerned that Pruitt's alleged disregard for TSCA reform will lead EPA officials who work on chemicals to quit.
"One of the areas that I think can really hurt an agency is driving off the career employees, hurting your base of knowledge and experience by just showing them that you don't care about the law and where it's headed," Udall said.'Bad faith'
The disagreement between the Lautenberg law's lead sponsors is a sign of how hard fought TSCA reform was and continues to be, according to Sean Moulton, a policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.
"Everyone agreed that TSCA was broken, but they had wildly different ideas about what should be done about it," the ethics watchdog group expert said. "And a lot of time and energy and effort was expended over years trying to figure out something that would work. And essentially, for a short time, they got a configuration that they were all willing to agree to and support — at that moment."
The election of Donald Trump, which Vitter acknowledged to E&E News was unexpected, has tipped the balance of regulatory power decidedly away from the environmental community's priorities and toward those of the chemical industry.
Neither side would now be willing to come to the table, but the TSCA reform deal they made in the Obama era remains on the books. So, according to Moulton, Pruitt's EPA and the chemical industry would rather just ignore it.
"This very different take than expected on implementation, or lack of, veers toward the chemical industry's original desires," he said. "It's more in keeping with what they really, truly wanted — their first choice, if you will, rather than this compromise second choice."
But the chemical industry may eventually regret its move to undermine TSCA reform, warned Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law.
"This is all tremendous bad faith," said Steinzor, who worked on chemicals as a Democratic Hill staffer in the 1980s. "ACC will never enter into another bipartisan deal because it got what it wants and it's free to ignore language. And that's quite a gamble. You don't know what's going to happen in the electoral process."
For its part, ACC claims environmentalists are the ones reinterpreting TSCA reform (Greenwire, March 1).
Ultimately, experts expect courts and future administrations to play a big role in determining whether the Lautenberg law views of Vitter or Udall are more correct.
"I still believe he was the right person to work with," Udall said. "He committed to me we were going to put in place a strong law, and we did that."
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079925
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US EPA, Health Canada and Echa Collaborate on Testing Alternatives
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
Scientists from regulatory agencies across the world will soon publish the first results from a series of joint case studies, set up to increase the use of new approach methodologies (NAMs) for chemical prioritisation, screening and quantitative risk assessment.
The US EPA, Health Canada and Echa are coordinating an initiative called Accelerating the Pace of Chemical Risk Assessment (APCRA). Through meetings and workshops, the group has identified some key barriers to accepting NAMs for regulatory decision making. These include the current practice of benchmarking new tests against lab animal studies as well as a general lack of understanding and confidence in applying NAMs.
The initiative began with a meeting hosted by the EPA in September 2016, followed by a workshop last year. Its aim is to "enhance collaboration across international organisations with an emphasis on learning by doing", explains Rusty Thomas from the EPA, Tara Barton-Maclaren from Health Canada and Mike Rasenberg from Echa, co-authors of a recent APCRA paper in Chemical Research in Toxicology.
"Through case studies, the collaborators are engaging in two-way dialogues to exchange information about how these NAMs can be applied to various decisions. As these case studies progress, training and communication through webinars, workshops and meetings will occur as well as expanding case studies to other applications with more collaborators," they add.
APCRA has developed six case studies, on:risk evaluation;chemical categorisation; andexposure evaluation
A first risk evaluation case study looks into using bioactivity as a conservative estimate of no– and low effect levels in animal studies. The project compares the point of departure on dose-response curves, corresponding to the no- or low effect level, from NAMs and animal studies for several hundred chemicals. It will be published in a scientific journal in the next few months.
A second case study takes a "prospective" approach, generating NAM data for a number of substances. "Traditional" animal tests will then be carried out on a subset of the chemicals to help analyse the results and improve the NAMs approach. It is a collaboration between Echa, the EPA, the US National Toxicology Programme, Health Canada, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, and Singapore's A*Star programme.
Meanwhile, one of the chemical categorisation case studies involves a systematic literature review of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, followed by NAMs analysis; another attempts to integrate NAM profiles for categorisation.
For exposure, the group has chosen to focus on computational exposure science and in silico approaches.
Future case studies will need to explore new ways of describing hazard in ways that fit with the information that NAMs provide, such as looking at whether bioactivity in a certain pathway can predict adverse effects, according to the journal article.
They should also examine new ways of describing risk, "being protective without the requirement of being predictive", add the authors.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66099/us-epa-health-canada-and-echa-collaborate-on-testing-alternatives
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Nap Mats at Some Seattle Child-Care Centers Contain Potentially Harmful Chemicals
Apr 24, 2018 | The Seattle Times
By Sandi Doughton
Afternoon naps are a time-honored tradition in many child-care centers, as toddlers snuggle up on soft mats to drowse, daydream or fidget.
The possibility that those mats could be exposing kids to toxic chemicals might come as a surprise to most parents and day-care workers. But a new analysis found potentially harmful flame retardants in the majority of mats at some day cares across Seattle.
The study was a small pilot, sampling only seven child-care centers in neighborhoods from the University District and Wallingford, to South Seattle and the Central District. Nap mats in all but one of the centers contained the flame-retardant chemicals.
Estimated exposures to children were generally below existing safety thresholds, though exposures to a few chemicals were higher. The researchers found that replacing older mats with new, greener versions lowered exposures dramatically by reducing chemicals in dust.
“This study shows that, clearly, we can reduce kids’ exposures to these chemicals linked to serious health problems simply by taking them out of the products,” said Erika Schreder, science director of the Seattle-based advocacy group Toxic-free Future and a co-author of the paper published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Pollution.
Public Health – Seattle & King County plans to work with Schreder’s organization and reach out to other child-care centers, including in-home operations, to see how many use older mats and what it would take to replace them, said an agency spokeswoman.
A growing body of research suggests that flame-retardant chemicals can cause a wide range of health problems, from obesity and cancer to hormone disruption, said co-author Amina Salamova, of Indiana University. There’s also little evidence that the chemicals in children’s products are effective in reducing fire danger, she added.
The chemicals have been widely used since the 1970s, promoted in large part by the tobacco and chemical industries. A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2012 found that Dr. David Heimbach, the former director of Harborview Medical Center’s Seattle burn center, fabricated tales of grievously burned children to convince state legislatures to require the use of flame- retardant chemicals.
Most people have traces of the chemicals in their bodies. Levels in children, who are more likely to ingest contaminated dust, are much higher than in adults, the study says.
Several types of flame retardants were phased out starting in 2004, but manufacturers replaced them with a dizzying array of alternatives, some of whose safety is also suspect, Schreder said. Washington’s 2016 Toxic-Free Kids and Families Act banned five flame-retardant chemicals from furniture and children’s products — but many other compounds are still on the market.
“It’s been a bit of a whack-a-mole problem with flame retardants in children’s products,” Schreder said.
It can be difficult for parents or day-care workers to tell whether products have the chemicals. The Child Learning and Care Center in the University District was the sole center in the study with retardant-free mats — but it was only by chance, said executive director Michele Sorenson.
“It was a surprise to me that this was something I would even have to worry about,” she said. “I didn’t make an informed decision.”
The mats at Interlake Child Care & Learning Center contained the chemicals, but director Marna Towle didn’t realize that could be a problem.
“So many things have flame retardants, you don’t think that’s necessarily going to mean it’s bad for you,” she said. “For us to learn that the mats could be actually emitting something harmful was a real eye-opener.”
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission last year urged the public, especially pregnant women and children, to avoid a large class of fire-retardant chemicals, called organohalogens, which includes most of the chemicals found in Seattle day cares. The commission also took the first steps to eventually ban their use in furniture, electronics and children’s products.
Since 2013, when California changed its flammability standards, many companies have been manufacturing retardant-free products, including nap mats. But many older mats are still in use.
In the Seattle study, researchers cut up and analyzed mats and collected dust and air samples in the participating day-care centers, then replaced the older mats and repeated the dust and air sampling three months later.
Though estimated exposures to most of the chemicals were below levels considered unsafe, they don’t include any additional exposures kids encounter at home or elsewhere, Salamova pointed out. Also, there’s so little data on many of the compounds and their health effects that the so-called “safe” levels may not be trustworthy, Salamova cautioned.
“Since we know so little about the toxic effects, we should be careful about any exposures to these chemicals,” she said.
After the old mats were replaced, flame-retardant levels in dust dropped between 42 and 90 percent.
The day-care centers that participated in the study got new nap mats for free. A single, new mat can cost $50 or more, Towle pointed out.
“It’s a pretty big deal for day cares, because they are expensive,” she said.
Schreder advised concerned parents to speak with their day-care providers about the facilities’ nap mats. Older mats are much more likely to contain flame-retardant chemicals than mats purchased after 2013.
Salamova, whose own daughters are now 12 and 14, also recommends that parents check the ventilation and use of pesticides at their kids’ day care, and make sure their children wash their hands frequently.
For Sorenson, at Child Learning and Care Center, the study was a wake-up call that potentially dangerous substances can hide in innocuous products.
“It’s kind of discouraging when you work so hard to give the kids a really super-safe place, then you find out you could possibly be buying toxic things,” she said. “The take-away for me is to be more aware and not always trust what you’re buying.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/science/sleepy-time-some-nap-mats-at-seattle-child-care-centers-contain-toxic-chemicals/
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Canada Adds LPGs to Toxics List
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Julie Miller
Canada's government has added two categories of liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) to schedule 1 of the country's Environmental Protection Act (Cepa) – its list of toxic substances.
This allows the government to develop regulations or other risk management measures if it deems such actions necessary. The final screening assessment for the substances and the proposal to add them to the schedule were published in April last year.
The two categories are:petroleum gases, liquefied – referring to "a complex combination of hydrocarbons obtained from the distillation of crude oil"; andpetroleum gases, liquefied, sweetened – produced by subjecting liquefied petroleum gases to "a sweetening process to convert mercaptans or to remove acidic impurities".
The primary health risk identified in the assessment is from people living near petroleum refineries inhaling 1,3-butadiene. This is a carcinogen that could be present in the LPGs released by the refineries.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66143/canada-adds-lpgs-to-toxics-list
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NGOs Urge Member States to Support REACH Nano Amendments
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
A group of NGOs has written to EU member states, urging them to support proposals to amend REACH annexes for nanomaterials and to restrict carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) substances in textiles.
In the letter, which has been sent ahead of a REACH Committee meeting on 25-26 April, the group also asks members to vote in favour of the European Commission's proposal for a restriction on four phthalates.
The group of seven NGOs includes:the European Environmental Bureau (EEB);ClientEarth;the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel); andthe Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL).
After several years of delays, the Commission proposed changes to REACH annexes to address substances in nanoforms last year.
These include the addition of a new section to Annex IX, which calls for further testing if specific additional particle properties "significantly influence the hazard or the exposure to those nanoforms".
The NGOs say its placing there is "contrary to the spirit of REACH" and defeats the purpose of adapting the annexes for nanomaterials.
The provision should be inserted in Annex VI, they say, as this would make REACH more "future proof" at no extra cost for registrants. Annex VI details the information needed for the submission of a registration dossier and evaluation.Textiles CMR restriction
The NGOs say the restriction on CMRs in textiles should cover all that are category 1A and 1B substances with a harmonised classification. It should not be "just those 40 plus substances for which the European Commission was able to find evidence of use in the textiles sector".
Additionally, consumer organisations Beuc and Anec provided comments ahead of the meeting, calling for a "systematic, comprehensive approach" on the restriction.
The proposal should be amended, they say, to ensure:better protection of small children;regular updates to the list of restricted substances and applicable concentration limits; andthe addition of disposable textile within the scope of the restriction.Phthalates restriction proposal
Regarding the intention to restrict four phthalates – bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP) and diisobutyl phthalate (DIBP) – the NGOs say member states should reject an exemption on exports to non-EU countries.
This is to avoid "completely unacceptable double standards", they add.
The group has also called on member states to reject exemptions for outdoor, industrial and agriculture uses, as well as for spare parts for the automotive and aerospace sectors.
And they say they "firmly oppose" a proposal to defer the restriction on automotive and aerospace articles for 60 months.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66197/ngos-urge-member-states-to-support-reach-nano-amendments
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EU Adopts EDC Criteria for Plant Protection Products
Apr 24, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Vanessa Zainzinger
The European Commission has officially adopted the revised criteria to identify endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plant protection product (PPPs). They will become applicable on 10 November.
This finalises the development of the criteria, which were subject to controversy throughout the last few years. The final version was accepted after the European Commission removed a problematic exemption in its original proposal.
The EU’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (ScoPAFF) voted in favour of the criteria in December.
Neither the European Parliament nor Council raised any objection during the scrutiny period that followed the ScoPAFF vote. Their chance to object ended on 9 April.
"The EU is now the first worldwide to have strict legally binding criteria to identify endocrine disruptors," the Commission said in a press release. They will apply to all on-going and future evaluations of active substance used in PPPs.
Similar criteria for biocides were already adopted last year and will become applicable on 7 June.Remaining criticism
Despite their revision the final criteria do not please everyone. The European Crop Protection Association (Ecpa) said it "still fundamentally believes that the criteria are missing crucial elements". This includes potency, which industry made frequent calls to be included during the drafting process.
The missing elements "will lead to the loss of a number of substances, without consideration being given to the significant agronomic impact this could have on Europe’s farmers", an Ecpa spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, the European Consumer Organisation (Beuc) has turned its focus onto extending the criteria’s reach beyond biocides and pesticides.
"The EU is finally emerging from the deadlock on endocrine disruptors," said Beuc safety and health policy officer, Pelle Moos. Now, he added, "it is time to get to work in other areas, such as toys, food packing and cosmetics.
"There’s no more time to lose and now no more excuses for failing to act. We count on the EU Commission to develop an ambitious response to minimise consumers’ exposure to endocrine disruptors."Hope for good guidance
NGO Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) remains sceptical of the "high burden of proof" the criteria require. HEAL is hoping more work will be done on the technical guidance that will steer how they are implemented in practice.
However, the NGO is critical that the draft version of the guidance – published earlier this year – is limited because it only focuses on adverse effects from interaction with oestrogen, androgen, thyroid and steroidogenic (EATS) endocrine disrupting properties.
It wants the final paper to go beyond that and also to acknowledge that multiple modes of action can contribute to a single adverse effect. "The current mode of action analysis, which is not part of the requirements of the criteria themselves, is too burdensome and should not be required," said HEAL’s health and chemicals policy officer, Natacha Cingotti.
"Finally, the document should explicitly state how and when revisions will be carried out in the future, so that new scientific knowledge and advances on testing guidelines can be included," she said.
The pesticides industry is following the guidance closely, Ecpa said. "We hope that something practical, reasonable and workable – unlike many guidance documents currently being used – might come out of the process."
Echa and the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) are currently finalising the document, which is due to be published in June.
https://chemicalwatch.com/66194/eu-adopts-edc-criteria-for-plant-protection-products
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U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Legality of Patent Review Process
Apr 24, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Andrew Chung
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday gave its stamp of approval to a government review process prized by high technology companies as an easy and cheap way to combat "patent trolls" and others that bring patent infringement lawsuits.
The justices ruled 7-2 that a type of in-house patent review at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not violate a defendant's right under the U.S. Constitution to have a case adjudicated by a federal court and jury. The court ruled against Oil States International Inc, a Houston-based oilfield services company that had challenged the legality of the process, called inter partes review (IPR).
Justices John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision authored by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas to uphold the reviews.
While the ruling gave Silicon Valley reason to celebrate, it was sure to displease name-brand drugmakers, which had called the IPR process a threat to innovation. Firms dubbed "patent trolls" have a business model based on suing other companies over patents rather than actually making products.
The U.S. Congress created the reviews as part of a 2011 law to deal with the perceived high number of flimsy patents that had been issued by the patent office in prior years. Since then, the patent office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board has canceled all or part of a patent in about 80 percent of its final decisions. In 2015, it canceled an Oil States patent on protecting wellhead equipment after an IPR proceeding.
These reviews have been especially popular with companies like Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd that are frequent targets of patent infringement suits. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies like AbbVie Inc, Allergan plc and Celgene Corp called for the IPR system to be scrapped.
In challenging the review process, Oil States argued that patents are private property that may be the revoked only by a federal court. The standard for canceling a patent is higher in federal courts than in the review proceedings.
Thomas, writing for the court, called the IPR process an extension of the Patent and Trademark Office's decision to grant a patent.
"Inter partes review is simply a reconsideration of that grant, and Congress has permissibly reserved the PTO's authority to conduct that reconsideration," Thomas wrote.
Though it upheld the IPR process, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in a separate case on Tuesday that faulted one aspect of how the reviews are carried out. The justices said that when several parts of a patent are challenged, the patent office does not have the discretion to review only some of them. That ruling split the court along ideological lines, with its five conservatives in the majority and four liberals dissenting.
COSTLY LITIGATION
A ruling striking down the reviews could have diverted the bulk of patent disputes back to federal courts, where litigation is more drawn out and expensive. A patent office review costs about $350,000 to litigate fully, whereas in district court it could be $3 million, Apple said in legal papers.
The case began when an Oil States subsidiary sued in 2012 claiming Houston-based rival Greene's Energy Group infringed its patent for use in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of oil wells. Greene's responded by filing an inter partes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, the administrative tribunal run by the patent office that conducts the reviews. The board later canceled key parts of the patent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized Washington-based patent court, upheld that decision in 2016. Oil States appealed to the Supreme Court, telling the justices that the reviews are not wiping out weak patents as advertised but instead "the best United States patents."
Backed by the President Donald Trump's administration, Greene's Energy also had the support of large technology firms including Alphabet's Google and Intel Corp.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/04/24/technology/24reuters-usa-court-patent.html
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U.S., Cheniere Rewrite Safety Order After LNG Leak
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel
Cheniere Energy Inc. has finalized an agreement with U.S. regulators that eliminates some deadlines for the company to complete an investigation into the causes of a ruptured storage tank at its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export facility in Louisiana.
In a "consent agreement and order" dated Friday and published yesterday, Cheniere and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) agreed that the company would continue to investigate the cause of an LNG release from a storage tank at Sabine Pass, which in 2016 was the first of a handful of LNG plants to begin shipping U.S. gas overseas.
The leak on Jan. 22 was not publicly reported until Feb. 9, when PHMSA issued a corrective action order requiring Cheniere to shut down two of the five LNG storage tanks in use at the facility (Energywire, Feb. 12).
Natural gas is highly flammable and, under certain conditions, explosive. LNG is natural gas that is cooled to a liquid at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit. Its volume is then reduced six-hundredfold. When supercooled LNG encounters ambient air temperatures, it quickly expands and turns back into a gas. Each of Cheniere's tanks can store up to 3.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
At a hearing last month in Houston, Cheniere said PHMSA had overstated the danger posed to the public by the leak and described the agency's order as "not warranted." PHMSA responded that the safety order was necessary to protect the safety of the hundreds of workers at the Sabine Pass site, as well as the public (Energywire, March 22).
The hearing was initially scheduled as closed to the public but was made open under legal pressure by E&E News with the help of lawyers for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The new consent agreement replaces and supersedes PHMSA's February order and was reached in part to avoid "further administrative proceedings or litigation," the document says.
Portions of the new document echo the February order. Cheniere and PHMSA will finalize a work plan to fully remove from service the LNG storage tank that ruptured and leaked LNG from what PHMSA earlier described as "vertical through-wall cracks in approximately four separate areas on the carbon steel outer shell." The company will conduct a root cause failure analysis and develop a plan to repair the tank and return it to service.
A second tank that, upon inspection in February, was found to be leaking small streams of methane from a dozen points around the base has also been emptied and must be repaired and assessed, with some changes to be made to the tank piping and automated monitoring systems.
The three other tanks at the site, which remain in use as the facility continues what Cheniere has described as a normal level of activity, will be assessed once the failure analysis is completed.
Elements from the original corrective action order that are absent in the newly agreed-to document include PHMSA's account of what it found at the site during its initial investigation, along with PHMSA's remarks on "long-standing safety concerns" conveyed by Cheniere regarding incidents in which LNG had escaped the inner tank walls from 2008 through 2016.
The order also included deadlines for action by Cheniere that are absent in the new consent agreement, including a requirement that the failure analysis be completed within 120 days.
A deadline for Cheniere to produce a history of previous temperature problems with the storage tanks was pushed from 30 days after the initial February order to July 31.
A statement from Cheniere's vice president for communications, Eben Burnham-Snyder, stressed that the company believes there has never been a public safety threat related to its LNG tanks. "Cheniere remains committed to a continued productive relationship and ongoing collaboration with PHMSA," he said.
Burnham-Snyder said both of the affected tanks are currently empty. The breached tank is in the process of being warmed to ambient temperatures for repair.
The tank will also have a "bottom fill line," a pipe that fills the tank from the floor, rather than the ceiling, mechanically disabled, Burnham-Snyder said. Cheniere has previously suggested that a problem with the line could have been the cause for LNG spilling out of the inner tank, where it came into contact with the outer wall, which is not designed to handle supercold temperatures.
Burnham-Snyder did not say whether there is new evidence that the bottom fill line caused the failure. But he said the company judged it "prudent" to disable the line on the two tanks that are most like the ruptured one.
PHMSA has required Cheniere to bring in independent experts to work on analyzing the tank failures. Cheniere said yesterday that it has contracted "more than 10 independent teams of experts" to assist in the matter. PHMSA said there are three outside parties involved: DNV GL, Chicago Bridge and Iron Co., and Matrix PDM Engineering Inc. Matrix is the company that built the storage tanks.
PHMSA declined to release Cheniere's monthly status reports on the incident or the agency-approved work plan for repair of the damaged tank.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079883
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BLM Appeals Court Order Nixing 'Untethered' Methane Rollback
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
The Trump administration is heading to a federal appeals court to challenge a February ruling that briefly revived Obama-era standards for methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
The Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management last night announced plans to ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a lower court's decision striking down BLM's rollback of key provisions of the 2016 methane venting and flaring rule.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California halted the agency's December suspension of the standards, calling it "untethered to evidence" (Energywire, Feb. 23).
The ruling reinstated the full Obama regulation, but another court in Wyoming has since put a stop to the standards again. That has triggered a separate legal battle at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Obama administration's methane rule aims to cut methane emissions on public and tribal lands — both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to maximize taxpayer benefits from natural gas production.
But critics have long argued that the rule is too costly and overlaps with existing state- and industry-led initiatives to cut methane waste.
While litigation over BLM's suspension of the standards moves forward, the agency is working on a broader plan to permanently undo most of the regulation.
A public comment period on that proposal closed yesterday, attracting more than 400,000 submissions. In addition to thousands of form letters, BLM received feedback from industry groups, environmental organizations, legal experts, tribal advocates, big businesses and others.
Trump administration officials expect to finalize the broader rollback by August. The new legal battle at the 9th Circuit and the existing appeal at the 10th Circuit will determine whether the full Obama standards must be enforced in the meantime.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079895
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Southern Co., Oil Interests Launch Lobbying Coalition
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Southern Co. has joined BP PLC, Chevron Corp. and other oil interests in the launch of a coalition promoting carbon capture, utilization and storage.
The Energy Advance Center, announced in new lobbying documents, also includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America Inc. and Denbury Resources, a Texas-based oil and gas production company. The group, which spent $30,000 in the first quarter, is represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, according to the filing.
"The center is a voluntary association of energy companies, industrial energy users and other energy-related entities formed to promote the energy industry's interests in issues related to carbon capture and storage, to improve the greenhouse gas emissions profile of fossil fuels, and to enhance the economic opportunities from use of CO2 with benefits for the economy, energy security and the environment," said Fred Eames, a carbon capture expert and partner at the firm.
The coalition hasn't decided on which legislation it would endorse, he said.
Last month, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee debated the "Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies (USE IT) Act," which would change several federal laws to speed up deployment of CO2 pipelines and carbon capture research (E&E Daily, April 12).
Eames said he needed to "get a position approved" before endorsement of that bill. Other legislation recently introduced on Capitol Hill would incentivize carbon capture through private activity bonds. Last December, Congress passed legislation doubling tax credits for carbon storage.
The link between carbon capture and the oil industry has caused some controversy as of late, after the Natural Resources Defense Council declined to participate in a newly formed carbon capture coalition because of concerns about boosting fossil fuels (Greenwire, Feb. 23).
Carbon capture supporters say linking the technology with oil recovery helps bridge a steep cost gap that will come down as more projects come online. Ultimately, carbon emissions are lowered overall in cases where captured CO2 brings more oil out of the ground, they say.
Southern oversaw the Mississippi-based Kemper project — a planned coal gasification plant with carbon capture that was turned into a natural gas plant last year after years of cost overruns. Denbury Resources formerly had a contract to accept Kemper's captured CO2 for oil recovery before the project was canceled.
Southern also manages and operates the national carbon capture center, which is sponsored by the Department of Energy and tests promising CO2-reduction technologies.
Chevron has invested more than $1 billion in two CCS projects, including Royal Dutch Shell PLC's initiative to capture CO2 from a Canadian oil sands upgrader. BP was involved for years in an Algerian capture project involving natural gas processing.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries helped developed the carbon-stripping technology at NRG Energy Inc.'s Petra Nova project in Texas, the world's largest carbon capture retrofit of a coal plant. The captured CO2 in that project is piped to nearby oil fields.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079951
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S&P: LNG Buyers in the Driver's Seat Until Demand Surges
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Peter Behr
Global markets for liquefied natural gas are likely headed for volatile swings moving into the next decade, when growing LNG surpluses give buyers the upper hand over producers at least until the mid-2020s, analysts with S&P Global Inc. said yesterday.
Spot prices for gas globally will remain low though 2021. Then, accelerating LNG demand from China and India, prompted by natural gas's carbon advantage over coal, could put sellers back in the driver's seat — at least until Russia opens major gas pipeline deliveries to China or a breakthrough in battery technology helps renewable power at the expense of gas, according to S&P.
The challenging outlook for LNG was surveyed by a quartet of specialists from S&P Global Platts and S&P Global Ratings, whose most confident predictions concern trends nearest at hand.
Chief among these is a strong swing against long-term contracts that LNG terminal developers and investors have successfully demanded from utilities and other LNG buyers as security for multibillion-dollar LNG export terminal construction. Developers' conventional 20-year, take-or-pay contract, which predominated over the past decade, start expiring in 2020, the S&P analysts said.
Those terms "will simply not exist the second time around," said Ira Joseph, head of Global Gas and Power at S&P Global Platts, speaking yesterday at a briefing for reporters. Sellers still want long-term contracts, but "buyers want nothing to do with it."
"With the latest commercialization of [LNG export] units in the U.S. and Australia, the global LNG market went into oversupply in the third quarter of 2017 and is likely to remain oversupplied until demand catches up again," Aneesh Prabhu, S&P Global Ratings senior director, and colleagues wrote last week.
"As a result, we believe that the global LNG market is at a pivotal stage in its evolution," they said.
The analysts spotlight China as the critical factor in the future LNG supply-demand balance. While that picture is still somewhat uncertain, S&P predicts that China will be the most important LNG buyer through 2022, accounting for 45 percent of demand growth. Later in the 2020s, it could add even more demand by moving to meet carbon reduction goals of the Paris Agreement by replacing much more coal-fired generation with natural gas and renewable power, the analysts said.
In an LNG poker hand full of wild cards, the intentions of Qatar, Russia, and to a lesser degree Mexico and possibly Saudi Arabia all must be taken into account, they said. Qatar's plan to add 23 million tons of LNG production capacity per year will press some LNG developers to delay or abandon new project commitments. "Any prospects of meaningful supply scarcity also recedes," the ratings analysts said.Russia's choice
The willingness of Russia's Gazprom to shift to lower gas prices in 2016 to defend its European market share revealed a flexibility that left it able to set marginal prices for the fuel in Europe. However, S&P says, the gas supply glut, fueled in part by U.S. shale gas production, has weakened Russia's position somewhat.
"Now with the risk of the LNG supply, Europe has an alternative supplier" to Russia. Gazprom has to choose whether to continue pegging natural gas prices to crude oil or accept a lower price, the S&P analysts said.
Gas sales to China would help firm Gazprom's pricing. A major pipeline, around 60 percent completed, will connect eastern Russian gas fields to China by 2020. That new destination will help Russia if its European customers are willing to look elsewhere for gas supply to security purposes, even at higher prices, S&P said.
The possibility that Saudi Arabia could become the Middle East's biggest LNG importer is another potential disrupter. Under the kingdom's new regime under Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, importing gas is in play, and the Saudis could become one of the four biggest LNG buyers in the world, S&P's Joseph said. "What was a political impossibility in the past is not necessarily so in the future," he added.
Regardless of the outcome of the Trump administration's pressure on Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement on terms more favorable to the U.S., pipeline connections from the U.S. will continue to expand to permit more conventional gas exports. "The infrastructure is being built out," Joseph said. "We think that will continue," with Mexico trying to take advantage of cheap U.S. gas to advantage its exports.
The prospect of tightening demand in the mid-2020s creates an economic case for the next round of U.S. LNG export terminal investments, said Stephen Goltz, director of S&P Global Ratings. But given the lead time for construction, investment decisions will have to be nailed down soon, and many developers are holding back in the face of gas oversupply and weak prices, Goltz said.
"There is a significant impasse between sellers and buyers," Joseph said. "It is really going to be disruptive."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079855
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FERC Order Tightens Cybersecurity Standards
Apr 24, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Eric Wolff
FERC is tightening up security standards for laptops and access controls for certain “low-impact” parts of the grid.
The order approves parts of a new set of standards submitted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. It sets up new standards for thumb drives and laptops and other devices that frequently connect and disconnect from systems. FERC approved the order last week and released it today ahead of its publication in Wednesday's Federal Register.
FERC also decided not to adopt new standards for access control for systems that connect to other systems that provide key grid services. The commission instead asked NERC to review existing access controls and see if they provided enough security. It also decided that provisions setting standards for mitigating the damage from viruses were not sufficiently clear, and asked NERC try again.
FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre has said that improving cybersecurity from the grid is one of his highest priorities while chairman. The Trump administration in March revealed that Russian hackers penetrated power plant control systems to the extent that they could turn off the power, if they wanted.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Train-Stopping System Misses Mark in Test Runs on LIRR
Apr 24, 2018 | Newsday
By Alfonso A. Castillo
The failure of positive train control to stop a Long Island Rail Road train during a recent test run in Port Washington has further set back the LIRR’s efforts to have the federally-required crash prevention technology in place throughout its system by the end of the year, MTA officials said.
The $1 billion dollar system’s inability to do precisely what it’s supposed to — automatically bring to a halt a train that violates a stop signal — has raised new concerns about the program for MTA officials, who learned about the test failures during a Monday meeting of the agency’s railroad committee.
According to MTA documents, the LIRR system failed 16 out of 52 tests during a trial run of the new technology on the railroad’s Port Washington branch. Although the MTA’s positive train control contractor continues to investigate the cause of the failures, MTA officials said they believe it stems from the complexity and density of the LIRR — the busiest commuter railroad in the United States.
Positive train control, also known as PTC, works by having radio transponders that are installed on tracks and on trains communicate with one another to automatically slow down or stop a train if it’s going too fast, is about to hit another train or violates a signal. National Transportation Safety Board investigators have said PTC could have prevented several fatal train accidents in recent years, including the December 2013 derailment of a Metro-North train in the Bronx that killed four people.
The U.S. Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, passed after a deadly commuter train crash in California, mandates that all railroads have positive train control in place by Dec. 31, 2018, or risk heavy federal fines.
But the federal Government Accountability Office last month issued a report saying that as many as two-thirds of all commuter railroads in the United States — including the LIRR — are at risk of missing the deadline.
MTA officials said the recent LIRR test failures have set back their efforts by another two months.
With the prospect of having PTC fully in place throughout the LIRR, and sister railroad Metro-North, by the end of the year dimming, MTA officials said they are shifting their focus to meeting minimum standards to be compliant with the federal law. If the MTA can complete installation of PTC hardware, train all its employees, and have the technology operational on at least one railroad branch, it can receive another two-year extension to complete the project, the officials said.
Metro-North president Catherine Rinaldi said Monday she remains confident the MTA will achieve that goal.
“We fully expect to be compliant with the federal requirements by the end of the year. That has not wavered,” Rinaldi said. “It is our highest priority, and we’re killing ourselves to get it done.”
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/lirr-positive-train-control-failure-deadline-long-island-rail-road-1.18235120
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Dems Question Pruitt Over Centralizing Water Pollution Authority
Apr 24, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
A pair of Democratic lawmakers is questioning Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt about a memo that gave him new authority to make certain determinations over water pollution standards.
The March memo took away the authority of regional EPA officials to make some calls as to whether a particular body of water can be federally controlled under the Clean Water Act, and gave that authority to Pruitt.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in their Tuesday letter that the memo calls into question Pruitt’s “commitment, as EPA Administrator, to follow the law ... as well as to ensure that Clean Water Act decisions are based on established science and precedent, and conducted in a transparent manner.”
They accused him of "sidelining" local expertise and said that Pruitt actions “appear nothing more than a power grab to consolidate absolute authority in your personal offices, with no assurance that you will follow the rule of law, science, or the precedents of the agency in exercising your statutory responsibility under the Clean Water Act to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.’”
The lawmakers, each the top Democrat on the Senate and House committees that oversee the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act, asked Pruitt for a wide range of documents and explanations related to the memo.
The March memo came as the EPA is working to repeal an Obama administration regulation that expanded the federal government’s authority over waterways under the Clean Water Act. The Trump administration is also working on a new definition of federal authority that is less extensive and more industry-friendly.
The EPA defended the memo at the time, saying it doesn’t shut out regional officials.
“This memo explains that jurisdictional determinations that raise significant issues or technical difficulties should be handled in a consistent and uniform manner, particularly during the [Waters of the United States] rulemaking,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said.
"Regions will absolutely be involved in the process and work closely with the Administrator’s office when doing the work to assess jurisdiction for very select, and often rare, cases."
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/384596-dems-question-pruitt-over-epa-memo-centralizing-water-pollution
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Gore on 'Turning Point' for Climate Change, Trump, Pruitt
Apr 24, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Arianna Skibell
Former Vice President Al Gore said he sees an impending "turning point" for climate action in this country, much like other social movements.
"Change takes much longer than you would think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought," he said at an event this morning.
"If someone had told me that in the year 2018, marriage equality would be legal in all 50 states ... I would have said, 'Well, I hope so, but what are you smoking?'"
In a conversation this morning with Axios' Mike Allen, Gore compared the Trump administration to a bad science experiment. And while he expressed optimism about action against global warming, Gore said the president is unlikely to re-enter the Paris climate deal.
"We're only in a little over a year into this experiment with Donald Trump, and in science and medicine, sometimes experiments are terminated early for ethical reasons," Gore said.
Allen asked Gore whether he had any advice for French President Emmanuel Macron, who is in Washington, D.C., for a state visit with President Trump and is discussing the possibility of the United States re-entering the Paris Agreement.
"I'm not going to give Macron advice on how to deal with Donald Trump," Gore said. "He seems to be interested in persuading the president we should stay in the nuclear agreement with Iran."
Gore said that he personally tried to convince Trump to stay in the Paris accord, but that the former real estate mogul is too close to the fossil fuel industry to be moved.
"I don't think he's going to change on that," Gore said. "I never give up on anybody, but I've come closest as I ever have with President Trump."
Climate change is getting worse, Gore said. "The future of human civilization is at risk," he said. "Every night on the news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation," with all the extreme weather events.
Gore said the good news in the fight against warming is that businesses, states and cities in the United States are sticking with their Paris pledges.
"I know what you're thinking: President Trump made his statement, but the first day on which the U.S. could legally withdraw from the Paris Agreement happens to be the day after the next president election," Gore said. "If there is a new president, a new president could simply give 30 days' notice, and the U.S. is right back in the agreement."Scott Pruitt
At the end of the hour, Allen asked Gore to participate in a lightning round where the former vice president would quickly respond to a list of names, beginning with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
"Scott Pruitt," Gore mused. "I don't know why he's still in office." When Allen tried to move to the next name, Gore said, "Now wait a minute."
"I think the big grifters depend on the little grifters. I think the Koch brothers and other polluters keep him there," Gore said of Pruitt. "They've pressured President Trump to overlook the extreme daily embarrassments coming to his administration because of Scott Pruitt."
He added: "Surely, somebody in the White House will say, 'Enough already.'"
Gore also said he is excited about businesses investing in space exploration, like Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos. Gore cautioned, though, that he does not believe in finding a "backup planet" if humans destroy Earth.
"I don't want to live in a hermetically sealed freezer on a planet where you can't breathe the air," he said. "We need to focus on this planet at the same time and make sure it continues to support the flourishing of humanity."
Allen concluded the conversation by asking Gore what's on his bucket list. "Solving the climate crisis," Gore said without hesitation.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/24/stories/1060079947
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