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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Goes on the Record, For the Record
Apr 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Garrett Ross and David Beavers
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s big day on Capitol Hill arrived with much fanfare, as he sat before angry lawmakers seeking answers on the multitude of ethical errors that have enveloped him in recent weeks. -
At Hearings, EPA Chief Seeks to Divert Blame for Ethics Woes
Apr 27, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, yet another Trump administration official with his job on the line over ethical concerns, took heat from lawmakers over his profligate spending and lobbyist ties and tried to divert responsibility to underlings. -
Pruitt, Oil's Friendly Regulator, Lives to See Another Day
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Joel Kirkland and Mike Soraghan
In January 2017, President Trump's nominee to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt, dismissed Democratic attacks painting him as a tool of wealthy energy and industrial interests. -
OMB Backdates Completion Date for 'Secret Science' Review
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
The White House has altered an official timeline to show that a required review of a proposed EPA science rule was finished one day before agency Administrator Scott Pruitt signed it this past Tuesday. -
(ACC Mentioned) New Research Shows BPA Connected to Breast Cancer, FDA Skeptical
Apr 27, 2018 | Organic Authority
By Emily Monaco
New research has linked low dose exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) with a threefold increase in combined benign breast tumors and breast cancer in lab rats. -
New York Threatens to Sue Trump Over EPA Climate Rule Repeal
Apr 27, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
New York state will sue the Trump administration if it carries out its proposal to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate-change rule for power plants. -
Refining Margins Dent Exxon, Chevron First-Quarter Results
Apr 27, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Ernest Scheyder
Weak refining margins dinged first-quarter results for Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp, though Chevron's oil production gains outshone its larger rival, which has struggled to turn operations around after recent missteps. -
ExxonMobil Expects Mid-Year Start-Up for New US Cracker
Apr 27, 2018 | ICIS
ExxonMobil plans a mid-year start-up for its new 1.5m tonne/year ethanecracker at its complex in Baytown, Texas, a company executive said on Friday. -
Texas City Hosts First Supertanker as U.S. Crude Gushes
Apr 27, 2018 | Bloomberg (In Houston Chronicle)
By Alaric Nightingale
A 2 million barrel-carrying supertanker arrived for the first time at a jetty in Texas City as surging U.S. oil output drives up incentives to export. -
'Gamechanger' Earthquake Linked to Geothermal Power
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Scientists have linked a magnitude 5.5 earthquake to enhanced geothermal power, raising new questions about the safety of the emerging technology when the U.S. government and other countries are investing millions of dollars researching and deploying new systems. -
Wisconsin City Lifts Evacuation Order After Refinery Explosion
Apr 27, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
Tens of thousands of residents of a northern Wisconsin city were cleared to return to their homes on Friday, the day after a blast at a Husky Energy Inc refinery injured at least 15 people, a local official said. -
Smoke From Wisconsin Refinery Explosion Poses Health Risk
Apr 27, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times, The Washington Post)
An explosion and asphalt fire at a Wisconsin oil refinery sent huge plumes of smoke into the air that pollution experts said almost certainly contained large amounts of toxins, posing a serious health risk to those living downwind. -
Interior to Unveil Offshore Well-Control Rule Changes
Apr 27, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department will propose today revising offshore well-control rules that the Obama administration put in place after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon explosion, according to sources. -
Environmentalists Fear Broad Precedent in Methane Rule Suit
Apr 27, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are asking an appellate court to reinstate the requirements of an Obama-era Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule limiting methane from oil and gas operations on federal land, arguing that a lower court made a significant error that could set a broad adverse precedent when it paused the standards. -
FERC's Pipeline Policy Review: The Legal Rundown
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal regulators' decision to revisit how they evaluate pipeline projects has put a spotlight on an obscure policy document and how it's used in court. -
Gas Project Hopes High Court Can Break Regulatory Limbo
Apr 27, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima and Aaron Gregg
At a stockyard in Guilderland, N.Y., hundreds of pieces of pipeline are sitting through another spring. They've been sitting there since 2014. -
PG&E Fined Nearly $100M for Improper Talks with Regulators
Apr 27, 2018 | San Francisco Chronicle (In E&E Greenwire)
By David Baker
California regulators yesterday hit Pacific Gas and Electric Co. with a $97.5 million fine for improper private communications with their agency after the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. -
Pruitt Says Ambassador Invited Him to Morocco
Apr 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told lawmakers his much-scrutinized trip to Morocco where he promoted natural gas was prompted by an invitation from the country’s ambassador. -
The Health and Safety of America's Workers Is at Risk
Apr 27, 2018 | Scientific American
By Kathleen Rest
Tomorrow may seem like just another Saturday. -
They’re On the Lookout for Malware That Can Kill
Apr 27, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima and Aaron Gregg
The cyber threat hunters had honed their chops at the National Security Agency — the world’s premier electronic spy agency. -
New Source Review Rulemaking Possible — Pruitt
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
EPA is contemplating an overhaul of its perennially contentious New Source Review permitting program, Administrator Scott Pruitt said yesterday. -
UP Notes PTC Implementation Progress in Q1
Apr 27, 2018 | Progressive Rail Roading
Union Pacific Railroad yesterday provided an update on its positive train control (PTC) implementation effort through the first quarter. -
Energy and Environment Bills Roll Out Before Recess
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Manuel Quinones
Senators introduced a flurry of bills related to energy and the environment yesterday ahead of next week's recess. -
Environmental Concerns May Turn Voters Blue: Poll
Apr 27, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Concerns over environmental regulation and climate change could be an important voting issue and may sway some voters toward Democrats, according to a poll released Friday.
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(ACC Mentioned) Pruitt Goes on the Record, For the Record
Apr 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Garrett Ross and David Beavers
ON THE RECORD, FOR THE RECORD: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s big day on Capitol Hill arrived with much fanfare, as he sat before angry lawmakers seeking answers on the multitude of ethical errors that have enveloped him in recent weeks. Protesters also showed up, wearing “Impeach Pruitt” T-shirts and holding signs calling him “Mr. Corruption."
Teeing off the hearing, Chairman John Shimkus (Ill.) made it clear that questioning would not be limited to the EPA’s proposed fiscal 2019 budget, as the hearing was originally scheduled. After praising Pruitt’s policy moves, he said of the scandals plaguing the administrator: “I consider much of this narrative to be a distraction but one this committee cannot ignore.”
As lawmakers began to dig in, inquiries into Pruitt’s reported missteps came from both sides. E&C Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) called the issues “too persistent to ignore,” and urged Pruitt to commit to providing the committee with the same information he provided the EPA IG and other congressional committees.
Ranking member Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) urged Republicans to put themselves in his shoes: “I would ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to imagine if a Democrat acted in this manner — would you stand for it? I think the answer is clear you would not.” Frank Pallone, the committee’s top Democrat, took it a step further, blasting the committee’s GOP leadership over the lack of a real investigation: “I have seen no evidence from committee Republicans that this is really happening,” Pallone (D-N.J.) said.
Pruitt said he had “nothing to hide” in his opening statement, while deriding the reports on his behavior as “fiction” and “lies.” “Let’s have no illusions about what’s really going on here: Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to attack and derail the president’s agenda and undermine this administration’s priorities. I’m simply not going to let that happen.”
Welcome to Afternoon Energy! We’re your hosts Garrett Ross and David Beavers. Send suggestions, news and tips to gross@politico.com, dbeavers@politico.com, mdaily@politico.com and njuliano@politico.com, and keep up with us on Twitter at @garrett_ross, @davidabeavers, @dailym1, @nickjuliano, @Morning_Energy and @POLITICOPro.
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IN HIS OWN WORDS: Getting the chance to speak on the reports, Pruitt addressed — or in some cases didn’t — the lawmakers’ concerns.
— On the $43,000 private phone booth: Pruitt threw career EPA staffers into the fire for the furor over the soundproof installation in his office, and said he would have opposed it had he known of the plan. “I did have a phone call that came in of a sensitive nature and I did not have access to secure communication. I gave direction to my staff to address that and out of that came a $43,000 expenditure that I did not approve. If I’d known about it, I would have refused it."
Later, he said that it was rare that he used the phone booth, and that it depends on the “nature of the call and how urgent” it is.
— On raises to EPA staffers: Despite previous denials, Pruitt said that he did authorize his chief of staff to award pay raises, but didn’t know how they would be implemented: “I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the bypassing or the [Presidential Personnel Office] process not being respected.”
— On his reported wasteful spending: As Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) dug in to the administrator’s reported excess spending at the agency, Pruitt largely avoided answering directly, saying, “I think there are changes I’ve made already,” and that he follows his security team’s recommendations. Eshoo, however, wasn’t satisfied: “With all due respect, I may be elected, but I’m not a fool. That’s really a lousy answer from someone that has a high position in the federal government.”
— On EPA’s new science standards: Pruitt defended his agency’s controversial new policy as Democrats heavily questioned its potential effects. “It doesn’t apply to only certain studies, it applies to all third-party studies,” while also trying to quell concerns that the scope of information would be too limited. “Both [confidential business information] and personal information can be redacted, it can be addressed, and still serve the purposes of the proposed rule.”
— On former aide Samantha Dravis: Pruitt was unable to answer questioning over whether Dravis, one of his top aides, did in fact report for work for a period of three months. “There’s a pending investigation, as you’ve indicated, a review of that. I’m not aware that she did or did not appear for work. So that’s something that is being reviewed at this point.”
— On whistleblower retaliation: “There’s no truth to the assertion that decisions have been made about reassignments or otherwise as far as employment status based upon the things you reference. I’m not aware of that ever happening, and it’s something I want to make very, very clear,” adding that he believes staffers reporting wrongdoing is “how we improve outcomes and processes.”
— On his relationship with Albert “Kell” Kelly: Pruitt said he would urge Kelly, a former Oklahoma banker who now works for EPA, to share the details of his lifetime banking ban with Congress. “I think Mr. Kelly, if he’s willing to share that with you, he should do that. I would encourage him to do so.”
HOW IT LANDED: As expected, Democrats tore into Pruitt early and often, with Pallone deploying perhaps the sharpest rebuke, saying the scandals are “an embarrassment to President [Donald] Trump and distract from the EPA's ability to effectively carry out the president's mission. And if I were the president, I wouldn't want your help. I'd get rid of you."
Republicans, meanwhile, offered a mixed bag as some were more interested in actual policy decisions and rushing to his defense. Rep. Joe Barton(R-Texas), former chairman of House Energy and Commerce Committee, came to Pruitt's aid, alleging he’s been the “victim” of Washington politics. And Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), a staunch Pruitt ally, leveled a similar claim: “I think this has been a lot of classic display of innuendo and McCarthyism that were seeing too often here in Washington that I think unfortunately works against civility and respect for people in public office. Some can’t resist the limelight, the opportunity to grandstand.” Ohio Rep. Bill Johnson called Democrats “shameful” for launching “personal attacks” against Pruitt.
A handful from the GOP demanded answers from Pruitt. Most notably, retiring Pennsylvania Rep. Ryan Costello said that the criticism of Pruitt was warranted. “I’ve reviewed your answers and I find some of them lacking or insufficient. And I believe you’ve not demonstrated the requisite good judgment required of an appointed executive branch official on some of these spending items.” New Jersey GOP Rep. Leonard Lance also joined with Costello, saying that he agreed with the GAO’s report last week that Pruitt’s EPA violated federal law by not notifying Congress of the “inappropriate” installation of the phone booth.
HANDS OFF CALIFORNIA: Pruitt during his testimony this morning said his agency is “not at present” attempting to undo California’s Clean Air Act waiver that allows the state to set stricter vehicle emissions standards, Anthony reports. California officials have warned they would challenge any effort to go after the waiver.
EPA RFS WAIVERS: EPA has received 54 requests to waive small refiners’ Renewable Fuel Standards requirements between 2016-2017, Pruitt said today in response to questions from Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas). Ethanol producers, corn-state senators and the American Petroleum Institute have all slammed EPA for its expanded use of the exemptions, which Pruitt says are to alleviate pressure on small refineries due to “escalating RIN prices and inconsistency in the market.” Read more from Eric here.
CRUZ: YOU NEED ‘MAGIC FAIRY DUST’ TO MOVE RFS LEGISLATION: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slammed the idea that legislation would provide a practical resolution to the long-running RFS debate at a rally outside the Capitol today. Cruz, backed by workers from three Philadelphia-area refineries, said that if someone had the “magic fairy dust” to get the legislation through the Senate, he’d support it. But he doubted it. “We don’t have 60 votes,” he said. “Those who say we should let the legislative process play out are really saying let’s do nothing.” Cruz’s Texas colleague Sen. John Cornyn has been working for over a year to develop an RFS overhaul bill.
ICAHN’S REFINERY SAVED A BUNCH ON RIN COSTS THIS QUARTER: The refining company owned by billionaire Carl Icahn has seen its obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard reduced, the company said on its earnings call today. One of CVR Refining’s two refineries, located in Wynnewood, Okla., meets the requirements for the small refiners exemption. But the company declined to tell AE or investment analysts whether it had received the exemption. All it would say was that “a reduction to our estimated Renewable Volume Obligation” contributed to a strong quarter.
Executives on the call also revealed the company is planning to make investments to improve their access to the credits used to prove compliance with the program, including building out biodiesel blending capacity and building out wholesale and retail outlets. The company says it expects to increase its production of biofuels credits by 25 percent.
EXPLOSION INJURES SEVERAL IN WISCONSIN: A tank containing crude oil or asphalt exploded today at the Husky Energy refinery in Superior, Wis., injuring several people. Mel Duvall, a spokesman for Husky Energy, confirmed the fire and said all workers had been accounted for. Superior Fire Chief Steve Panger told the Associated Press no fatalities were reported, but at least five people had been taken to hospitals in Duluth, Minn. The explosion occurred at about 10 a.m. at the Canada-based company’s refinery, but Panger said the fire was out by 11:20 a.m. “Husky’s first priority is the safety of its people, the community and emergency responders,” Duvall said in a statement, noting that authorities had been notified and air quality in the area was being monitored. “There is no danger to the public or local residents at this time.” Rep. Sean Duffy, whose district is home to the refinery, tweeted that he was “still awaiting details.” But said he was “praying for the explosion victims and their families, and for the first responders on the scene.”
INTERIOR OFFICIAL RESIGNS: Bryan Rice, the head of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, has resigned barely six months after being appointed to the post by Secretary Ryan Zinke. Rice had previously worked as deputy director for the BIA Office of Trust Services from 2011 to 2014 and as director of forest management in the U.S. Forest Service from 2014 to 2016. Read more from Pro’s Ben Lefebvre here.
NOW HIRING: After a decade at the helm of the American Chemistry Council, President and CEO Cal Dooley announced today he will retire at the end of the year. The former Democratic congressman from California, who led the Grocery Manufacturers Association before coming to ACC in 2008, will step down when his current contract expires.
ROSEN DROPS YUCCA BILL: Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) today introduced a bill to prohibit the secretary of Energy from taking any action to move forward with the long-stalled Yucca Mountain project without the OMB director first submitting a study to Congress on the economic and job-creating viability of alternative uses of the Yucca Mountain site. House Republicans had hoped to include Yucca funding in the $1.3 trillion spending bill they passed last month, but the measure wasn’t included in the Senate’s version of the bill. Rosen is currently the front-runner to take on incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (D-Nev.) in what could be one of the tightest midterm races.
SWAMP WATCH: There were a number of notable filings that caught our eye today. Coal giant Peabody Energy hired John Hammond, a partner in Ice Miller’s Indianapolis office and co-chairman of its Public Affairs Group, to lobby Vice President Mike Pence’s office on Waters of the U.S. American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, home heating oil and petrochemical manufacturers, hired a pair of lobbyists in Ice Miller’s D.C. office to lobby on transportation and security issues.
— Norwegian oil and gas giant Statoil hired a pair of lobbyists with Covington & Burling to lobby on “Foreign Agents Registration Act reform legislation,” per the filing. And the Energy Advance Center, the coalition including BP and Chevron that earlier this week hired its first lobby firm, added a second today. Michael Moore of EWSA will lobby for the group on carbon capture and storage — the first lobby registration by the firm.
QUICK HITS:
— Is Big Oil back? Investors aren’t so sure, The Wall Street Journal.
— Pruitt’s friends became lobbyists. And then handed their clients an EPA biomass win, InsideClimate News.
— Trump’s threat to ax ‘insane’ Iran deal is scaring off oil traders, Bloomberg.
WIDE WORLD OF POLITICS:
— Ronny Jackson withdraws as veterans affairs secretary nominee
— Why Kanye loves Trump
— “We’ve been censored,” Diamond and Silk tell Congress
https://www.politicopro.com/newsletters/afternoon-energy/2018/04/pruitt-goes-on-the-record-for-the-record-185224
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At Hearings, EPA Chief Seeks to Divert Blame for Ethics Woes
Apr 27, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times)
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, yet another Trump administration official with his job on the line over ethical concerns, took heat from lawmakers over his profligate spending and lobbyist ties and tried to divert responsibility to underlings.
The EPA administrator said "twisted" allegations against him were meant to undermine the administration's anti-regulatory agenda, and he denied knowing details of some of the extraordinary spending done on his behalf at the agency.
The public grilling at back-to-back House hearings on Thursday, convened to consider EPA's budget, came as support has appeared to erode for Pruitt among fellow Republicans after revelations about unusual security spending, first-class flights, a sweetheart condo lease and more. Even Republicans who heartily support Pruitt's policy agenda said his apparent lapses had to be scrutinized.
Democrats excoriated him.
"You are unfit to hold public office," said Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey.
"You've become the poster child for the abuse of public trust," said Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland.
Although most of the Republican lawmakers at the hearings rallied around Pruitt, reviews were mixed. Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, chairman of the first panel that questioned Pruitt, said afterward the EPA chief was "a little vague," adding, "It's never a good idea to blame your staff in public."Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENTContinue reading the main story
Asked whether Pruitt should resign, he said that's not his call and suggested it's up to President Donald Trump.
Thursday's hearings were Pruitt's first major appearance since a Fox News interview in early April that was widely considered to be disastrous within the West Wing.
Before Congress, the administrator demonstrated his background as a lawyer, giving clipped answers and sticking to repeating rehearsed talking points.
He visibly bristled as Democrats pressed about the many financial allegations against him, then relaxed when Republicans on the panel gave him openings to expand on his policy steps at EPA.
Mocking Pruitt's opponents, Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said that as far as the EPA chief's critics were concerned, "I think the greatest sin you've done is you've actually done what President Trump ran on."
"It's shameful that this day has turned into a personal attack," GOP Rep. Bill Johnson of Ohio said.
Trump has stood by his EPA chief, but behind closed doors, White House officials concede Pruitt's job is in serious jeopardy.
Pruitt has faced a steady trickle of revelations involving pricey trips in first-class seats and unusual security spending, including a $43,000 soundproof booth for making private phone calls. He also demanded 24-hour-a-day protection from armed officers, resulting in a 20-member security detail that blew through overtime budgets and racked up expenses approaching $3 million.
The EPA chief acknowledged under sharp questioning that he did, in fact, know something about huge pay raises given to two women on his staff, at least one of them a friend, after insisting weeks ago that he didn't approve the raises and didn't know who did. After his initial denial, documents emerged showing that EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson signed off on the raises and indicating he had Pruitt's consent.
Pruitt said Thursday he delegated authority to Jackson to give the raises but didn't know the exact amounts. Senior legal counsel Sarah Greenwalt received a raise of more than $66,000, bringing her salary to $164,200, and scheduling director Millian Hupp saw her salary jump from $48,000 to $114,590.
Under questioning, Pruitt appeared to acknowledge that Hupp helped him find accommodations in the capital but said her search apparently did not cost taxpayers. "I'm not aware of any government time being used," he said. "She is a friend."Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main storyMorning Briefing
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As he has previously, Pruitt sought to deflect questions about any missteps by blaming subordinates.
—On the communications booth: "I was not involved in the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it, Congressman, I would not have approved it."
—On flying first class at taxpayer expense: "Security decisions at the agency are made by law enforcement personnel, and I have heeded their counsel."
—On the pay raises to the two women: "I was not aware of the amount provided or the process that was used in providing that."
At several points, he spoke of decisions made by "career individuals at the agency."
"You're the guy in charge," Democratic Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont countered. "It really seems like there's something on your desk with the motto: 'The buck stops nowhere.'"
Pruitt drew an unusual rebuke from the office of EPA's inspector general, Arthur Elkins, while he was still testifying. A spokesman for Elkins, Kentia Elbaum, said he never signed off on an internal review of security threats that Pruitt cited at the hearing to explain why he needed unusual arrangements for his safety.
Elbaum said the summary was prepared by Patrick Sullivan, an assistant inspector general, and provided to Pruitt's security team but said it was later "leaked without authorization."
Pruitt read aloud from two security threats, one from a man who tweeted that he planned to shoot Pruitt. Investigators determined that the person who wrote the tweet "is currently believed to be living in India."
Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota was unmoved, saying: "We all receive threats on our Facebook page."
The same document Pruitt cited also recounted similar threats against Obama EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who routinely flew in coach and didn't require full-time protection.
Pruitt's troubles began in earnest last month, when ABC News first reported he had leased a Capitol Hill condo last year for just $50 a night that was co-owned by the wife of a veteran fossil fuels lobbyist whose firm had sought regulatory rollbacks from EPA.
Both Pruitt and the lobbyist, Steven Hart, denied he had conducted any recent business with EPA. But Hart was forced to admit last week he had met with Pruitt at EPA headquarters last summer after his firm, Williams & Jensen, revealed he had lobbied the agency on a required federal disclosure form.
Asked Thursday whether he had received any other gifts from lobbyists seeking favors from EPA, Pruitt replied, "I'm not aware of any instances."
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/27/us/politics/ap-us-congress-epa.html
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Pruitt, Oil's Friendly Regulator, Lives to See Another Day
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Joel Kirkland and Mike Soraghan
In January 2017, President Trump's nominee to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt, dismissed Democratic attacks painting him as a tool of wealthy energy and industrial interests.
It's a "false paradigm" to suggest that as EPA chief he couldn't be both pro-energy and pro-environment, Pruitt told the Senate panel holding his confirmation hearing. "I thoroughly reject that narrative," he said.
Yesterday, nearly 16 months into his tenure as EPA administrator, Pruitt's trip to Capitol Hill held all the anticipation of a prize fight. The narrative thoroughly rejected by Pruitt had taken on a life of its own. And the stakes couldn't be higher for the embattled EPA chief.
Editorial pages have called on Pruitt to resign after weeks of negative press reports and ongoing investigations into his personal conduct, public spending and conflicts of interest. But ethics issues have gone hand-in-hand with complaints that Pruitt's tenure at the agency has been a clean sweep for oil, gas, coal, chemical and auto companies seeking regulatory rollbacks.
With open hostility toward Pruitt from some quarters of the White House because of the ethics probes, yesterday's easy money was on a political knockout in back-to-back House budget hearings.
At the start of the morning hearing, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, set the tone for his party. "Mr. Pruitt, clearly you do not believe in EPA's mission," Pallone said.
In defiance, Pruitt wriggled and pushed and kicked and punched his way through the day. By the end, Pruitt lived to see tomorrow.
"Those who attacked the EPA and attacked me want to attack and derail the president's agenda and undermine this administration's priorities," Pruitt told the House Energy and Commerce Environment Subcommittee. "I'm simply not going to let that happen."
Pruitt dodged or denied claims that the $50-a-night Capitol Hill apartment rented from a lobbyist benefited special interests, that he went around the White House personnel office to give two staff members extraordinary pay raises, that he had signed off on pricey security equipment for his office and that he had billed taxpayers for first-class travel.
"Facts are facts, and fiction is fiction, and a lie doesn't become truth just because it appears on the front page of the newspaper," Pruitt remarked.
Questions for the administrator skipped among ethics issues, policy concerns and pet congressional projects. House members piled on in five-minute increments.
Fresh on their minds was an EPA decision this month to revisit Obama-era tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks through 2025. Auto industry trade groups made the request shortly after President Trump took office, expressing concern that the timeline was tight for achieving better efficiency and emissions standards. In explaining the agency's decision to grant that request, Pruitt talked about the uncertainty of oil prices and how that might affect the sales of fuel-efficient cars.
EPA decisions to delay limits on methane emissions from oil and gas sites also came up, as did a decision to give states more authority to change rules around the disposal of toxic power-plant coal ash. On top of that came complaints that Pruitt had stripped climate change from the agency's website and replaced members of an independent science advisory panel with industry representatives.
While embroiled in controversy this month, Pruitt quietly moved on a new science policy that critics say would allow the agency to exclude certain public health data when it is developing regulations. Influential groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists oppose the changes, which GOP backers call a new "transparency" policy that would finally do away with "secret science" data used by past administrations to justify clean air, water, climate and chemical rules.
For smokestack industries, Pruitt defended a move to put the brakes on a 1990s-era policy that required companies to maintain air standards and continue to use modern emissions-control technology. Pruitt made no apology for a Jan. 25 guidance from EPA air office chief Bill Wehrum that scrapped the "once in, always in" policy. Under the old policy, a rule to use clean technology remains in place even after smokestack emissions requirements are met. The idea is to prevent a company from backsliding.
For the electricity industry, Pruitt reiterated his position on a signature climate rule: "By repealing and replacing the so-called Clean Power Plan, we are ending a one-size-fits-all regulation on energy providers and restoring rule of law," he said.
Pruitt talked about "pruning back decades of regulatory overreach."
"I have nothing to hide as it related to how I've run the agency," he added, referring to the ethics and policy issues being slung at him.
For environmental groups, Pruitt's fate was sealed.
"He lacks the ethics, integrity and the dedication to the agency's core mission to protect public health and the environment," said Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "He should be fired before sundown."Superfund's leadership
EPA's changing priorities for cleaning up decades-old toxic waste sites under the Superfund program are among Pruitt's top talking points. But he couldn't escape the congressional gaze on that, either.
In the morning hearing, Pruitt said he didn't know whether agency ethics officials had looked at any potential conflicts regarding landownership by his top Superfund official. Pruitt put the Superfund program in the hands of a longtime associate from Oklahoma, Albert "Kell" Kelly. As first reported by E&E News, Kelly is part of a family company that owns land adjacent to an old refinery site that is on the Superfund priority list (Energywire, Feb. 28).
Another refinery was operated on the parcel owned by the family company, Kelly Brothers Business Trust, but the parcel is not in the Superfund site. Administration critics have said the situation raises questions and bears watching but have not alleged any direct conflict of interest.
Democratic lawmakers have become increasingly critical of Pruitt's decision to hire Kelly, since the longtime banker was banned from banking under a consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shortly after joining EPA (Energywire, Feb. 22). According to documents obtained by E&E News, his ban traces back to a troubled shopping development in Oklahoma in which his bank took an ownership stake in the development after foreclosing on the original developer (Energywire, Feb. 6).
Under questioning yesterday morning, Pruitt declined to say he would "direct" Kelly to answer lawmakers' questions about the banking ban, but he said he would "encourage" him to do so.
Earlier this month, he answered questions about the deal from The Montana Standardnewspaper.
"I ran out of money to oppose it [the FDIC's charge]. When you run out of money, you have to take the best settlement you can," he told the paper. "You can litigate against the federal government for a long time. There are two sides to the story, and mine rarely gets out there."
EPA has refused multiple requests from E&E News to make Kelly available for interviews, and Kelly has not returned several phone calls made directly to his mobile phone.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080285
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OMB Backdates Completion Date for 'Secret Science' Review
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
The White House has altered an official timeline to show that a required review of a proposed EPA science rule was finished one day before agency Administrator Scott Pruitt signed it this past Tuesday.
The Reginfo.gov site had previously shown that the proposal cleared Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday, indicating Pruitt went forward with the signing before the interagency review was complete.
OMB backdated that to Monday after E&E News reported the discrepancy yesterday (Greenwire, April 26).
Coalter Baker, a spokesman for the budget office, would not provide an on-the-record explanation as to the reason for the change. At EPA, spokeswoman Liz Bowman had earlier said in a statement that the review was finished before the signing, adding that "any questions about the management" of the Reginfo.gov site should be addressed to OMB.
"This is all highly irregular," Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association, said later in an interview. "Either it speaks to a significant lack of competence at EPA or OMB, or there is some sort of funny business or cover-up going on." The association, which has been critical of the proposal, closely tracks EPA rulemakings related to air quality issues.
The proposed rule, which has already sparked considerable controversy, would effectively bar EPA from using scientific research in crafting new regulations unless the underlying data are made public.
The Office of Management and Budget has backdated information on the Reginfo.gov website to show than a review of EPA's proposed "secret science" rule was completed Monday (bottom image). Yesterday, the website showed the review was completed Wednesday — a day after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed it (top image).
"I think it enhances transparency and the confidence of the American people as we do rulemaking," Pruitt said in the proposal's defense at a hearing yesterday of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment.
Critics say the aim is to keep EPA from tapping studies that could signal the need for tighter pollution regulations.
"The result will be policies and practices that will ignore significant risks to the health of every American," almost 1,000 scientists and technical experts said in a letter to Pruitt earlier this week released by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle quizzed Pruitt on the proposal at yesterday's hearing, with Republicans praising his approach and Democrats panning it. EPA is set to open a 30-day public comment period on the draft rule Monday, according to an upcoming Federal Register notice.
The purpose of the OMB reviews is to get feedback on regulatory proposals from other agencies and outside groups. The Reginfo.gov site serves as a clearinghouse on the status of rulemakings across government.
At a separate hearing two weeks ago, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) had sought to pin down Neomi Rao, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, on her views of the appropriate handling of scientific research (E&E Daily, April 13). Asked by Hassan whether she would "generally support agencies changing their procedures in ways that prevent them from using the best available evidence in making these decisions," Rao responded, "No, I would not."
Assuming that the revised completion date on the site is now accurate, however, Rao's office hustled the proposed science rule back to EPA only four days after receiving it on April 19 (Greenwire, April 20.) Under the long-standing executive order that governs the reviews, they can typically last as long as 90 days. Of the half-dozen other EPA regulatory measures still at OMB, most have been under review for approximately two weeks or more, according to the Reginfo.gov site.
Hassan is "deeply concerned" that Rao signed off so quickly on a draft regulation that "could have far-reaching impacts" on the public and the environment, spokeswoman Ricki Eshman said in a statement yesterday. She "will continue urging Pruitt to reconsider this senseless proposal."
Baker, the OMB spokesman, did not reply to an emailed request for comment.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080331
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(ACC Mentioned) New Research Shows BPA Connected to Breast Cancer, FDA Skeptical
Apr 27, 2018 | Organic Authority
By Emily Monaco
New research has linked low dose exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) with a threefold increase in combined benign breast tumors and breast cancer in lab rats.
The two-year study, a research collaboration called CLARITY-BPA, was coordinated by the interagency National Toxicology Program (NTP), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the FDA with a goal of studying the range of potential health effects from BPA exposure. In addition to the links to breast cancer, the researchers also found significant effects on the heart and reproductive system.
Despite the study’s findings, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, Stephen Ofstroff, MD, issued a statement in February asserting that the study showed “minimal” health hazards linked to BPA, a chemical commonly found in certain types of plastics such as the liners of soda cans. A recent JAMA article criticized these conclusions as “premature.”
“I’m speechless that the regulators can maintain a perspective about their own science that is devoid of the rest of modern science and what we know,” endocrinologist Thomas Zoeller, PhD, the principal investigator on a CLARITY-BPA study of thyroid and brain anatomy end points, told JAMA.
“This has been the FDA’s posture for more than a decade,” writes the Environmental Working Group in a press release. “Defending the safety of BPA exposures while independent scientists report BPA is toxic to the brain, thyroid and reproductive systems.”
Final conclusions from the study are expected in August 2019.
Researchers have published a number of peer-reviewed studies on the dangers of BPA, including a 2017 study from North Carolina State University whose findings appear to link prenatal BPA exposure with depression, anxiety, and hyperactivity. BPA has also been linked to reproductive conditions, metabolic disease, and behavioral problems; the United States’ President’s Cancer Panel concluded in 2010 that “more than 130 studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, obesity, and other health problems.”
Despite its stance on the safety of BPA, the FDA banned the substance in baby bottles and children’s cups in 2012 and in infant formula cans in 2013. The Agency noted at the time that this decision was not linked to safety concerns but was rather a response to a request from the American Chemistry Council, made in order to boost consumer confidence.
Individual companies have made attempts to reduce BPA in their products in recent years; Trader Joe’s, for example, removed the chemical from its register receipts earlier this year. The EPA found last year, however, that despite the use of BPA in the United States falling 30 percent since 2015, nearly 40 percent of canned goods purchased at grocery stores in eleven different states tested positive for the chemical.
http://www.organicauthority.com/new-research-shows-bpa-connected-to-breast-cancer-fda-refuses-to-recognize-link/
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New York Threatens to Sue Trump Over EPA Climate Rule Repeal
Apr 27, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
New York state will sue the Trump administration if it carries out its proposal to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) climate-change rule for power plants.
Eric Schneiderman (D), New York’s attorney general, led a coalition of 26 Democratic states, cities and counties late Thursday in filing formal comments objecting to EPA head Scott Pruitt’s plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan.
“The law and the science are clear. The Trump EPA’s efforts to dismantle this vital measure once again demonstrate that they’re more committed to pleasing the fossil fuel industry than protecting the health, safety, and wallets of New Yorkers and Americans,” Schneiderman said in a statement Friday.
“As we’ve made clear, if the Trump EPA refuses to protect those they serve and abandons this unlawful and unsupported repeal of the Clean Power Plan, we’ll see them in court.”
New York and other Democratic states have sued the Trump administration over numerous policy changes.
They have had a number of successes in the energy and environmental policy space, with lawsuits seeking to stop rollbacks or delays of policies on methane emissions, energy efficiency, vehicle fuel efficiency and more.
In the coalition letter filed on Thursday — the deadline for public comments on the EPA’s proposal — the states, cities and counties argued that the EPA is obligated to aggressively regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, as it did in the Clean Power Plan.
“The statute requires EPA to set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants, yet the agency is proposing to repeal the Clean Power Plan without replacing it with any alternative rule, much less a substitute that requires equivalent or greater pollution reductions,” they wrote.
In proposing the repeal in October 2017, the EPA argued that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority when it wrote the original rule.
Pruitt is separately proposing to replace the Clean Power Plan with a more industry-friendly alternative focused on smaller emissions reductions that coal plants could make.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/385163-new-york-threatens-to-sue-trump-over-epa-climate-rule-repeal
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Refining Margins Dent Exxon, Chevron First-Quarter Results
Apr 27, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Ernest Scheyder
Weak refining margins dinged first-quarter results for Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp, though Chevron's oil production gains outshone its larger rival, which has struggled to turn operations around after recent missteps. Refining and chemical operations hurt two of the world's largest integrated energy companies for the second consecutive quarter, highlighting concerns about the impact of volatile oil prices on their businesses.
"While the fourth quarter was a disaster for both, Chevron got back on track. Exxon's still trying to get back on the road," said Brian Youngberg, an oil industry analyst at Edward Jones.
U.S. producers are accelerating shale drilling mostly in the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, the largest U.S. oilfield, lifting the nation's output this year to more than 10 million barrels per day, a new record.
But the higher output has not translated into stronger refining results for the biggest oil companies. Chevron and Exxon are struggling with spotty demand in key markets outside the United States for refined products.
Oil prices <CLc1> <LCoc1> rose in the first quarter over a year earlier but bounced up and down during the period, zapping profit for the downstream divisions. Rising oil prices typically harm refiners by squeezing their margins on products.Continue reading the main story
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Shares of Exxon fell 3.3 percent to $78.20 while Chevron's stock rose 1.2 percent to $125.75.(To view graphic on Exxon's quarterly results, click here: https://reut.rs/2Kg4peq)Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main storySign up for the all-new DealBook newsletter
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International market conditions appear to be challenging for most everyone it seems like in the refining sector," said Youngberg. "Demand growth is in Asia and a lot of refining capacity is in Europe and the United States." Strength in the Chevron division that pumps oil and gas helped overcome the refining weakness and beat Wall Street profit expectations for the quarter. Exxon, though, has struggled in recent quarters in its upstream division, and its results badly lagged expectations.
In Exxon's downstream refining unit, profit fell 12 percent, and in the chemical unit, earnings dropped 14 percent.
Profit in Chevron's refining and chemical operations dropped 21 percent to $728 million.
Refining margins in Europe <BRT-ROT-REF> fell more than 14 percent in the quarter and were on track for a 38 percent drop in the second period, the biggest quarterly decline since the fourth quarter of 2015. Both companies have been trying different ways to bolster refining operations. Reuters reported earlier this month that they have asked U.S. regulators for exemptions to U.S. biofuels rules that are typically only given to small companies in financial distress.
CHEVRON SHINES UPSTREAM
While Exxon's overall results missed estimates, Chevron easily beat targets set by analysts, largely due to the fruits of its years-long push to bolster oil and gas production operations, especially in liquefied natural gas (LNG) and U.S. shale. It was a market turnaround for Chevron, which last quarter posted dismal results alongside Exxon. Exxon has struggled in the past 16 months to unwind some of the biggest bets taken by its former chief executive officer, Rex Tillerson, who left to become U.S. secretary of state in early 2017 before being fired by President Donald Trump last month.
Exxon shares are off about 6.6 percent in the last two years while Chevron has soared 24.5 percent.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/04/27/business/27reuters-oil-results.html
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ExxonMobil Expects Mid-Year Start-Up for New US Cracker
Apr 27, 2018 | ICIS
ExxonMobil plans a mid-year start-up for its new 1.5m tonne/year ethanecracker at its complex in Baytown, Texas, a company executive said on Friday.
"This will enhance integration through lower feedstock costs for the associated polyethylene (PE) lines that started up in the fourth quarter of 2017," said Jeff Woodbury, vice president investor relations.
He made his comments during the company's Q1 earnings call.
ExxonMobil has recently started up two PE lines at its plastics plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas. Each line has a PE capacity of 650,000 tonnes/year.
The PE lines were mechanically complete in May, and production started on the first line in October. Both lines are now operating.
The new cracker had previously been scheduled to start up in late 2017 to feed the new PE units. However, the project was delayed due to effects of the late-August Hurricane Harvey.
ExxonMobil announced the mechanical completion of the cracker and the start of commissioning activities in early February.
The ExxonMobil cracker is one of several ethylene projects expected to come online in 2018.
Most recently, a Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) cracker started up in early March. The unit at CP Chem's Cedar Bayou complex in Baytown, Texas, also has an ethylene capacity of 1.5m tonnes/year.
https://www.icis.com/resources/news/2018/04/27/10216384/exxonmobil-expects-mid-year-start-up-for-new-us-cracker/
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Texas City Hosts First Supertanker as U.S. Crude Gushes
Apr 27, 2018 | Bloomberg (In Houston Chronicle)
By Alaric Nightingale
A 2 million barrel-carrying supertanker arrived for the first time at a jetty in Texas City as surging U.S. oil output drives up incentives to export.
The Nave Quasar, a Very Large Crude Carrier, signaled from the jetty at the Gulf of Mexico terminal on Friday morning, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
The tanker is being brought into Enterprise Products Partners LP's Texas City terminal to determine measurements for future VLCC loadings, at least of partial cargoes, according to a person familiar with the matter. Nave Quasar will not load any supplies at this time for shipment, the person said. This site's water depth, also known as draft, needs to be increased to about 76 feet from 45 feet to enable supertankers to fully load. The company said it was too premature to discuss the project.
While profits from shipping U.S. oil overseas are surging on paper, the logistics to do so remain a challenge in a country that was set up for decades as an importer. The price of crude at Houston earlier this week tumbled to a record discount of more than $4 a barrel relative to Brent, the international benchmark. Freight costs on a very large crude carrier for delivery to Asia would probably be less than half that, highlighting the potential return for companies with the ability to get oil onto ships.
Oil continued its rally on Thursday, approaching $70 for the first time in more than three years. West Texas Intermediate rose about 1% to $69.56 at session highs around 7 a.m. On Wednesday, the US Energy Information Administration released a report showing oil inventories in the US fell by 1.1 million barrels last week to about 428 million barrels. Elsewhere, Saudi Arabia has been hinting the OPEC could extend production caps into next year. The country — OPEC's biggest producer — is targeting a crude price of $80 or even $100, Reuters reported.Media: Daily Press
Shipments on VLCCs have proven difficult from U.S. Gulf Coast ports where waters can be too shallow once carriers are fully loaded, meaning cargoes move on smaller ships. It still remains to be seen how much oil Nave Quasar will actually load. Another carrier, the Anne, tested at the Port of Corpus Christi last May but didn't collect a cargo.
The deepening price discounts are already driving up exports, which soared to a record 2.3 million barrels a day in the most recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, known as the LOOP facility, started exports in February and will receive its third VLCC in May, according to a person familiar with the matter.
U.S. crude output surged to 10.59 million barrels a day in the week to April 20, the highest in weekly data going back to 1983. The U.S. ended 40-year-old trade limits on crude exports in late 2015.
Lists of charters compiled by Bloomberg show the cost of recent U.S. Gulf of Mexico bookings to Asia would work out at about $1.50 to $2 a barrel, depending on where in the continent the ships go.
Platts was first to report the test.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Texas-City-hosts-first-Supertanker-as-U-S-crude-12869098.php
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'Gamechanger' Earthquake Linked to Geothermal Power
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Christa Marshall
Scientists have linked a magnitude 5.5 earthquake to enhanced geothermal power, raising new questions about the safety of the emerging technology when the U.S. government and other countries are investing millions of dollars researching and deploying new systems.
The findings about last year's disaster in Pohang, South Korea, were reported in two studies in Science yesterday and involve the largest quake by far tied to geothermal power.
"It was the largest and most damaging earthquake ever to have been associated with enhanced geothermal systems, making it a potential 'gamechanger' for the geothermal industry worldwide," said one of the two papers, authored by European scientists.
The quake — the most destructive in the country's recorded history — injured at least 60 people and caused more than $50 million in damages. Previously, enhanced geothermal systems were linked to smaller quakes, but those were at least 1,000 times smaller in magnitude than what occurred in the South Korean city.
The November 2017 event also signals that injected fluid volumes much smaller than assumed can trigger a large tremor under the right set of conditions.
Enhanced geothermal, which some have called geothermal "fracking," was considered by some to be less prone to quakes because it typically uses lower volumes of injected fluid than traditional geothermal, according to Emily Brodsky, an earthquake expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who did not participate in the research.
"People should be concerned," Brodsky said. "We do not have a good protocol for knowing when a project is going to induce an earthquake versus not."
Unlike traditional geothermal operations, an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) taps heat from areas of deep rock underground where there is not permeability or an easy way to pull heat up to the surface.
With EGS, water is injected underground to open existing fractures in rock so the heat can be extracted. Similar to natural gas, the idea is to broaden geothermal's use in areas that currently don't have the right geography to pull heat up from the subsurface. The Energy Department has estimated that EGS in theory could supply about half of U.S. electricity, considering suitable public and private lands.
The studies released yesterday did not conclude definitively that the $38 million Pohang geothermal plant caused the quake, but they determined it was likely.
The disaster and its largest aftershocks occurred within 2 kilometers or less of the plant, according to the study from European researchers, which used satellite data. Additionally, the quake activity was detected at unusually shallow depths between 3 to 7 kilometers, suggesting the presence of an unknown fault, said Francesco Grigoli, a seismologist at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and lead author of the study, in an email.
"Risk assessments therefore need to consider these unknown faults," Grigoli said.
The geothermal power plant in Pohang, South Korea. Rob Westaway/Special to E&E News
The other paper, from South Korean researchers, reached similar conclusions, finding that the quake likely was caused by fluid injected at the EGS site. The team placed eight sensors in the Pohang area after detecting "foreshocks," or trembles before the larger event. The centers of the main quake and aftershocks were at the bottom of the injection well, they found.
There was little seismic activity prior to the start of water injections at the geothermal site, further indicating a link, the paper said.
Ole Kaven, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the studies were "carefully done."
"While no project will ever be hazard-free, there are ways to reduce the potential for damaging earthquakes," said Kaven. Some advanced subsurface assessing technologies might have detected the fault, he said.
The Pohang quake was the second-largest in the country's history since seismic records began in the late 1970s. Prior to the studies, the largest quake associated with enhanced geothermal, which was 3.4 in magnitude, occurred in Basel, Switzerland, in 2006.
The South Korean government currently is conducting an investigation of the quake's cause with support from a team of international scientists.
The studies arrive as the Department of Energy is funding up to $10 million for 12 EGS research projects. Later this year, it is expected to pick a location for its planned Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) site, which envisions scientists testing potential EGS breakthroughs.
In the United States, DOE has invested in five demonstration projects, three of which resulted in increased power production at existing geothermal fields, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. France and Germany opened the first commercial-scale EGS plants, and there have been significant investments in Australia, Europe and Asia.
In 2004, DOE developed a protocol for addressing induced seismicity with geothermal development, which all DOE-funded projects are required to follow. The protocol has been updated several times.
Yet, UCSC's Brodsky said, current standards wouldn't be enough to prevent all large quakes. She recommended that there be more controlled tests of induced earthquakes specifically.
That doesn't mean that EGS development should be slowed, considering that most energy sources have multiple risks, she said.
Large earthquakes have been tied to injection of wastewater in hydraulic fracturing operations that extract natural gas, for example. There also have been warnings about the potential for earthquakes with large-scale injection of captured carbon dioxide underground (Climatewire, Nov. 15, 2013).
"All things have costs and benefits. It is well within society's purview to decide that the earthquake risk is acceptable compared to the risk of global warming," she said.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080335
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Wisconsin City Lifts Evacuation Order After Refinery Explosion
Apr 27, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
Tens of thousands of residents of a northern Wisconsin city were cleared to return to their homes on Friday, the day after a blast at a Husky Energy Inc refinery injured at least 15 people, a local official said.
Investigators searched for the cause of the massive Thursday morning explosion at the refinery, capable of processing up to 38,000 barrels of oil a day, which shook the city of Superior, Wisconsin, home to about 27,000 people.
"All indications are that the refinery site is safe and stable and the air quality is clean and normal," Superior Mayor Jim Paine said in a Facebook posting, noting that the evacuation order was lifted as of 6 a.m. local time (1100 GMT). "Welcome home."
At least 15 people were injured, local media reported, and at least 10 people - one seriously injured - were taken to area hospitals, said a spokeswoman for Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center, which operates hospitals in Superior and nearby Duluth, Minnesota.
What ignited the blast was not clear. After an initial blaze was extinguished, a storage tank was punctured, and a second fire erupted, Husky Energy spokesman Mel Duvall said.Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENTContinue reading the main story
Another tank caught fire at 3:15 p.m., a local ABC affiliate reported, citing Douglas County authorities.
"Our focus in the days ahead will turn to the investigation and understanding the root cause of the incident," Husky Energy said in a late Thursday Twitter post.Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main storyCalifornia Today
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Thick black smoke billowed from the facility and hung over Superior throughout the day on Thursday, forcing tens of thousands to flee homes and businesses.
Friday classes were canceled in Superior and nearby Maple school districts.
There were no reports of fatalities, and all of the refinery's workers have been accounted for, Husky Energy's Duvall said.
The refinery had additional workers on site preparing for a plant-wide overhaul when the blast occurred, he said. It produces asphalt, gasoline, diesel and heavy fuel oils, largely using heavy crude oil imported from Canada.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has sent a four-person team to investigate. The non-regulatory federal agency investigates serious chemical accidents such as refinery fires.
Husky purchased the refinery from Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/04/27/us/27reuters-husky-energy-refinery-blast.html
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Smoke From Wisconsin Refinery Explosion Poses Health Risk
Apr 27, 2018 | AP (In The New York Times, The Washington Post)
An explosion and asphalt fire at a Wisconsin oil refinery sent huge plumes of smoke into the air that pollution experts said almost certainly contained large amounts of toxins, posing a serious health risk to those living downwind.
Asphalt is a petroleum product that when burned emits chemicals in gaseous form and small particles that can linger long after the smoke dissipates, said Wilma Subra, a chemist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network who has examined past refinery accidents.
The gases include so-called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which can cause symptoms ranging from dizziness, breathing problems and nausea to liver damage and cancer, depending on the level and length of exposure, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Also present in asphalt smoke are microscopic particles of chemicals that stick together as visible smoke.
Those particles carry cancer-causing benzene and other contaminants that can lodge deep in the lungs when inhaled. From there, they can pass directly into a person's bloodstream, said Neil Carman, a former refinery inspector for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, now with the Sierra Club.
"Anybody breathing that stuff should be very concerned about what's getting into deep tissue, into the bloodstream," Carman said. "When you see that kind of smoke, it means you're getting a lot of unburned hydrocarbons. ... Those particles are loaded with carcinogens."
Officials ordered an evacuation of a wide area around the Husky Energy refinery to reduce the public's exposure to the plume. The fire Thursday was later put out, and residents were told they could return to their homes. But then authorities announced the evacuation order would remain and be re-evaluated throughout the night.
Government agencies planned to conduct air monitoring tests to gauge the hazard, refinery manager Kollin Schade said during an evening press conference.
The duration and extent of the toxic hazard depends on a variety of factors, such as wind direction and speed, proximity to the refinery and weather events that can trap pollution close to the ground, said Elena Craft, senior health scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Federal officials did not immediately respond to questions about the health risks from the smoke. A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services referred questions to local officials in Douglas County, who could not be reached for comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/04/27/us/ap-us-refinery-explosion-smoke-risk.html
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Interior to Unveil Offshore Well-Control Rule Changes
Apr 27, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Ben Lefebvre
The Interior Department will propose today revising offshore well-control rules that the Obama administration put in place after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon explosion, according to sources.
“The U.S. Department of Interior will be announcing revisions to a rule guiding oil and gas drilling and production operations on the Outer Continental Shelf in the afternoon,” according to an invitation Interior sent to several groups earlier today.
A source familiar with the issue said the rule will be the well-control rule Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement finalized in April 2016, This would be the second BSEE rule on offshore well safety that Interior plans to revise.
In December, the agency started the process to revise offshore oil and gas production safety systems. Interior has said it was reviewing the well-control rules in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order last year calling for increased offshore oil and gas production.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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Environmentalists Fear Broad Precedent in Methane Rule Suit
Apr 27, 2018 | Inside EPA
Environmental groups are asking an appellate court to reinstate the requirements of an Obama-era Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule limiting methane from oil and gas operations on federal land, arguing that a lower court made a significant error that could set a broad adverse precedent when it paused the standards.
“The district court committed an unprecedented legal error when it indefinitely enjoined” BLM's methane rule pursuant to section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act, “without concluding that the regulation’s challengers had demonstrated the four prerequisites for this extraordinary remedy,” the groups say in an April 20 motion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to stay the prior ruling by a Wyoming district court judge.
The litigation, Wyoming, et al. v. Department of Interior, et al., challenges the merits of the Obama-era rule seeking to limit venting and flaring of “waste” natural gas from drilling operations on federal lands.
The suit had been put on hold as Trump officials worked to suspend much of the rule's requirements, though a separate court blocked those suspension efforts and put the standards back in effect.
This prompted Judge Scott Skavdahl of the federal district court in Wyoming to issue an April 4 ruling pausing implementation of the rule, pending the conclusion of the administration's attempts to rescind key requirements.
Several environmental groups have appealed that ruling to the 10th Circuit, and are now asking the appellate court to stay the lower court ruling until it decides on the merits of the appeal.
BLM's rule was issued more than 17 months ago, “and has not been lawfully suspended since,” the motion says, adding that Skavdahl previously found that rule challengers were not likely to succeed on the merits of their claims.
“At the time the district court issued the Order, the Rule was in full effect and operators were gearing up to comply,” it says. “If the district court’s Order is allowed to stand, a lawful final agency regulation -- developed after years of analysis and public engagement -- will be permitted to go unheeded in substantial part for at least a year and a half simply because a new political administration does not want to administer it and would like to change it in the future.”
The groups say that Skavdahl acknowledged that he declined to apply the four-part test courts traditionally use when weighing requests to stay a rule.
“If allowed to stand, [the order] would create a new, lower standard for enjoining agency actions based solely upon alleged harm to the moving party,” the motion says.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/environmentalists-fear-broad-precedent-methane-rule-suit
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FERC's Pipeline Policy Review: The Legal Rundown
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Ellen M. Gilmer
Federal regulators' decision to revisit how they evaluate pipeline projects has put a spotlight on an obscure policy document and how it's used in court.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week unveiled a plan to review its pipeline policy statement, a broad guiding document that hasn't been updated since 1999.
The commission is asking the public to weigh in on whether FERC should change how it evaluates the need for interstate natural gas pipelines, works with landowners, conducts environmental studies and processes pipeline applications.
Developers, landowner advocates, environmentalists and others will be heavily involved in the process, advocating for policy changes that range from streamlined permitting to increased consideration of climate change (Energywire, April 25).
Many of the issues up for discussion have been raised in recent legal battles, putting pressure on FERC to review its 1999 policy document.
But what exactly is a policy statement? How much legal weight does it have? Here are some key questions and answers.What's the legal force of the policy statement? Is it like a regulation?
FERC's policy statements do not carry the same legal weight as a law or regulation. They're more akin to guidance documents that steer agency decisionmaking without creating new obligations.
"As a policy statement, by definition it does not have the force and effect of law in the way that a regulation would," said Avi Zevin, an attorney for the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.
As a policy statement, by definition it does not have the force and effect of law in the way that a regulation would.Institute for Policy Integrity attorney Avi Zevin
Still, the statements can affect the way courts review FERC actions. Judges tend to be skeptical of agency decisions that don't reflect internal policies.
"It would have some binding value such that if FERC did something that was completely the opposite of what's in the statement, I think a court could reverse it," said attorney Carolyn Elefant, a solo practitioner who frequently litigates pipeline issues.
Judges would likely apply the same standard they use in routine Administrative Procedure Act cases: whether the commission's action is arbitrary and capricious.
But any changes FERC makes to the statement are likely to leave plenty of wiggle room — setting forth general policies but reserving broad discretion for the commissioners as they consider specific pipeline cases.
"Guidance documents tend to be a little bit more wishy-washy and provide room for a lot of movement," Earthjustice attorney Moneen Nasmith said. "I cannot imagine that the staff at the commission are not going to be pushing hard to maintain the level of flexibility and discretion that they've had historically."Can critics sue FERC if they don't like changes to the pipeline policy?
They can try, but it will take some creativity.
Because policy statements are intended as internal guidance, they're typically not considered a "final agency action" that would be subject to litigation under the APA.
However, if FERC adopted a document that blatantly contradicted the Natural Gas Act or another law, someone could ask a court to step in and toss the policy or a decision that relied upon it.
"If they say up is down and down is up and then make a decision that says, 'Well, because the guidance says up is down and down is up, we're going to make this decision,' the guidance doesn't shield them from the fact that, no, that's really still arbitrary and ridiculous," Nasmith said.
The commission could also face some legal pushback if it adopts changes so significant that stakeholders think they should have gone through an official rulemaking process with additional procedural requirements.
Elefant cautioned that such a lawsuit would likely be an uphill battle.
"Here, this is definitely something that falls within the parameters of policy statements because it's just explaining the standards that FERC is going to apply when it makes the decision on a pipeline," she said.
Still, groups are expected to push FERC for extensive public engagement. A large coalition of grass-roots groups that generally oppose pipelines has already asked the agency to lengthen the 60-day comment period to 90 days and add a series of public hearings.When would policy changes kick in? Would they apply to pending projects?
We'll find out later.
FERC has pretty wide discretion to decide what projects would be subject to a new policy statement, so long as it explains its reasoning.
Zevin noted that the issue arose the last time the agency updated its approach, in the late 1990s.
When Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corp. proposed a change in its rate structure, FERC relied on its 1995 policy statement to guide its decision, even though the 1999 statement had just been adopted. The agency reasoned that the company's request had already gone through various agency proceedings under the earlier policy.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit looked at whether FERC made the right call in applying it and ultimately sided with the agency.
"When an agency issues a policy statement that is not binding and merely signals how the agency may handle future cases, there is no legal principle that mandates retroactive application of the new policy statement to pending cases," the court said in a 2003 ruling. "Retroactive application to pending cases may be permissible, but it is not required."
The D.C. Circuit also looked at the legality of the 1995 policy statement itself and upheld it.Would a policy update increase legal certainty for pipeline projects?
Perhaps, but don't expect litigation to slow down.
"I don't think it will in any way, shape or form deter anyone who wants to litigate," ClearView Energy Partners LLC analyst Christi Tezak said. "But I think it could make some of FERC's defenses stronger."
That's because an updated policy statement would give FERC a more recent and robust record to point to in support of its pipeline decisions, she said.
The review may also help clear up some legal questions that have dominated recent court cases, including how FERC determines project need, how it uses eminent domain authority and how it weighs climate impacts.
"I would be surprised if there was less litigation because there are strong positions among all parties," Zevin said. "But it strikes me that one of the things that the commission is trying to do is address these harder policy questions in a more holistic, considered process, rather than in the context of a single certificate."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080235
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Gas Project Hopes High Court Can Break Regulatory Limbo
Apr 27, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima and Aaron Gregg
At a stockyard in Guilderland, N.Y., hundreds of pieces of pipeline are sitting through another spring. They've been sitting there since 2014.
Whether they go underground, to become part of the Constitution pipeline, will depend in part on a decision today by the U.S. Supreme Court.
New York regulators denied the natural gas pipeline a critical permit back in 2016. Since then, the project's lead sponsor, Williams Cos., has been fighting to overturn a decision it deems "political" and a violation of federal law.
After President Trump was elected in November 2016, Williams met with the White House, federal agencies and regulators, telling its investors it was pursuing all options to get the pipeline approved.
But after more than a year of advocacy, lobbying and lawsuits, Constitution remains in regulatory suspense. Investors are asking whether it's ever going to get built, and the company concedes it doesn't know.
Now, Williams is asking the high court for a writ of certiorari, a long-shot request to treat its case as a pressing constitutional matter. The Supreme Court typically takes 100 to 150 out of some 7,000 applications a year.
"The stakes for federal supremacy could hardly be greater, and the global consequences for U.S. national security are incalculable," Constitution Pipeline Co. said in a brief.
Williams' efforts reflect the industry's desperation to break the Northeast's pipeline blockade. With natural gas supplies still booming in the Marcellus Shale, which underlies several Northeast states, prices remain tepid because there aren't enough pipelines to take it away. Williams — whose assets include a 10,200-mile network running from Texas to New York City — and its competitors are eager to connect to high-demand, high-priced markets in the Northeast.
But policymakers in the region, such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), have become increasingly convinced that they have all the gas infrastructure they need. Multiple high-profile pipeline projects in the region have been pulled in recent years.
No state has been more resistant than New York, which has used its authority under the Clean Water Act to deny three gas pipelines, including Constitution, since 2016. (One of them is getting built anyway, after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission overruled the state.)
New York has said it was within its rights. But as the state-federal dynamic gets more contentious there and elsewhere, companies like Williams are asking for intervention on the federal side. They've asked the Trump administration to apply federal authorities that keep states in their lane, and they've asked Congress for laws that smooth the regulatory road. And, of course, they've taken states to court in the hopes of supportive precedents.
Without some amount of regulatory certainty at the state level, companies simply won't build pipelines, said Chris Stockton, a Williams spokesman.
"The bottom line is, all we want is to be treated fairly," he said. "We're fine with permitting agencies doing their jobs and applying their laws to us. ... But when we satisfy all those conditions and we're still not allowed to go forward, that's where we have an issue."Denial
Constitution, a 124-mile pipeline proposed to run from northeast Pennsylvania into New York, got approval from FERC in 2014. One of the last approvals it needed was from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation: a "certificate" that the pipeline checked out under the state's water laws. This permit is required under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act.
At the time, Williams was touting the $680 million project as one of its key growth projects in the medium term.
But after more than a year of negotiations with Williams, the New York DEC denied the permit in April 2016, saying it didn't have the necessary information to reach a conclusion.
That forced Williams to start calculating what its sunk costs were, in case Constitution never went through; it had almost $400 million capitalized for the project. But it promised investors that it would fight in multiple forums and moreover that it thought it had a winning case.
Williams formally asked DEC to reconsider. When that didn't work, Williams filed suit with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2016, challenging the Section 401 decision.
It also sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, saying the state's decision was pre-empted by federal law.
After Trump's election in November 2016, Williams President and CEO Alan Armstrong expressed hope.
"I would tell you I used to go to D.C. and come back really depressed because it didn't seem like anything made any difference and it didn't seem like anybody really cared," he said at the company's annual analyst day in May 2017. "Today, it feels like people care."
As Armstrong told Bloomberg that month, the company planned to ask the administration for a regulatory crowbar while it waged its battle in the courts.
Armstrong believed that New York had taken too long to act on Constitution's water application, thus ceding authority to the feds. He said that if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared this "waiver," Constitution could get its final approvals under FERC and begin construction.
"The issue has been purely political. That's exactly when, for interstate commerce, the federal government should use their authority," he told Bloomberg.Lobbying
With a newly sympathetic administration in power, Williams intensified its usual lobbying efforts. Its lobbying budget nearly doubled in 2017 to almost $1.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (That still pales next to the $3 million-plus it spent annually during President Obama's first term.)
Throughout 2017, Williams sent representatives to the Executive Office of the President, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Interior Department, the Army Corps and FERC, as well as its customary lobbying on Capitol Hill, according to Senate disclosures.
Williams would not comment on the specifics of its meetings with the White House. But according to the records, a frequent topic was "federal regulatory reform related to natural-gas pipeline development." A frequently mentioned bill was H.R. 2910, the "Promoting Interagency Coordination for Review of Natural Gas Pipelines Act," introduced in the House in June.
The company also added firepower to its roster of advocates. A marquee hire was Chad Zamarin, a former executive at Cheniere Energy Inc. who would report directly to Armstrong.
Zamarin joined a Williams delegation that, in September, met with two newly confirmed FERC commissioners: Neil Chatterjee, who was then chairman, and Robert Powelson, according to visitor records and calendars released through the Freedom of Information Act (Greenwire, Dec. 14, 2017).
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the company was throwing its weight behind legislation meant to ease the regulatory load for pipelines in the future.
Williams' lobbying team included former staff on the House Energy and Commerce Committee; one member, Ed Whitfield, was a 10-term Republican congressman who'd served as a subcommittee chairman. (Whitfield resigned in 2016 following an ethics probe.) That's the committee that was considering H.R. 2910, which would reassert FERC's seniority as the lead permitting agency on gas pipelines.
"Federal, state, and local agencies involved in the environmental review process must defer to FERC's approved scope for a [National Environmental Policy Act] review," a bill summary says. The bill would also empower FERC to enforce deadlines; if an agency missed one, FERC and Congress would have to be notified.
From Republicans' point of view, H.R. 2910 took aim at the very problem that New York had posed: States could evaluate pipelines however and whenever they wanted, and then point to their sovereign rights as states if a company disputed the fairness of their decisions.
A coterie of power, oil and gas industry groups, including the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, voiced their support.
"Unfortunately, the permitting process has become more protracted and challenging in recent years," they said in a June letter. "We need a process that is fair, comprehensive, and ensures commonsense cooperation and timely decision-making."
That wasn't a universally held view. To Democrats, the bill smacked less of cooperation with states and more of coercing them.
The bill would demote states to "participants" rather than cooperators, staff said in a July bill report; a FERC official had himself warned of "unproductive tension" with state agencies. It didn't ease Democrats' concerns about pipeline companies seizing private property through eminent domain.
"At best, it is a solution in search of a problem," the report said. "[A]t worst, it is an assault on private property rights and the environment in the name of corporate profit and expediency."
The bill passed through committee and the House in July, securing 13 Democratic votes. One Republican, New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance, voted against it; he's opposed to the PennEast pipeline, a project still working to secure access to the land in his district. The Senate version of the bill is still in committee.Two paths
As far as Constitution goes, it's debatable whether these regulatory seeds have borne fruit.
Williams was initially encouraged by a court decision last year that led to another New York pipeline getting the waiver it needed to start construction. But when Constitution asked FERC to declare this waiver, it was denied.
FERC said Constitution's case was different; in the other case, the state had gone over its statutory timeline, but with Constitution, it technically hadn't (Energywire, Jan. 12).
For now, Constitution's pieces sit in a stockyard while Williams pursues "two separate and independent paths" for its last permit.
One is at FERC, where Williams has asked for a rehearing of the waiver question. The other is at the Supreme Court, where it has asked the justices to review the case it lost in federal appeals court.
Armstrong has dialed down his confidence that Williams will prevail. In January, an analyst asked him what it means for future earnings if Constitution's never built.
"I would just say, we have other projects ultimately," he said on an earnings call, according to a transcript. "[I]f the folks in the New England area want to continue to buy their gas from Russia, they can, and the folks in the South will benefit from that.
"It is important, I think, in terms of determining if the Trump administration is going to be successful in pushing for infrastructure development," he said. "And so we remain very committed to that."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080279
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PG&E Fined Nearly $100M for Improper Talks with Regulators
Apr 27, 2018 | San Francisco Chronicle (In E&E Greenwire)
By David Baker
California regulators yesterday hit Pacific Gas and Electric Co. with a $97.5 million fine for improper private communications with their agency after the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the fine unanimously. PG&E will have to pay the cities of San Bruno and San Carlos $6 million each, and it will fork up $12 million to the state general fund.
The utility will also have to pass up on $63.5 million in revenue from this year and next year.
Utilities are allowed to talk privately with regulators in certain circumstances, but in the case of the pipeline explosion, California law requires talks to be publicly disclosed.
The 2010 blast killed eight and left PG&E with felony charges.
Emails handed over in court revealed that executives had a close relationship with two former regulators. They engaged in back-channel conversations about skirting public records requests, among other things.
PG&E agreed to the fines last year, but the commission warned that it could face further action over the emails.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080317
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Pruitt Says Ambassador Invited Him to Morocco
Apr 26, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Emily Holden
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told lawmakers his much-scrutinized trip to Morocco where he promoted natural gas was prompted by an invitation from the country’s ambassador.
“There was a free trade agreement that is in existence with Morocco and the ambassador of Morocco invited me to Morocco to negotiate the environmental chapter on that free trade agreement,” Pruitt told Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing today.
The agency in a press release disclosing the December trip after the fact described it as dual-purpose: to discuss updates to a U.S.-Morocco Free Trade Agreement “and the potential benefit of liquified [sic] natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy.”
Luján questioned Pruitt’s travel spending overall, including his previous practice of always flying first-class, which he has said was for security reasons. Pruitt said today that he’s made changes to that policy but did not specifically commit to always flying coach.
Luján asked if Pruitt would reimburse taxpayers for $160,000 in first class, charter and military flights. Pruitt did not respond but countered that his international travel “pales in comparison to the previous administrations.”
EPA officials have pointed to Pruitt’s predecessors, Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, spending more on international trips, although they have compared their longer tenures to less than a year of Pruitt’s time as administrator.
https://www.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2
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The Health and Safety of America's Workers Is at Risk
Apr 27, 2018 | Scientific American
By Kathleen Rest
Tomorrow may seem like just another Saturday. Some of us will likely sleep a little later and then get on to those household chores and tasks we can’t get to during the week. Some of us will enjoy some leisure time with family and friends. Many of us will get up and go to work—maybe even to a second or third job.
But April 28 is not just another day. Here in the U.S. and around the world, it’s Workers’ Memorial Day—the day each year that recognizes, commemorates and honors workers who have suffered and died of work-related injuries and illnesses. It is also a day to renew the fight for safe workplaces. Because too many workers lose their lives, their health, their livelihoods or their ability to fully engage in the routine activities of daily living because of hazards, exposures and unsafe conditions at work.
THE DATA TELL PART OF THE STORY
Unless you know someone who was killed or seriously injured on the job, you probably don’t give workplace safety much thought. Perhaps you think work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses are infrequent, or only affect workers in demonstrably risky jobs—like mining or construction. The actual statistics, however, tell a different story. (For a more detailed and visual look, see this Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] charts package.)
Fatalities: In 2016 the number of recorded fatal work injuries was 5,190. On average, that’s 14 people dying every day. In the United States. It’s also 7 percent more than the number of fatal injuries reported in 2015 and the highest since 2008. Most of these deaths were the result of events involving transportation, workplace violence, falls, equipment, toxic exposures, and explosions. And the 2016 data reveal increases in all but one of these event categories. That’s not going in the right direction.
Non-fatal cases: According to the BLS, private industry employers reported 2.9 million non-fatal workplace injuries and illnesses in 2016, nearly one third of which were serious enough to result in days away from work—the median being 8 days. For public sector workers, state and local governments reported another 752,600 non-fatal injuries and illnesses for 2016.
Costs: And then there’s the enormous economic toll that these events exact on workers, their families and their employers. According to 2017 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index, the most serious workplace injuries cost U.S. companies nearly $60 billion per year.
But that’s just a drop in the bucket. The National Safety Council estimates the larger economic costs of fatal and non-fatal work injuries in 2015 at $142.5 billion. Lost time estimates are similarly staggering: 99 million production days lost in 2015 due to work injuries (65 million of which occurred in 2015), with 50 million estimated days lost in future years due to on-the-job deaths and permanently disabling injuries that occurred in 2015.
And even these costs don’t come close to revealing the true burden, as they do not include the costs of care and losses due to occupational illness and disease. A noteworthy and widely cited 2011 study estimated the number of fatal and non-fatal occupational illnesses in 2007 at more than 53,000 and nearly 427,000, respectively, with cost estimates of $46 billion and $12 billion, respectively. ADVERTISEMENTWho foots the bill and bears these enormous costs? Primarily injured workers, their families, and tax-payer supported safety net programs. Workers’ compensation programs cover only a fraction. See more hereand here.
THE OTHER PART OF THE STORY
As sobering as these data and statistics are, they tell only part of the story; the true burden of occupational injury and illness is far higher. Numerous studies find significant under-reporting of workplace injuries and illnesses (see here, here, here, here, here). Reporting of occupational disease is particularly fraught, as many if not most physicians are not trained to recognize or even inquire about the hazards and exposures their patients may have encountered on their jobs.
Nor do the statistics reveal the horror, loss, pain, and suffering these injuries and diseases entail. In the words of Dr. Irving Selikoff, a tireless physician advocate for worker health and safety, “Statistics are people with the tears wiped away.”
Just imagine having to deal with the knowledge that a loved one was suffocated in a trench collapse; asphyxiated by chemical fumes; shot during a workplace robbery; seriously injured while working with a violent patient or client; killed or injured from a fall or a scaffolding collapse; or living with an amputation caused by an unguarded machine.ADVERTISEMENT
Or the heartache of watching a loved one who literally can’t catch a breath because of work-related respiratory disease. Or is incapacitated by a serious musculoskeletal injury. Or has contracted hepatitis B or HIV because of exposure to a blood-borne pathogen at work.
And here’s the kicker: virtually all work-related injuries and illnesses are preventable. There’s no shortage of proven technologies, strategies and approaches to preventing them. From redesign, substitution and engineering solutions that eliminate or otherwise control hazards and exposures to safety management systems, worker training programs, protective equipment, and medical screening and surveillance programs, there are multiple paths to prevention. And, as a former assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, David Michaels, recently wrote in Harvard Business Review, safety management and operational excellence are intimately linked.
HISTORIC PROGRESS NOW AT RISK
The Good News: It’s important to note and remember that workplace health and safety in the U.S. is a lot better than it used to be before Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, and even since 2000. This progress has resulted large measure from the struggles of labor unions and working people, along with the efforts of federal and state agencies. Workplace fatalities and injuries have declined significantly, and exposures to toxic chemicals have been reduced.
It is also a testament to the effectiveness of health and safety regulations and science-based research. We can thank the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) for many of these protections and safeguards. We must also acknowledge and thank the persistence, energy and efforts of the workers, unions, researchers and advocates that have pushed these agencies along the way.ADVERTISEMENT
The Red Flags: There are numerous indications that this progress will be slowed or even reversed by a Trump administration intent on rolling back public protections and prioritizing industry interests over the public interest. For example:Right off the bat, the president issued his two-for-one executive orderrequiring agencies to rescind two regulations for each new one they propose. So, to enact new worker health and safety protections, two others would have to go.OSHA has delayed implementation or enforcement of several worker protection rules that address serious health risks and were years in the making—i.e., silica, the cause of an irreversible and debilitating lung disease, and beryllium, a carcinogen and also the source of a devastating lung disease. OSHA has left five advisory and committees to languish—the Advisory Committee on Construction Safety and Health; the Whistleblower Protection Advisory Committee; the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health; the Federal Advisory Council; and the Maritime Advisory Committee—thus depriving the agency of advice from independent experts and key stakeholders. Earlier this week, a number of groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, sent aletter to Secretary of Labor Acosta asking him to stop sidelining the advice of independent experts. President Trump signed a resolution that permanently removed the ability of OSHA to cite employers with a pattern of record keeping violations related to workplace injuries and illnesses. Yes,permanently, because it was passed under the Congressional Review Act. And Secretary Acosta recently seemed hesitant to commit not to rescind OSHA’s rule to improve electronic recordkeeping of work-related injuries and illnesses.Having failed in efforts to cut some worker health and safety protections and research in his FY18 budget proposal, the president is going at it again with his FY19 proposal. He is calling for the elimination of the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and OSHA’s worker safety and health training program, Susan Harwood Training Grants. There is, however, a tiny bit of good news for workers in President Trump’s proposed budget for OSHA; it includes a small (2.4 percent) increase for enforcement, as well as a 4.2 percent increase for compliance assistance. Of note, employers much prefer compliance assistance over enforcement activities.The president’s budget also proposes to cut research by 40 percent at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)—the only federal agency solely devoted to research on worker health and safety—and eliminate the agency’s educational research centers, agriculture, forestry and fishing research centers and external research programs.He has also proposed taking NIOSH out of CDC, perhaps combining it later with various parts of the National Institutes of Health. Never mind that NIOSH was established by statute as an entity by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has also jumped on the regulatory reform bandwagon. The agency has indicated its intent to review and evaluate its regulations protecting coal miners from black lung disease. This at a time when NIOSH has identified the largest cluster of black lung disease ever reported.EPA actions are also putting workers at risk. Late last year, the EPA announced that it will revise crucial protections for more than two million farmworkers and pesticide applicators, including reconsidering the minimum age requirements for applying these toxic chemicals. Earlier in the year, the agency overruled its own scientists when it decided not to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, thus perpetuating its serious risk to farmworkers, not to mention their children and users of rural drinking water. And the agency has delayed implementation of itsRisk Management Plan rule to prevent chemical accidents for nearly two years.The Department of Interior is following up on an order from President Trump to re-evaluate regulations put into place by the Obama administration in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010, which killed 11 offshore workers and created the largest marine oil spill in United States’ drilling history.And then there’s a new proposal at the U.S. Department of Agriculturethat seeks to privatize the pork inspection system and remove any maximum limits on line speeds in pig slaughter plants. Meat packing workers in pork slaughter houses already have higher injury and illness rates than the national average. Increasing line speeds only increases their risk.
REMEMBER AND RENEW
The Trump administration makes no bones about its (de)regulatory agenda. The president boasts about cutting public safeguards and protections, and his agency heads are falling right in line. Our working men and women are the economic backbone of our nation. They produce the goods and services we all enjoy, depend on and often take for granted. They are our loved ones, our friends, and our colleagues. They deserve to come home from work safe and healthy.
Worker Memorial Day is a time to pause and remember workers who have given and lost so much in the course of doing their jobs. It is also a time to renew our vigilance and be ready to use our voices, votes and collective power to demand and defend rules, standards, policies and science-based safeguards that protect our loved ones at work. Let’s hold our elected leaders and their appointees accountable for the actions they take—or don’t take—to protect this most precious national resource.
Kathleen Rest is executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-health-and-safety-of-americas-workers-is-at-risk/
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They’re On the Lookout for Malware That Can Kill
Apr 27, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Ellen Nakashima and Aaron Gregg
The cyber threat hunters had honed their chops at the National Security Agency — the world’s premier electronic spy agency. And last fall, they were analyzing malware samples from around the world when they stumbled across something highly troubling: the first known piece of computer software designed to kill humans.
The researchers, who launched their own firm several years ago, determined that the malicious computer code was created to sabotage a safety system whose sole purpose is to avert fatal accidents. When the system fails, the chance of a deadly accident — in this case, in a petrochemical plant — greatly increases.
“The only purpose of these safety systems is to protect human life,” said Robert M. Lee, co-founder of Dragos, who conducted cyber operations for the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command from 2011-2015. “The only reason to sabotage them is to kill people.”
Dragos, based in a techno-hip warehouse in Hanover, Md., is at the forefront of a new line of business for cybersecurity firms. It focuses on industrial control systems — the machines that make oil, gas and electricity flow; pump water and create chemicals.
A larger and better-known cyber firm, FireEye, independently also identified the potentially deadly malware. Yet the obscure start-up is the only company so far to have identified two, separate strains of malware that were built to damage or destroy industrial control systems. Several U.S. and Western government agencies have turned to Dragos for analysis and insights on control system attacks.
Lee, 30, and his two Dragos co-founders — Jon Lavender and Justin Cavinee — gained crucial experience at the NSA, which employs a corps of highly skilled cyber operators. But after several years working at the NSA in industrial threat detection, they realized that gathering exquisite intelligence on adversaries who are bent on disrupting industrial control systems is one thing. Protecting the systems from those hacks is another.
So Dragos built a software product to help industrial companies detect cyber threats to their networks and respond to them. Its clients include energy, manufacturing and petrochemical factories in the United States, Europe and Middle East.
In October, Dragos discovered Trisis, a malware that targets a “safety instrumented system,” or a machine whose sole function is to prevent fatal accidents. In a petrochemical plant, for instance, there are machines that operate at very high pressures, and if a valve blows, the pressure or the leak of hazardous materials could kill a human being. But a safety instrumented machine is supposed to shut down the entire system to reduce the risk of a fatal accident.
There has been one known deployment of the Trisis malware — FireEye called it Triton — at a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia last August. But a coding error prevented the malware from working as intended and a potential catastrophe was averted.
As of this week the culprits behind Trisis were still active in the Middle East, Lee said. “It’s reasonable to assume that [what happened last year] is not a one-time event.’’
Though Dragos had some indication of who was responsible, the firm refrained from drawing a conclusion. “It wasn’t cut and dried,” Lee said. Dragos shared the malware with the Department of Homeland Security, but Lee argued against the government seeking to assign blame.
“The best they could do is a well-reasoned guess,” he said. “There’s not the years’ worth of data on this event that would make attribution possible.”
Dragos’s policy of not publicly declaring who it believes is responsible for a malicious cyber campaign sets it apart from other cyber threat intelligence firms.
FireEye, for instance, says that attribution is “critically important” to its customers. To a Persian Gulf oil company, Iranian threats are existential, whereas state election boards would want to know if, for instance, the Russians had compromised their systems, said FireEye Director of Intelligence Analysis John Hultquist. Knowing your attackers makes it easier to make the most of limited security budgets, he says.
For Dragos, however, “there’s no value to our customers” in identifying their attacker, Lee said, adding that an inaccurate attribution of responsibility could escalate tensions between states. “Attribution is a political discussion,” he said. “When it comes to our customers’ networks, we want to stay away from the politics and focus on the defense.”
Put simply, he said, “nobody needs to be in anyone’s civilian infrastructure.” If it’s a civilian power plant or manufacturing facility, “we have the full right to kick them out and we don’t need to know who they are.”
Awareness of threats to industrial control systems soared after the Stuxnet cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear plant was uncovered in 2010. Stuxnet was a computer worm jointly developed by Israel and the United States that caused uranium centrifuges to spin out of control, though the two governments have not publicly acknowledged their role. The operation slowed Iran’s nuclear program but also prompted a cyber arms race, said Sergio Caltagirone, Dragos’s director of threat intelligence.
“Everybody saw that critical infrastructure could be attacked, and that they needed to have at least equivalent capabilities in order to maintain parity,” said Caltagirone, who was a pioneer in NSA’s cyber threat intelligence work and who later worked as head of analytics and intelligence at Microsoft. “It’s not that it wouldn’t have happened. It would have. But I do believe that it accelerated the trend and was the start of the arms race.”
Today more than 30 countries have or are developing computer warfare capabilities, and a quartet of nations are considered significant cyber adversaries of the United States: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Though Stuxnet was applied against a military target, the capabilities countries have developed can also be used against civilian systems.
And it is that space — civilian critical infrastructure — that Dragos seeks to protect.
The U.S. government took the unusual step in March of publicly warning that Russia has targeted U.S. critical infrastructure systems, including energy, nuclear and manufacturing sectors, for potential cyber sabotage. And Iran has targeted critical infrastructure companies in the United States and elsewhere.
The U.S. government’s position is that nations in peacetime should not attack each other’s critical infrastructure — or systems that provide crucial services to the public, such as water, electricity and transportation.
For now, the ability to sabotage industrial equipment — as opposed to stealing information — remains a specialized mission available only to the most highly skilled, best-funded hacking groups. That generally means government-funded groups, though that is expected to change.
Dragos recently has identified five nation-state groups outside the United States that are actively targeting industrial systems. In keeping with its policy, the firm is not naming them.
“In any given year the information security community usually sees one or two such groups,” Lee said. “In 2017 we saw five. So it’s an extremely worrying trend.”
Lee has been watching the threat develop since 2010. At an NSA site in Germany, he was among the first to help the agency map the foreign cyber threats facing the military’s critical infrastructure and U.S. industrial systems, including from worms such as Stuxnet. The NSA didn’t have an industrial control system lab accessible there, he said, so Lee ordered his own equipment on eBay, set it up in his house and at night practiced hacking into it.
He later was posted to U.S. Cyber Command, where he conducted offensive operations. He left CyberCom in 2015, and a year later with a few close colleagues formed Dragos. They received $1.2 million in seed money from DataTribe, a Maryland start-up incubator focused on companies that use spy technology.
They got a further $9 million from AllegisCyber, a Silicon Valley venture fund, and Energy Impact Partners, a New York Venture Fund created by energy companies, and an additional $1 million from DataTribe. Their open office space features a mini gas pipeline and electric grid. There, Dragos staff, many of them former NSA operators like Lee, discuss technical analyses over beer and pizza, and unwind throwing darts and playing pingpong.
Companies are willing to share their incident data with Dragos because the firm provides security in return, Lee said. As a result, he said, “I have more access to the industrial threat landscape today at Dragos than my entire time at the NSA.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/theyre-on-the-lookout-for-malware-that-can-kill/2018/04/27/33190738-32c1-11e8-8abc-22a366b72f2d_story.html?utm_term=.506a9115d8b9
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New Source Review Rulemaking Possible — Pruitt
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
EPA is contemplating an overhaul of its perennially contentious New Source Review permitting program, Administrator Scott Pruitt said yesterday.
"What we want to do is provide clarity," Pruitt told Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) at the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment. "Overall, we're looking at a comprehensive rule that will address New Source Review." The purpose, he continued, is to assure companies that they "are not going to face new permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act" as they make investments to reduce pollution.
Pruitt, who also termed New Source Review "one of the greatest issues" facing EPA, did not give a timetable for the undertaking. Late last year, he had announced "an assessment of opportunities" to streamline the program, but stopped short of saying he would attempt a major rewrite.
Asked today for more details, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman in an emailed response appeared to hedge: "We are taking a comprehensive look at the program and plan to make a number of targeted changes that, altogether, will produce significant improvement."
The New Source Review (NSR) program, a pillar of the act, requires manufacturers, utilities and other industries to get preconstruction permits before building a new plant or embarking on major changes to an existing facility.
Businesses have long complained that NSR requirements are a drag on economic development and may even discourage efforts to curb emissions. The program "is impeding modernization and growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector," Paul Noe, a top official of the American Forest and Paper Association, said at a February hearing of the same subcommittee.
NSR defenders, pointing to the economy's current health, say major changes could lead to more pollution and that industry in any case is laying out a false choice. Clean air and growth "go hand in hand," George Washington University environmental law professor Emily Hammond said at the February hearing.
Relaxing NSR requirements is also a long-standing priority for EPA air chief Bill Wehrum. After pursuing sweeping changes with mixed success during an earlier stint at the agency during the George W. Bush administration, Wehrum said in December that he planned a more "targeted" strategy.
"Last time around, we swung for the fences," he told EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, resorting to a baseball analogy. "This time around, what I'd like to do is hit a bunch of singles and maybe a couple of doubles, and if we keep that up, we're going to start scoring some runs."
It was not immediately clear how Wehrum's small-ball game plan would jibe with the broader revamp that Pruitt suggested yesterday is in the works. Environmental groups are already alarmed by two changes to NSR requirements imposed by Pruitt in recent months in guidance memos that sidestepped public notice-and-comment requirements that would accompany a formal rulemaking.
Under the first, EPA no longer challenges the preconstruction estimates of expected emissions increase from a particular project (Greenwire, Dec. 8, 2017). The second condenses the emissions forecasting process for planned plant expansions or other significant changes to a major industrial emitter (E&E News PM, March 13).
Still more contentious has been Wehrum's decision to drop the "once in, always in" policy that — while not directly related to NSR — had maintained strict hazardous air pollutant standards for major pollution sources even after their releases fell below the thresholds that originally triggered those standards (Greenwire, Jan. 26).
The state of California and an array of environmental groups are now suing to reverse Wehrum's decision. In a letter earlier this week, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and 86 other House Democrats urged Pruitt to reinstate the policy (E&E Daily, April 26).
At yesterday's E&C Environment Subcommittee hearing, Dingell queried Pruitt on whether the agency had done any advance analysis of the potential health effects of the decision to scrap the policy on children, pregnant women and other groups. "That's something we'll have to assess and provide," Pruitt responded.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/04/27/stories/1060080343
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UP Notes PTC Implementation Progress in Q1
Apr 27, 2018 | Progressive Rail Roading
Union Pacific Railroad yesterday provided an update on its positive train control (PTC) implementation effort through the first quarter.
As of March 31, the Class I had prepared eight additional track segments for PTC operations in the quarter, boosting the total number of segments to 176, or 97 percent completion.
"These track segments are equipped with wayside devices such as signals, switches and radios and have defined GPS coordinates, which identify thousands of precise locations for systemwide PTC coordination," UP officials said in a press release.
Through March 31, the Class I also had trained 3,300 additional employees on PTC operations and installed its system on another 900 route miles, increasing the total number of route miles in PTC operation to 10,899, or 64 percent completion. Now, about 22,690 workers are trained on PTC, or 88 percent of those who need such training.
"Training materials are tailored to a variety of employee roles, including engineer, conductor, dispatcher, maintenance of way/engineering, mechanical, signal, telecom and information technologies," UP officials said.
The railroad expects to continue implementing, testing and refining its PTC system in 2019 and 2020. The Class I's PTC footprint is the largest among all North American railroads, encompassing more than 17,000 route miles — roughly one-third of all PTC miles and 45 percent more than the next largest railroad, UP officials said.https://www.progressiverailroading.com/ptc/news/UP-notes-PTC-implementation-progress-in-Q1--54530
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Energy and Environment Bills Roll Out Before Recess
Apr 27, 2018 | E&E Greenwire
By Manuel Quinones
Senators introduced a flurry of bills related to energy and the environment yesterday ahead of next week's recess.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced S. 2783, aimed at improving infrastructure resilience to climate change and disasters through natural and nature-based measures.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul rolled out two Clean Air Act bills: S. 2760 would exclude energy efficiency or pollution-control projects from the definition of site modification, and S. 2761 would clarify what constitutes a modification of stationary pollution sources. Both bills are meant to allow changes to plants without subjecting them to new regulatory scrutiny.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered S. 2776 that would reform the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, or PURPA.
Backers of PURPA reform say the law that aimed to promote renewable energy technology now spurs higher power prices. Renewable energy advocates counter that proposed reforms would hamstring wind and solar power.
Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg introduced a similar piece of legislation last year in the House (E&E Daily, Dec. 1, 2017).
Other new bills:S. 2777, from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), which would exempt state and county payments under the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act from automatic spending cuts.S. 2764, from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), would amend the High Seas Driftnet Fishing Moratorium Protection Act to protect the conservation of sharks. Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is a co-sponsor.S. 2778, from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), which would amend the Endangered Species Act to prevent the listing of nonnative living species.S. 2773, from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), would improve driftnet fishing management. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) introduced a companion in the House.S. 2776, from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), which aims to reduce flooding at military installations.S. 2767, from Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), would improve federal wildlife and disaster recovery programs.S. 2771, from Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), which would provide grants to improve household decentralized water systems for people with low or moderate incomes.S. 2772, also from Booker, would modify provisions of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act relating to household well water.
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Environmental Concerns May Turn Voters Blue: Poll
Apr 27, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Miranda Green
Concerns over environmental regulation and climate change could be an important voting issue and may sway some voters toward Democrats, according to a poll released Friday.
The poll, conducted by polling firm Change Research, found that voters disapprove of the Trump administration's environmental policies by a 50-35 percent margin with 47 percent saying the policies will impact their 2018 vote.
Released by environmental media group Our Daily Planet (ODP), the study also found that concerns surrounding pollution are on the rise. Between 40 and 59 percent of voters believe that water, air and open space protections are at more risk now than two years ago. Similarly, between 28 and 54 percent believe that the U.S. is on the "wrong track" when it comes to planet protection for future generations.
Looking specifically at those who voted for Trump, 42 to 34 percent oppose Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) efforts to fire scientists who believe in climate change.
Voters look predominantly to the Democratic Party to lead on environmental issues, the poll also found. Those polled said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans to handle conservation issues by a 43-24 percent margin and pollution issues by a 44-22 percent margin.
“Our ‘Environmental Anxiety Index’ poll is a siren of green alert for President Trump and his Republican allies,” said ODP Publishers Monica Medina and Miro Korenha. “Voters are rejecting Trump’s rollback of environmental protections, denial of climate science, and reduced protection for public lands and wildlife.”
The study polled 1,000 respondents online between April 16 and 18.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/385196-environmental-concerns-may-turn-voters-blue-poll
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