Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 8/3/2018
-
(ACC Mentioned) Officials Want to Open Competition for Public Pipe Projects
Aug 2, 2018 | Plastics News
By Catherine Kavanaugh
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced a bill to amend three federal acts and open the bidding process for government-assisted water infrastructure projects to all materials, including plastic. -
(ACC Mentioned) Dow Chemical Ceo: 'I've Never Seen the Industry More Aligned' Around Tackling Plastic Waste
Aug 2, 2018 | CNBC
By Elizabeth Gurdus
Plastics manufacturers have never been more united about the need to curb plastic waste than now, Dow Chemical Company CEO Jim Fitterling told CNBC on Thursday. -
EPA Shift to Substance of Rule Rollbacks Adds to 'Pressure' on Wheeler
Aug 2, 2018 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is shifting its focus from the multiple delays of Obama-era rules it has already issued to crafting substantive regulations rolling back those standards, which supporters and critics of the agency alike say will add to the “pressure” acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler... -
Amazon to Shell Out $1.5 Million in California for Plastics Claims (1)
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam McQuillan
Amazon will pay $1.5 million for falsely advertising that some of its plastic products sold in California are biodegradable. -
(ACC Mentioned) Manufacturers’ Core Questions Remain on EPA’s New Chemical Controls
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA’s latest batch of controls governing new chemicals doesn’t answer a core industry question: Can the agency address risks those compounds may pose without imposing regulations that hinder sales? -
Tucson Mom Joins Other Parents Pressing EPA for Ban on Toxic Chemical
Aug 2, 2018 | Arizona Daily Star
By Bryan Pietsch
Tucson mom Linda Robles was in Washington this week to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency ban TCE, the chemical she blames for the death of one daughter and the birth defects of three other children. -
(ACC Mentioned) EPA to Evaluate Science Underlying Formaldehyde Iris Assessment
Aug 3, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has confirmed the agency will be examining the science underlying its assessment of formaldehyde. He also hinted at other changes that may be in the works for the IRIS programme. -
(ACC Mentioned) San Francisco Moves to Ban Food Containers Made with Fluorinated Chemicals
Aug 3, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
In what is perhaps a first-of-its-kind action, San Francisco is close to enacting a ban on single-use food containers, such as carryout boxes, that are made with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). -
(ACC Mentioned) Market Flooded with Counterfeit Straws After Blanket Ban in Liberal Cities
Aug 2, 2018 | Western Journal
By Jack Davis
As bans on plastic straws proliferate, the business of making reusable straws is booming. But one company that wants to sell collapsible steel straws says the competition to market the straws is leading to a flood of counterfeits. -
Wheeler Says Formaldehyde IRIS Study Undergoing 'Accuracy' Review
Aug 3, 2018 | Inside EPA
Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler says that he is reviewing the “accuracy” of EPA's long-pending draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review of formaldehyde prior to its release, the first time that he has offered a public assurance that the agency... -
'No-Deal' Brexit Could Make Uk Chemicals Dumping Ground
Aug 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Ozel
Chemicals banned in Europe could "find their way" to the UK if its domestic chemicals regulations do not keep pace with EU legislation following a no-deal Brexit, environmental groups have said. -
Construction Underway on Dow's Texas Cracker Expansion: Executive
Aug 2, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays and Andrea Salazar
DowDupont has begun construction to expand its 1.5 million mt/year steam cracker in Freeport, Texas, to push its capacity to the largest in the US, a top executive said Thursday. -
At Least One Remains in Critical Condition After Pipeline Explosion
Aug 2, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Rye Druzin
At least one worker remains in critical condition after an explosion at a natural gas pipeline sent seven people, including two firefighters, to the hospital Wednesday. -
Regulators Say Energy Transfer Can Resume Mariner East 2 Work
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard and Ryan Collins
Energy Transfer Partners LP can restart work on its Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline that is facing delays after state regulators ordered construction to shut down. -
How Oil Exploration Cut a Grid of Scars Into Alaska’s Wilderness
Aug 3, 2018 | New York Times
By Henry Fountain
Matt Nolan, who runs a mapping business in Alaska using aerial photography, was flying a small plane to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeastern part of the state last month when he noticed a pattern on the tundra. -
DOE to Vet Grid's Ability to Reboot After a Cyberattack
Aug 3, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
The Department of Energy is planning an unprecedented, "hands-on" test of the grid's ability to bounce back from a blackout caused by hackers, E&E News has learned. -
'Cyber Hygiene': Reducing Human Error Key Part of Fight Against Digital Attacks
Aug 3, 2018 | Platts
By Jasmin Melvin
To protect US energy systems from a continuous barrage of cyberattacks, policymakers and industry players are homing in on a non-digital defense system: improving people's awareness and changing the way they think about cybersecurity. -
Husky Energy Refinery Explosion Echoes Exxon’s Torrance Blast
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
An explosion at a Husky Energy Inc. refinery in Superior, Wis., that injured 11 of the company’s workers and contractors came during a planned maintenance shutdown of the fluid catalytic cracking unit, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said Aug. 2. -
Trump’s Failed Infrastructure Plan Is Open Road to a Democratic House Majority
Aug 2, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.)
The road to a midterm Democratic House Majority is clear. The American people are fed up with empty promises for a big infrastructure plan to rebuild the nation's economy. Democrats must hold the president accountable for failing to deliver on his biggest campaign promise. -
EPA Prepares for Next Ozone Battle While Keeping Obama Standards (2)
Aug 3, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA staked out the next battleground over federal ozone pollution requirements despite its decision not to change the standards set in 2015 at this time. -
Not All EPW Republicans Sold on Wheeler as Permanent EPA Chief
Aug 3, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have been impressed with Andrew Wheeler's steady hand at the helm of the EPA in his early weeks as acting administrator, but some aren't ready to endorse him to take the top job permanently yet. -
East Coast States Warn EPA's CSAPR 'Closeout' Is Unlawful, Inadequate
Aug 3, 2018 | Inside EPA
East Coast states are warning EPA against finalizing its proposed finding that its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program fully satisfies Clean Air Act requirements to curb interstate ozone pollution, telling the agency the proposal is based on faulty... -
Environmental Riders Hobbling Efforts to Finish First Minibus
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nancy Ognanovich and Jack Fitzpatrick
Disputes over environment-related policy riders in a House Energy and Water spending bill may lead to that measure being dropped from the first package of spending bills that GOP leaders are determined to complete in September, lawmakers and aides said. -
Rare GOP Carbon Bill Got Shrugs from Big Oil. Here's Why
Aug 3, 2018 | E&E Climatrewire
By Nick Sobczyk
Political posturing began quickly last week when Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo introduced the first Republican-led carbon tax legislation in nearly a decade. -
IG to Assess Post-Hurricane Air Monitoring in South Texas
Aug 2, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
EPA's inspector general announced plans today to scrutinize federal and state regulators' handling of air monitoring after Hurricane Harvey slammed the Houston area a year ago.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
-
(ACC Mentioned) Officials Want to Open Competition for Public Pipe Projects
Aug 2, 2018 | Plastics News
By Catherine Kavanaugh
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced a bill to amend three federal acts and open the bidding process for government-assisted water infrastructure projects to all materials, including plastic.
Senate Bill 3121 calls for "maximum open and free competition" in procuring projects receiving federal tax dollars under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, Safe Drinking Act and Water Infrastructure and Innovation Act.
Introduced June 25 and referred to the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, the so-called Water Infrastructure Transparency Act is similar to legislation proposed in March by U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas). Babin introduced the Municipal Infrastructure Savings and Transparency Act to open the bidding process for publicly-funded projects, such as roads, bridges and dams in addition to water systems, to cost-effective building materials.
The federal legislation comes at a time the plastics industry and American Chemistry Council have been pushing for open bidding at the state level in Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and South Carolina. ACC retained BCC Research to study pipe installation data nationally. One finding indicates increased competition decreases pipe capital costs by 32-35 percent.
However, no state bills have passed. Tony Radoszewski, president of the Plastics Pipe Institute, which is based in Dallas and represents many polyethylene pipe producers, blames strong lobbying by iron and concrete associations and their allies in state capitols and on Capitol Hill.
"These two industries have a long and storied presence in both state and federal agencies," Radoszewski said in an email. "That is to say they have a lot of friends, a lot of money and a lot of boots on the ground."
Opponents of open-competition policies say they would complicate bidding, slow down projects and lead to lawsuits. Some see the state and federal bills as attempts to use the government to promote plastic pipes.
Not so, say supporters of the policies. They contend neither federal bill calls for use of any specific material.
"Legacy material interests are trying to make it a plastics preference issue as they realize advanced materials — that is plastics — offer better long-term performance and economics, and that their monopoly in the pipe arena is being threatened," Radoszewski said. "There is also a ruse being employed by both iron and concrete concerns that such legislation would take away the authority of the design and specifying engineer to choose which material to use.
"The hypocrisy of this position is simply breathtaking since a closed competition environment is truly the only way an engineer loses the ability to choose," he said.
Adopting open competition policies at the federal level is a no-cost way to help state and local governments save billions of dollars to repair aging water infrastructure, according to Steve Russell, the ACC's vice president of plastics. Paul and Babin have demonstrated "real thought leadership" on the issue, he added.
"We urge Congress to include these sensible bills as part of legislation to repair our failing infrastructure and help communities across the country," Russell said in an email.
For the nation's water systems, aging infrastructure and quality concerns pose serious challenges. The American Water Works Association says an estimated $1 trillion will have to be spent during the next 25 years to meet needs for drinking water.
The American Society of Civil Engineers says it will cost $2 trillion over the next 10 years to improve the nation's infrastructure.
Open-competition policies offer two main benefits, Russell said.
"First, they help break through outdated regulatory barriers to let project managers consider all technologies and to select the most innovative and cost-effective solutions for the job instead of being mandated to use pre-selected materials," he said. "Second, open competition brings market forces to bear on project funding. Competition drives down prices, and a federal open competition policy could save over $370 billion on water infrastructure projects alone."
Babin's legislation, which applies broadly to infrastructure, could drive those savings even further, Russell added. It also has provisions to protect engineers and their professional judgment in choosing the materials they deem appropriate, he said.
If either Babin's or Paul's bill passes, open bidding would remain tied to federal funding only. Overall, federal spending is a "surprisingly small component" of water infrastructure spending, Russell said. He pointed to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Water Council, which says 98 percent of the financing to build water supply and sewer/wastewater infrastructure is made by local government. In the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's budget, for example, Clean Water and Drinking Water Revolving Funds only totaled about $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2018.
"However, these federal dollars spread widely as they flow into state coffers and local projects, and the policy requirements can have an outsized impact," Russell said.
Making gains
The main options for pipe replacement are traditional materials like concrete and ductile iron and newer materials like PE and PVC, which have been around for some six decades. Plastic pipes are replacing older materials across the country for drinking water, sewer, wastewater and storm water applications. The city of Burton, Mich., which is a neighbor to Flint, reportedly saved $2.2 million by using PVC pipes to update its water system for 30,000 residents. And, in Virginia, the Arlington National Cemetery used PE pipes to replace underground water infrastructure because it could be installed using trenchless technology, which didn't disturb the graves of fallen soldiers.
JM Eagle, which manufactures both kinds of plastic pipe for water, sewer and other applications, saw estimated sales increase 11 percent to $2.8 billion, keeping the Los Angeles-based company the No.1 pipe, profile and tubing extruder in North America, according to Plastics News' latest ranking.
Both PVC and PE pipes are lightweight, durable and resist corrosion. Introduced to North America in the 1950s, recent studies indicate PVC water mains have fewer breaks than traditional materials and have a reliable service life of more than 100 years. Used since the 1960s, PE pipe has heat-fused joints that don't leak and is flexible for easy installation, yet strong enough to withstand earthquakes. PPI says the service life is 100 years.
Growing sales
Advanced Drainage Systems Inc., in Hilliard, Ohio, which offers mostly PE products for storm and sanitary applications, retains the third spot in the newly updated ranking with sales of $1.33 billion, which is up 5.8 percent from a year ago.
The estimated sales of other plastic pipe producers ranking among the Top 15 extruders increased 3.4 percent to 25 percent except for Performance Pipe in Plano, Texas. The PE pipe producer, which serves the water, waste water and gas distribution markets, held onto the No. 6 spot despite a sales drop of 8 percent to $450 million. The company closed its Williamston. Ky., plant in fall 2016 and laid off 48 employees due in part to a drop in PE pipe demand for oil exploration and production. The Fairfield, Iowa, site also closed recently.
The big estimated sales gain of 25 percent happened at Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Corp., in Charlotte, N.C., which acquired Accord Industries of Winter Park, Fla., in April 2017 and is running the company as its irrigation division. Charlotte produces PVC, CPVC and ABS pipes and fittings for residential and commercial uses.
The other plastic pipe producers in the Top 15 include Dura-Line US/Canada (PE gas distribution pipe), Ipex USA LLC (PVC water pipe), WL Plastic Corp. (PE pipe for potable water, wastewater, oil and gas gathering) and Diamond Plastics Corp. (PVC water, sewer and irrigation pipe).
"In hot and cold climates, highly corrosive soils, difficult terrain, or complex urban environments, plastic pipes have numerous advantages that may make them preferable to alternate materials," Russell said.
Shifting share
Plastic pipe use is increasing but breaking down the market share of the major materials is complicated because there more than 50,000 public and private U.S. water utilities. Radoszewski said older data suggested iron pipe — ductile, cast and steel — at about 55 percent share and PVC at 30 percent with cement, clay and HDPE making up the rest. But trends indicate the ductile iron market has been steadily declining at the expense of plastics.
"Extrapolating this data indicates PVC is now equal to iron pipe and HDPE has nearly doubled," Radoszewski said, adding that market share for HDPE pipe is slightly less than 10 percent for potable water and about 15 percent for sanitary sewers.
"In storm water management systems, which is dominated by reinforced concrete pipe, HDPE pipe has gained significant market share, predominantly in private work," he added. "Use of HDPE pipe in public work projects, namely DOT [Department of Transportation] controlled, has grown but at a much slower rate."
Bruce Hollands, executive director of the UniBell PVC Pipe Association, also based in Dallas, agreed that market numbers are hard to come by. He said water utilities are one segment of the market where PVC has made strides.
"PVC pipe acceptance in North America has increased from 60 percent to 74 percent from 2012 to 2018, a 23 percent increase," Hollands said in an email about a 2018 survey that asked respondents what water main pipe materials are currently approved for use at their utility.
For open cut installations, PVC and ductile iron pipe are the predominantly accepted materials while HDPE pipe has 66 percent allowance for use in water systems, particularly where trenchless applications, such as pipe bursting and directional drilling, make sense, the survey also says.
The number of utilities approving of ductile iron, concrete steel cylinder, and steel pipes for use in water systems remains essentially the same, according to the survey.
Rural rivalry required
Hollands said open competition keeps infrastructure expenses under control, which benefits rate payers and taxpayers. Almost all spending on transportation, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure is done by the public sector. A March 2017 report by the Congressional Budget Office says $416 billion was spent in 2014 with roughly $100 billion from the federal government and more than $300 billion from state and local governments
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a policy that calls for open bidding for rural utilities projects to receive federal loans, grants and loan guarantees. The goal is to build reliable and affordable systems in places with 10,000 people or less.
Holland said it should be expanded.
"PVC pipe is up to 70 percent less expensive, so more pipe can be put in the ground and fixed," Hollands said. "Studies also show that when PVC pipe is included in bids, the cost of ductile iron pipe is 30 percent cheaper. The USDA program, which funds rural water and sewer projects, has included open competition stipulations since the 1970s."
The Vinyl Institute, a trade group that monitors policies and regulations for an industry with 2,900 manufacturing facilities and 350,000 employees, likens Rand's legislation to extending the USDA policy.
"It will allow municipalities to stretch taxpayers' dollars and lower local ratepayers' costs," Vinyl Institute President and CEO Richard M. Doyle said in a statement. "Studies have shown that when municipalities require open design and bidding for piping systems the project costs are 30-50 percent less, regardless of the type of piping material selected."
For example, in North Carolina, the ACC says pipe costs nearly $305,000 per mile in Raleigh, which is closed to competition, compared to about $149,000 per mile in Charlotte, which has an open-competition policy.
"Costs savings from competitive design and bidding policies result in more pipe installed per project which is essential to addressing the dire needs of our nation's decaying water infrastructure," Doyle said.
http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20180802/NEWS/180809974/officials-want-to-open-competition-for-public-pipe-projects
-
Aug 2, 2018 | CNBC
By Elizabeth Gurdus
Plastics manufacturers have never been more united about the need to curb plastic waste than now, Dow Chemical Company CEO Jim Fitterling told CNBC on Thursday.
"Plastics are a great sustainability story. They're the most sustainable package in the world and they're the fastest-growing packaging in the world. We do have a plastic waste problem, though, and at this point in time, I've never seen the industry more aligned about tackling that problem," Fitterling told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer in an interview.
Concrete data on plastic waste levels is difficult to track, but what we do know doesn't look good. Scientists estimate that on the whole, global manufacturers have put out roughly 8.3 billion metric tons of new plastic. In 2015, 6.3 billion metric tons of that had become plastic waste — and only 9 percent of that was recycled, a study said.
Fitterling, whose company is part of chemical conglomerate DowDuPont, said that industry leaders have been "working on a very big initiative" that will be rolled out over the next several months.
Citing recent estimates, Fitterling said that "every year, we make 400 million metric tons of plastics as an industry, all types of plastics, and they go into many different markets. We're dealing with about eight million metric tons per year that ends up as a waste problem."
In the second quarter, DowDuPont's packaging and specialty plastics division garnered $6.1 billion in net sales, up 12 percent year over year.
Fitterling acknowledged that rising aluminum costs could drive packaged goods companies to shift to plastic packaging, resulting in higher plastic production.
Even so, Fitterling, who is also chief operating officer of DowDuPont's materials science segment — the conglomerate's biggest revenue generator — stressed the need to act on the growing issue.“You do not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start.”Hear what else Buffett has to say
"It's not acceptable. We have to address it. And the good news is the industry has many solutions to do it," he told Cramer.
"They're aligned through the [American Chemistry Council], through Cefic in Europe and through our other international chemistry councils," Fitterling continued. "We're working on a joint program which can bring in our other value chain partners, bring in NGOs, bring in private money, work with governments to try to develop signature projects and solutions that are actually going to tackle this issue."
DowDuPont's stock sank on Thursday, settling down 2.24 percent at $66.44 a share. The company's earnings, issued before the bell, beat Wall Street estimates for the second quarter.
Fitterling also confirmed Dow's plans to spin off from its parent company at the end of the first quarter of 2019.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/dow-chemical-ceo-on-plastic-waste-problem-industry-initiatives.html
-
EPA Shift to Substance of Rule Rollbacks Adds to 'Pressure' on Wheeler
Aug 2, 2018 | Inside EPA
By David LaRoss
EPA is shifting its focus from the multiple delays of Obama-era rules it has already issued to crafting substantive regulations rolling back those standards, which supporters and critics of the agency alike say will add to the “pressure” acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler faces in quickly crafting rollbacks that can withstand judicial review.
The agency is already facing the first major lawsuit over a substantive change to Obama-era regulations, after issuing a rule July 30 that revised the 2014 coal ash disposal standards. But that case is just the first of a long list of final actions that observers expect before the end of the year, in which the agency is expected to make major substantive changes to a host of Obama EPA policies in order to soften them.
“Time is already a factor. I think that everyone anticipates that rules that aren't out the door by the end of 2018 are going to have a tough time getting through all the levels of judicial review before the first Trump term ends and we potentially have a new administration,” an industry attorney says.
The challenges over those rules will mark a new phase in environmental litigation in the Trump era. Previously, litigation mainly aimed to undo the Trump administration's stays or delays of Obama-era rules, based on arguments that EPA had failed to justify those actions or was overreaching its limited authority to stop enforcing an active rule.
While many of those suits are still pending, courts have handed environmentalists several wins against EPA and other White House agencies that limited their power to halt implementation of existing policies. Those decisions, in turn, have been seen as boxing in Wheeler's ability to follow any similar path with delays.
But the industry attorney says the shift to substantive rulemaking on the text of rollbacks offers a chance for the Trump EPA to reverse those losses, because of the broad body of court precedent backing agencies' rulemaking discretion -- a sharp contrast with the more novel legal questions involved in delay suits.
“Once you get to the substance, the battlefield shifts more in EPA's favor, because of the principles of deference that govern rulemakings,” such as Chevron deference to agencies' interpretations of unclear statutory text, as well as deference to agencies' findings of fact based on a scientific record, the attorney says.
However, opponents of the Trump administration's policies are hoping to build on rulings that took a dim view of EPA and other agencies' rule delays -- most prominently the 2017 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case Clean Air Council, et al., v. EPA. In that case, a three-judge panel unanimously scrapped a stay former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued of first-time Obama-era methane standards for new oil and gas drilling, after finding the delay fell short of Clean Air Act requirements.
“EPA had some tough hurdles to face in those delay cases, but when you get to rulemakings the hurdles only get bigger,” Bethany Davis Noll, an attorney for the pro-regulatory Institute for Policy Integrity, told Inside EPA in an Aug. 2 interview.
Davis Noll said courts that faulted agencies' delay rules often cited as a factor a lack of robust analysis of their environmental and economic impacts, and she said Trump critics see that same weakness in pending rollbacks, including the vehicle emissions standards proposed Aug. 2.
“The challenge here is that these [Obama-era] rules have really, really significant economic analyses supporting them, and EPA now has to show why they should be allowed to ignore those analyses. . . . The truth is that economic analysis plays a big role in delays as well -- the standard is the same for delays as for repeals,” she said.
Rulemaking Process
The industry attorney says Wheeler could be able to shore up the legal basis for many of the pending proposals compared to his predecessor Scott Pruitt, since the current EPA chief is a career EPA and Senate staffer familiar with the rulemaking process.
“Andy Wheeler is far more attuned to legal risk issues than Scott Pruitt was,” the source says, pointing to EPA's withdrawal of an enforcement waiver for manufacturing limits on high-emitting “glider” trucks issued on July 6, which was Pruitt's final day in office before resigning due to a host of ethics scandals.
But the attorney says there will be consistent “pressure” on Wheeler and his assistant administrators to meet the 2018 timeline for major rollbacks, which will force them to balance competing goals of issuing rules quickly and making them as defensible as possible.
“We're going to see a steady series of rules being finalized over the next six months."
Observers have seen Wheeler as potentially more effective than Pruitt as a deregulator, even discounting the lack of ethics scandals that plagued his predecessor, based on his experience in federal government. Wheeler previously worked at EPA, as a Senate environment panel staffer, and as an industry lobbyist before the Senate earlier this year confirmed him as deputy agency administrator under Pruitt. After Pruitt resigned, Wheeler took over in an acting capacity.
But it is unclear how much time he will have to put that experience into practice given the 2018 target for issuing substantive, major rule rollbacks.
“We don't know yet how Wheeler will shape rules that are still in the development process -- whether we'll see less aggressive rules or more robust legal reasoning. I do expect that we'll see more fulsome explanations of what the agency intends to do and why. . . . But rules that are rushed are almost never as well-reasoned as rules on which the agency takes its time,” the industry source says.
Davis Noll said that presents an opportunity for defenders of the Obama-era rules, since the administration has limited time to produce a “reasoned justification” for its actions -- a test she said many Pruitt-era proposals could not pass.
Rather, she said, many of EPA's early delays were issued “without any attempt” to address whether saving industry compliance costs was worth the loss of environmental benefits, or based on clear misreadings of underlying data.
“They eventually did come around to the position that they're supposed to address foregone benefits in these delays,” she said, but added that the agency will face a more stringent test on permanent rule changes as opposed to temporary stays.
“In a delay, you can hold out the promise that you'll eventually leave the rule as-is, so you only have to address the foregone benefits from a couple of years rather than forever,” she said.
For instance, she said, the newly issued vehicle proposal cites data such as falling gas prices to justify loosening fuel-efficiency standards, but gas price reports show the opposite -- a consistent rise in prices.
“They can make these assertions in a proposal but that means they're going to have to defend their assertions based on these new facts and new data, and I think that might be very hard for them.”
https://insideepa.com/weekly-focus/epa-shift-substance-rule-rollbacks-adds-pressure-wheeler
-
Amazon to Shell Out $1.5 Million in California for Plastics Claims (1)
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam McQuillan
Amazon will pay $1.5 million for falsely advertising that some of its plastic products sold in California are biodegradable.
District attorneys in Sonoma County and 22 other jurisdictions announced Aug. 1 that they settled a consumer protection action case against the retail company.
Under California’s Public Resources Code, products must meet specific scientific standards to be advertised as biodegradable or compostable.
“Over the past several years Amazon has already voluntarily been in compliance with these laws, and we are pleased to bring this issue to a mutually satisfactory conclusion with the District Attorneys,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
According to the terms of settlement, Amazon will pay an additional $50,000 to CalRecycle to fund product recycling research.
The settlement forbids Amazon from promoting its products as compostable without the Public Resources Code certification. Amazon has already made changes to its website in order to comply with state law, the district attorney’s office said.
(Updates with Amazon statement in fourth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/amazon-to-shell-out-15-million-in-california-for-plastics-claims-1
-
(ACC Mentioned) Manufacturers’ Core Questions Remain on EPA’s New Chemical Controls
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
The EPA’s latest batch of controls governing new chemicals doesn’t answer a core industry question: Can the agency address risks those compounds may pose without imposing regulations that hinder sales?
The Environmental Protection Agency has issued 145 restrictions (RIN: 2070-AB27) on new chemicals. If companies seek to use those chemicals in ways other than how the EPA spells out, they would have to check with the agency first or be out of compliance.
The new restrictions—called “significant new use rules”—stem from authorities under the nation’s primary toxics law and help keep the marketplace fair by imposing the same restrictions on all companies that produce or use the same chemical.
Industry groups have growing concerns because of EPA plans to impose regulatory controls on nine times as many new chemicals going forward, which the firms argue may not be needed, could duplicate other regulatory requirements, and deter sales.
Huntsman International LLC, the Shell Chemical Co., and H.B. Fuller Co. are just a few of the chemical manufacturers that have recently asked the agency to approve new chemicals.
Some potential customers won’t purchase any compound regulated by a new use rule, even if the new chemical is better for the environment and safer than alternatives, Kathleen M. Roberts, vice president of Bergeson & Campbell Consortia Management LLC, told Bloomberg Environment Aug. 1.
Downstream users often perceive the new chemicals as more hazardous than unregulated compounds, and new use rules require chemical purchasers to comply with recordkeeping and other requirements, she said.
Even with the new restrictions, the agency is still skipping safeguards required under the 2016 amendments to toxics law, Liz Hitchcock, acting director of the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families coalition, told Bloomberg Environment.
Soaring Number of Rules
Industry groups are concerned because the number of new use restrictions the EPA plans to issue has soared since the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments, said Roberts and other industry consultants and attorneys Bloomberg Environment interviewed.
Before the TSCA amendments, the EPA issued new use rules for about 10 percent of the new chemicals it reviewed, Roberts said.
Agency officials now say they are targeting regulations for about 90 percent, Roberts said. The agency shares its initial conclusions with the manufacturers when reviewing new chemical applications and makes some information public.
For example, Hitchcock tracked agency data since June 2016, and found the EPA restricted the original manufacturers’ uses of at least 419 new chemicals. That figure was based on agency information filed by July 24, she said. The Aug. 1 rules apply those original restrictions to any company that makes or uses 145 chemicals.
The agency has yet to issue rules restricting the uses of at least 274 other new chemicals it has reviewed and found to raise potential, unreasonable risks, Hitchcock said. TSCA doesn’t require chemicals to be completely “safe"—but it does require that they not pose an unreasonable risk of injuring people or the environment.
The EPA didn’t immediately reply to a request for information on the extent of new chemical regulations it plans to issue.
Worker Protections
Chemical manufacturers and groups representing them have met with the agency several times to discuss challenges companies have faced since the 2016 TSCA amendments, American Chemistry Council attorneys previously told Bloomberg Environment.
These challenges include the delays in EPA’s new chemical reviews and the number of regulations it plans to impose on new chemicals, said Mike Walls, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the council.
In April, the TSCA New Chemicals Coalition, a manufacturers group, shared an idea with the agency designed to address worker health concerns, Roberts said.
All 145 chemicals the EPA regulated Aug. 1 included restrictions—such as mandating that workers wear gloves or masks—to protect employees in manufacturing plants that make or use those chemicals.
Instead of duplicating Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, the EPA could flag new chemicals raising worker-safety concerns to remind companies that they must refer to OSHA’s standards as they use the compound, Roberts said.
Adding an “EPA flag” on a chemical inventory—an official agency list of chemicals U.S. companies can make or use—could remind companies to comply with OSHA’s requirements, she said. For example, OSHA already requires companies to prevent chemical exposures to skin irritants, Roberts said.
Union advocate Rebecca L. Reindel, senior safety and health specialist with the AFL-CIO, said the coalition’s proposed strategy to protect workers is inadequate.
“The EPA’s approach to dealing with new chemicals is much more effective in protecting workers than anything OSHA can do,” Reindel told Bloomberg Environment. That’s among the reasons Congress specifically ordered the EPA to address worker risks when it amended TSCA, she added.
Advocacy groups’ concerns about new chemicals being used in ways that endanger people don’t match the reality of EPA oversight, Mark Duvall, a principal in Beveridge & Diamond PC’s Washington office, said.
There are many complex, built-in protections that prevent a new chemical raising potential concerns from being widely used. The EPA has time to issue any rules it deems necessary to control those risks, said Duvall, who works for chemical manufacturing groups, including the American Chemistry Council.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/manufacturers-core-questions-remain-on-epas-new-chemical-controls
-
Tucson Mom Joins Other Parents Pressing EPA for Ban on Toxic Chemical
Aug 2, 2018 | Arizona Daily Star
By Bryan Pietsch
Tucson mom Linda Robles was in Washington this week to demand that the Environmental Protection Agency ban TCE, the chemical she blames for the death of one daughter and the birth defects of three other children.
“Our community is tired of it,” Robles said at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday with other parents whose children have died from TCE exposure. “We’re saying no more . . . stop twiddling around. Really.”
The EPA has identified TCE – trichloroethylene – as a toxic chemical that is “carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure” and that can affect fetuses even from short-term exposure. It is used as a refrigerant, as an industrial solvent for degreasing metals and in some dry-cleaning uses.
The chemical was included in an amendment to the Toxic Substances Control Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in the last month of his term. The EPA moved in December 2016 to ban the chemical as an aerosol degreaser and as a dry-cleaning agent and in January 2017, it started the process of banning it as a commercial degreasing vapor.
But since then, progress on further limiting the chemical has stalled.
Delaying the ban is not acceptable when communities and families are still feeling the negative impacts of the chemical, which can remain in groundwater and in the air for years, parents said a this week’s event, hosted by Sen. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico.
Kari Rhinehart from Franklin, Indiana, said her daughter was diagnosed with the same kind of rare brain tumor inflicting Arizona’s Sen. John McCain. Her daughter, Emma, died of cancer four years ago.
Jerry Ensminger said his daughter was exposed while in the womb to TCE at the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and she died of cancer in 1985. Ten years later, he saw a news report about contamination at the base.
“The reporter on there said that many of the chemicals that were found in Camp Lejeune’s drinking water for nearly three decades are linked to childhood cancer,” Ensminger said. “I dropped my plate of spaghetti on the living room floor.”
Robles said her children were exposed to TCE pollution left by military contractors at the airport near their neighborhood on Tucson’s south side. All of her children were born prematurely and all had birth defects such as heart murmurs, nasal cavity deformities and a cleft palate.
Her daughter, Tianna, died in 2007, four years after being diagnosed with lupus.
The parents blamed former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt for the delay on a TCE ban, an issue that Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, pressed in a Senate hearing Wednesday morning with acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.
Booker asked Wheeler, whose appointment still needs Senate confirmation, if the agency would investigate TCE pollution into land, air and water. Wheeler said that he believes the agency has done so, according to a video of the hearing.
EPA officials were not able to immediately provide comment on the status of a ban.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he is tired of agency heads “putting the profits of chemical corporations ahead of the health and well-being of the American people.”
“No community deserves this,” Grijalva said. “I demand that the EPA continue testing for TCE in Tucson, expand the current testing area, hold polluters responsible, and ban this toxic chemical once and for all.”
Beyond banning the substance, Robles said there’s more to be done. She wants the EPA to relocate and compensate people affected by TCE pollution, and to make the polluters pay for the cleanup.
“Enough is enough,” she said. “We’ve been exposed to this stuff for over four decades. Four decades. And I say no more.”
https://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-mom-joins-other-parents-pressing-epa-for-ban-on/article_ee995127-2d48-571f-9b11-34b852aeffc2.html
-
(ACC Mentioned) EPA to Evaluate Science Underlying Formaldehyde Iris Assessment
Aug 3, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has confirmed the agency will be examining the science underlying its assessment of formaldehyde. He also hinted at other changes that may be in the works for the IRIS programme.
News on the much-derided Integrated Risk Information System programme came at this week's hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. In addition to scrutiny from Democrats over the agency's implementation of the new TSCA law, Mr Wheeler faced questioning on the programme's assessment of formaldehyde.
A revised version of the assessment has been ongoing for nearly a decade, after the National Academies of Science sharply criticised the programme's 2011 draft. But it has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks, following news that the EPA has been "suppressing" its release at industry's behest.
At the hearing, Senator Ed Markey (D–Massachusetts) sought a commitment from Mr Wheeler to release it. The acting administrator responded that the EPA will do so "but I need to make sure that the science in the report is still accurate".
"The question that I have to our IRIS staff is: 'what is the purpose of the assessment at this point?', and whether or not the data that they've used in the assessment is still current, because I know they started that back in 2010," he added.
Mr Wheeler's statement suggests that the agency's reassessment will be more than just a "restructuring" of the original draft, as the American Chemistry Council had previously feared. The group wrote to the EPA earlier this year, urging that it reevaluate the underlying science, particularly around linkages between formaldehyde and leukaemia.
Kimberly White, senior director at the ACC, told Chemical Watch the organisation supports Mr Wheeler's pledge to "ensure the agency's need and utility for the IRIS assessment and that the science is current". The ACC's formaldehyde panel continues to stand by its conclusion that the substance "does not cause leukaemia and that there are clearly defined safe thresholds" for exposure to it, Dr White added.
Mr Wheeler did not provide a timeline for when the updated assessment will be released. "It is my understanding that we still have a number of steps to complete", he said to Mr Markey.
Supporting regulatory processes
Beyond the formaldehyde assessment, Mr Wheeler spoke of the broader need for IRIS programme's evaluations to have a regulatory purpose.
Mr Wheeler said he has asked IRIS staff to "make sure that we know the purpose of the assessment".
"We have a lot of chemicals that we should and could be assessing under the IRIS programme, and I want to make sure that they are being used in a regulatory process because we have other chemicals that need to be assessed, as well."
The need for assessments to be "tailored to the regulatory need" is one of the purported motives behind a bill introduced in the House of Representatives last month. This seeks to eliminate the IRIS programme and move its assessments to the relevant regulatory office at the EPA.
The Improving Science in Chemical Assessments Act (HR 6468) cleared the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology shortly before the chamber took its August recess.
https://chemicalwatch.com/69210/epa-to-evaluate-science-underlying-formaldehyde-iris-assessment
-
(ACC Mentioned) San Francisco Moves to Ban Food Containers Made with Fluorinated Chemicals
Aug 3, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Cheryl Hogue
In what is perhaps a first-of-its-kind action, San Francisco is close to enacting a ban on single-use food containers, such as carryout boxes, that are made with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs).
Many paper-based containers designed for contact with food are coated with fluorochemicals that make them resistant to grease and liquids. San Francisco’s >pending ordinance cites concerns about the persistence of fluorinated substances and their ability to leach from containers into food.
“The use of PFAS in food packaging is already thoroughly regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has determined the PFAS currently used in food packaging are safe for their intended use,” Jon Corley, a spokesperson for the chemical industry group American Chemistry Council, says. “This potential ban is unnecessary, contrary to sound science and will provide no further benefits to public health or the environment.”
The ordinance, which the city’s board of supervisors passed unanimously July 31, would also prohibit the use of plastic utensils and drinking straws within the city. The measure now goes to San Francisco Mayor London Breed for signature or veto. She could also allow the ordinance become law without her signature.
If enacted, the ban will take effect Jan. 1, 2020.
San Francisco has already banned single-use plastic bags and polystyrene foam containers for carryout food and beverages as well as meat trays, egg cartons, plates, and cups made of the foam.
https://cen.acs.org/policy/legislation/San-Francisco-moves-ban-food/96/i32
-
(ACC Mentioned) Market Flooded with Counterfeit Straws After Blanket Ban in Liberal Cities
Aug 2, 2018 | Western Journal
By Jack Davis
As bans on plastic straws proliferate, the business of making reusable straws is booming. But one company that wants to sell collapsible steel straws says the competition to market the straws is leading to a flood of counterfeits.
In April, a company called FinalStraw started a Kickstarter campaign to produce a reusable, collapsible, stainless steel straw that consumers could reuse. The company is hoping that its product will appear on Amazon and other shopping sites in November.
As reported by The Independent, the effort was a quick success, surpassing its goal within 24 hours.
Now, other producers are flooding the market, leaving FinalStraw a step behind.
Emma Cohen, the company’s co-founder, complained about what she called counterfeit straws in an interview with BuzzFeed News. The site reported that straws were being sold online using FinalStraw’s promotional images, and that they were selling for about half of the $20 price from FinalStraw.
“The whole purpose was to reduce waste,” Cohen said, saying the cheap knockoffs created a “bigger waste problem.”
She said that consumers who buy a knockoff straw think they are buying her product and then complain to her about the straw failing to meet expectations.
“People are just genuinely confused,” Cohen said. “Some are angry and upset.”
Plastic straws have become a target of environmentalists. Cities such as San Francisco and Seattle are working to ban them, as are outlets such as Disney and Starbucks, Fox News reported.
As a result, the market for the straws “just sort of exploded,” said Cindy Schiff, the founder of GreenPaxx, a shop that sells adjustable silicone straws, according to Time. “I have people daily emailing me saying that they want my straws, they want my straws … it has been challenging to keep up with everything.”
Business people who want to serve those markets are finding that as soon as they come up with an idea, someone else steals it.
“I’ve spent a good amount of profit on lawyers’ fees,” said Schiff, who said she holds a patent on her design. “It’s exciting that people are on board, but it’s disheartening that people are copycatting.”
The global market means worldwide opportunities for copycatting. A search of the internet, for example, turns up competition from “The Final Straw,” a Singapore-based company selling reusable straws.
In a marketplace awash with knockoffs, consumers are urged to be careful with what they buy, David Abbate of Homeland Security Investigations told WCTV.
“It’s coming in. It’s usually coming from China and it may or may not be what the consumer thinks it is. And if you’re ingesting something that you don’t know what it is or against doctors’ orders, it could be very harmful,” Abbate said.
“The biggest and basic issue is if it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” he added.
Although FinalStraw offers metal as the solution, others think that the old standby of a paper straw is better, Time reported.
Although it might seem that the plastic straw has met its end, Keith Christman, managing director for plastic markets for the American Chemistry Council, said the industry will not give up without a fight, according to National Geographic.
“What we really need is good waste management structure in countries that are the largest source of this challenge,” he said. “Rapidly developing countries in Asia don’t have that structure.”
Christman also warned of “unintended consequences,” saying that by changing consumer behavior, a law intended to protect the environment could lead to a different form of trashing the planet.
As one commentator noted, it was consumer behavior that triggered the explosion of plastic straw use.
“Ten years ago, straws weren’t everywhere. It used to be at a bar, you’d get a straw. Now you order a damn glass of ice water and they put a straw in it,” said Douglas Woodring, founder of the Ocean Recovery Alliance, a Hong Kong-based group trying to reduce ocean trash. “Part of it, I suspect, came from people’s fear of germs.”
“All of a sudden, straws propagated. Then consumers took them for granted that they had to have their straw, even though most don’t need it.”
https://www.westernjournal.com/market-flooded-counterfeit-straws-after-blanket-ban-liberal-cities/
-
Wheeler Says Formaldehyde IRIS Study Undergoing 'Accuracy' Review
Aug 3, 2018 | Inside EPA
Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler says that he is reviewing the “accuracy” of EPA's long-pending draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) review of formaldehyde prior to its release, the first time that he has offered a public assurance that the agency will ultimately make public the controversial study.
“I'm sure that we will release it, but I need to make sure that the science in the report is still accurate, and what I've asked, not just for that report but for everything that we're doing on the IRIS program, [is] to make sure that we know the purpose of the assessment,” Wheeler said during an Aug. 1 hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Wheeler's remarks followed repeated questions from Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on whether he would allow the release of EPA's pending analysis.
Markey and Sens. Tom Carpenter (D-DE) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) charged in a May letter to former Administrator Scott Pruitt that Trump EPA appointees have stalled the draft assessment because of industry concerns that it links formaldehyde exposure to leukemia.
“I have not been briefed specifically on the IRIS formaldehyde report, but I have sat down with our IRIS staff,” Wheeler told Markey. “What I'm trying to do is provide more certainty to that process, to make sure we know how the different assessments will be used in very important programs, and it is my understanding that we still have a number of steps to complete on the formaldehyde assessment . . .”
Markey interjected, asking when Wheeler will release the formaldehyde assessment.
“The question that I have for IRIS staff is what is the purpose of the assessment at this point, and whether or not the data that they've used in the assessment is still current,” Wheeler replied. “I know that they started that back in before 2010.”
EPA pledged in a report to Congress last January that it would release the draft assessment by Sept. 30, but has yet to take steps to do so. Agency sources say the document has yet to leave the IRIS program for the necessary intra-agency review prior to public release.
Wheeler's comments echo, but appear to go a step further, than his comments last week to reporters at a renewable fuels event where he broadened the question to describe his request to IRIS leaders for a review of the entire IRISagenda, which assessments are underway or planned, and who the customers are for those assessments. IRIS observers inside and outside the agency reacted with concern, questioning whether Wheeler's request for a review of the program's operations was merely a pretext to further stall its assessments.
But Wheeler also told Markey that, “[w]e have a lot of chemicals that we should and could be assessing in the IRIS program, and I want to make sure that they are being used in a regulatory process. We have other chemicals that need to be assessed as well.”
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/wheeler-says-formaldehyde-iris-study-undergoing-accuracy-review
-
'No-Deal' Brexit Could Make Uk Chemicals Dumping Ground
Aug 2, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Clelia Ozel
Chemicals banned in Europe could "find their way" to the UK if its domestic chemicals regulations do not keep pace with EU legislation following a no-deal Brexit, environmental groups have said.
With less than eight months until Britain is set to leave the EU and no agreement yet in sight, there is increasing talk about the prospect of a disorderly exit.
Greener UK, a coalition of 13 environmental organisations including the WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, said the UK "abruptly leaving" Echa in a no-deal situation could threaten the environment as well as business, the latter due to the cost of re-registering substances.
It is "highly unlikely" that Britain will be able to replicate REACH, it said.
"Make no mistake, there can be no green Brexit if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal," Greener UK chair Shaun Spiers said in a statement. For the environment it "is the worst possible outcome of Brexit", he said.
European Environmental Bureau (EEB) senior policy officer, Tatiana Santos, echoed those concerns. There is a risk that "the UK would become a place where obsolete chemicals would continue to be produced with the rest of the EU moving forward with safer alternatives," she said.
If REACH is not applied in the UK, it may become Europe's 'easy and handy' production site for chemicals of most concern, Ms Santos added.
Protection of citizens in the EU 27 would also be undermined because substances of very high concern (SVHCs) under REACH could enter the EU market through consumer articles from the UK, she said.
According to Greener UK, a no-deal Brexit also raises questions about accountability.
The European Commission and European Court of Justice (ECJ) currently uphold environmental laws and protections, it said, with the UK government planning to replace their role with a domestic 'green watchdog' before exit day.
"It is clear, however, should the UK leave without a deal and the transition period be cancelled, the new body will not be ready in time and there will be no independent legal authority to hold the UK government and public authorities to account," it said.
UK position
In July, the UK reiterated its desire for associate membership of Echa, in a new Brexit white paper that sets out the government's vision for a future economic partnership with the EU.
However, the environment ministry (Defra) is working on a "large and detailed" draft of a statutory instrument to transfer the "responsibilities and operability" of Echa to a UK agency in the event of a no-deal Brexit scenario.
The draft should be laid out in Parliament this autumn.
A Defra spokesperson told Chemical Watch the government "will ensure an effective regulatory framework is in place for any scenario, including the possibility of no deal."
"This means that the requirements and standards established in the REACH Regulation will continue to apply in the UK," the spokesperson said.
The European Chemicals Industry Council (Cefic) and the UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA) have estimated that failure to secure a new UK/EU trade agreement after Brexit, could cost the chemicals industry an extra €1.5bn a year.
https://chemicalwatch.com/69212/no-deal-brexit-could-make-uk-chemicals-dumping-ground
-
Construction Underway on Dow's Texas Cracker Expansion: Executive
Aug 2, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays and Andrea Salazar
DowDupont has begun construction to expand its 1.5 million mt/year steam cracker in Freeport, Texas, to push its capacity to the largest in the US, a top executive said Thursday.
"We recently began construction on the expansion of our new Texas-9 ethylene facility, which will increase its capacity to 2 million mt," Jim Fitterling, chief operating officer of Dow's materials science division, said during the company's quarterly earnings call.
DowDupont started up the facility nearly a year ago, shortly after Hurricane Harvey's assault on the Texas Coast. The expansion will support Dow's derivatives operations as well as MEGlobal's adjacent 700,000 mt/year monoethylene glycol plant also under construction. Dow's additional 500,000 mt/year in ethylene capacity is slated to come online in late 2019, after MEGlobal's new plant starts up in mid-2019.
Ethylene prices have hovered near all-time lows for several months amid a supply glut as derivative capacity has not kept up with ethylene output. Four of eight new steam crackers slated to start up from 2017 to 2019 are operating, the latest being ExxonMobil's 1.5 million mt/year plant at its Baytown chemical and refining complex near Houston. Seven of 13 new polyethylene plants slated for startup in that same span are operational as well, but some had not been running at full capacity to soak up additional ethylene output.
"Ethylene's a little bit disconnected right now, just in the United States Gulf Coast, because there's not enough derivative demand or supply there to convert it," Fitterling said.
He said that situation should balance out in the short term as the year progresses.
"You've got to look at the full plastics chain margins, not ethylene," Fitterling said. "There really isn't much of an ethylene merchant market that's going to make that swing."
The US has only two merchant ethylene plants in the US that sell all their output because they lack associated derivative plants to feed: NOVA Chemicals' 855,000 mt/year Geismar, Louisiana, facility, and Flint Hills Resources' 634,000 mt/year plant in Port Arthur, Texas.
On May 10-11, US spot ethylene hit 12 cents/lb FD USG, its lowest point since S&P Global Platts began assessing spot ethylene prices in 2004. Spot prices have since rebounded somewhat, and were assessed at 14.50 cents/lb FD USG on Tuesday, with no settlement seen on July ethylene contract prices. Sources expect those contracts to settle 1-2 cents up from June, which settled at 26.50 cents/lb.
Spot US ethylene prices have fallen 55% from a post-Hurricane Harvey high of 32.25 cents/lb FD USG on September 20, 2017.
Spot prices for ethane, the cracker feedstock that yields the most ethylene, have risen more than 50% since mid-May. Market sources attribute that rise largely to fractionation capacity constraints, resulting in more ethane rejection at gas plants and tighter supply in caverns at the US NGL hub in Mont Belvieu, Texas.
On Wednesday, August non-LST ethane, reflecting prices at the Enterprise NGL storage and fractionation facility in Mont Belvieu, spiked 3 cents to close at 36.75 cents/gal. Ethane was trading 2.125 cents higher Thursday morning at 38.875 cents/gal. Prices were at a high since July 11, when S&P Global Platts assessed ethane at 39.25 cents/gal.
Cracker startups also have contributed to that strength, Fitterling said. The slew of new crackers use ethane to maximize yields of ethylene, the building block for the most-used plastics in the world. Heavier feedstocks like propane yield less ethylene.
"You've got new capacity coming on right now -- Exxon's up -- so you've got a big pull on ethane," he said. "Right now, we're heavy light. We're cracking as light as we can and we're cracking as much ethane as we can. I think we're going to be in that situation for the foreseeable future."
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/080218-construction-underway-on-dows-texas-cracker-expansion-executive
-
At Least One Remains in Critical Condition After Pipeline Explosion
Aug 2, 2018 | Houston Chronicle
By Rye Druzin
At least one worker remains in critical condition after an explosion at a natural gas pipeline sent seven people, including two firefighters, to the hospital Wednesday.
At least three pipelines, including the El Paso Natural Gas Pipeline operated by Kinder Morgan of Houston, may have been involved in the incident, authorities said. Sara Hughes, a company spokeswoman, said Kinder Morgan's 12-inch El Paso Natural Gas pipeline exploded Wednesday, but it appeared that another company's nearby pipeline exploded before the El Paso line.
Authorities are conducting a thorough investigation into the cause of the explosion, she said. A Kinder Morgan employee injured in the blast was in stable condition at the University Medical Center in Lubbock.
Four other workers -- its still unclear which company employed them --were transported by air and ambulance to University Medical Center, said Eric Finley, a hospital spokesman. At least one worker remained in critical condition, while three others were in serious condition in the burn center, he said.
The two firefighters, who suffered minor injuries, were treated and released in Midland.
At least one natural gas pipeline exploded Wednesday afternoon in the town of Greenwood, east of Midland, authorities said. Midland County Fire Marshal Dale Little said there were at least three pipelines in the vicinity of the area.
Around 11:30 a.m., Little said, the Midland Fire Department and Greenwood Volunteer Fire Department were responding to a leak at one of the pipelines. The explosion happened approximately an hour later.
https://www.chron.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/At-least-one-remains-in-critical-condition-after-13126259.php
-
Regulators Say Energy Transfer Can Resume Mariner East 2 Work
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Rachel Adams-Heard and Ryan Collins
Energy Transfer Partners LP can restart work on its Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline that is facing delays after state regulators ordered construction to shut down.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted 3-2 during an Aug. 2 hearing to allow construction to resume on Mariner East 2, which expands the already operational Mariner East 1 liquids pipeline. Four of 12 pipeline sections in question are still waiting for separate state permits that the company needs to move forward with construction.
The decision comes after the project’s anchor shipper, Antero Resources Corp., said in an Aug. 1 earnings release that the Mariner East 2 pipeline isn’t expected to enter service until the fourth quarter instead of the previously planned third quarter.
The vote follows a May 24 order by an administrative law judge who sided with a Democratic state senator’s complaint that the Mariner East project posed a safety threat. In June, the Public Utility Commission voted 3-2 to allow Mariner East 1, which opened in 2016, to re-enter service but said it needed more information before permitting Mariner East 2 construction to continue.
While construction was stopped, Energy Transfer moved to convert an existing products pipeline to temporarily help it meet customer obligations for natural gas liquids transportation. Vicki Granado, spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, said by email Aug. 2 that the company is sticking to its previous timeline.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/regulators-say-energy-transfer-can-resume-mariner-east-2-work
-
How Oil Exploration Cut a Grid of Scars Into Alaska’s Wilderness
Aug 3, 2018 | New York Times
By Henry Fountain
Matt Nolan, who runs a mapping business in Alaska using aerial photography, was flying a small plane to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeastern part of the state last month when he noticed a pattern on the tundra.
Dr. Nolan, a geophysicist, saw a grid of tracks left by heavy vehicles involved in recent seismic testing for oil and gas exploration in an area called Point Thomson. The tracks, several hundred yards apart, were as regular as a checkerboard and ran across the landscape just outside of the refuge.
A similar dense grid may soon cover some of the refuge itself, perhaps beginning as early as December, if seismic testing starts under a plan to sell leases for oil and gas exploration that was approved by Congress last year and that is strongly opposed by environmental and conservation groups. The northern part of the refuge, 1.5 million acres of the Arctic coastal plain known as the 1002 Area, is thought to overlie billions of barrels of oil and gas.
Disturbances like the tracks Dr. Nolan saw could remain for decades or longer like a tattoo on the refuge, a vast tableau of mosses, sedges and shrubs atop permafrost that is considered one of the most pristine landscapes in North America. There are still signs, for example, of a much less dense pattern of tracks from the only other time testing was allowed there, in the mid-1980s, and of the only drilling pad, which was built at the same time.
Dr. Nolan spent most of July flying across the 1002 Area making a high-resolution elevation map that will serve as a baseline for any changes to come. When he saw the tracks outside the refuge (lingering snow and ice made some of them easier to spot) he decided to map those as well. He found that they were up to half a foot deep.
Dr. Nolan, a former research professor at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks who has mapped changes in land and glaciers for years, said he was not taking sides in the fight over drilling in the refuge, “but I want to make sure that whatever happens out here happens in the most responsible way.”
“Leaving grid marks all over — that to me is unacceptable,” he said.
Environmental and conservation groups, which have fought to preserve the 19-million-acre refuge for decades, say that seismic testing, not to mention eventual drilling and production of oil and gas, could irreversibly alter the 1002 Area and potentially affect the habitat and behavior of caribou, polar bears and other animals there.
“There’s not a lot in here that you can look at and feel good about,” said Kristen Miller, conservation director of the Alaska Wilderness League, referring to a plan for testing in the 1002 Area put forth this year by a seismic services company, SAExploration, and two Alaska native corporations.
That plan proposes that testing begin this winter, when ice and snow provide some protection to the tundra, and resume, if necessary, the following winter. In addition to special trucks that vibrate the ground, the effort would include movable fuel tanks as well as housing and other facilities for two crews of 160 workers each. In the plan, the company said it and its partners were “dedicated to minimizing the effect of our operations on the environment.”
By producing three-dimensional images of the subsurface, the testing would help oil companies determine whether there are enough reserves to make it worth buying leases to drill in the area.
The plan drew criticism from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service when it was first put forth in May. But another agency of the Interior Department, the Bureau of Land Management, will review the plan and decide whether to allow testing. Lesli Ellis-Wouters, a bureau spokeswoman, said that SAExploration had been asked to provide more information.
The approval process includes conducting an environmental assessment, a less-thorough appraisal than an environmental impact statement, or E.I.S., although the bureau can require an E.I.S. later if the initial review finds the work could result in significant impacts.
Ms. Ellis-Wouters said there would be a 30-day public comment period when the assessment is finished. She said there was no time frame for a decision as yet.
But Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization in Washington, said the bureau seemed intent on moving quickly so that testing could begin this winter, part of an overall push to conduct lease sales within a few years.
Dr. Nolan has financed his mapping project himself, spending about $30,000 on fuel for his single-engine Cessna, among other expenses. To make his map he uses a method called photogrammetry, combining tens of thousands of digital aerial photographs, each with precise location data, to form a three-dimensional map of the land surface.
The map, which Dr. Nolan claimed in a blog post would be the best topographic map ever made of the 1002 Area, should have a resolution of about five inches. The map will be, in effect, a snapshot of the current landscape that can be compared to future maps to detect even small changes.
Dr. Nolan said he hoped to sell the finished product to oil companies, environmental groups and government agencies. “My hope is that it’s all of them,” he said. “I’m doing it now to support rational decision-making when it comes to oil and gas stuff.”
He said he thought the seismic work could be done differently to reduce impacts — perhaps using less elaborate, and heavy, facilities for the crews. “This is a place where we’re supposed to do things different and better,” he said.
Sue Natali, an ecologist at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts who studies Arctic tundra and permafrost, said that depressions, even shallow ones, can have cascading effects. “The ground sinks, so it gets wetter,” she said. Since water carries and conducts heat, the land thaws more and then sinks more. “The impact can last for a very long time,” she said.
“The issue is, you’re causing connections and movements of water across the landscape that perhaps weren’t happening before,” Dr. Natali added.
Ms. Ellis-Wouters, the bureau spokeswoman, said that hydrological and visual impacts, as well as effects on vegetation, would be considered in the review. “The visual impacts are only detected from the air,” she added.
She said the bureau expected that more advanced 3-D testing technology would result in less surface impact than the work done in the 1980s.
Dr. Nolan acknowledged there was little time to pressure the Bureau of Land Management or exploration companies to change their approach. Still, he said, the existence of his new map may have an effect.
“I hope the oil and gas people understand that someone’s watching,” he said. “When you know someone is watching you get on better behavior.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/climate/alaska-anwr-seismic-testing-tracks.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
-
DOE to Vet Grid's Ability to Reboot After a Cyberattack
Aug 3, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
The Department of Energy is planning an unprecedented, "hands-on" test of the grid's ability to bounce back from a blackout caused by hackers, E&E News has learned.
The "Liberty Eclipse" exercise will simulate the painstaking process of re-energizing the power grid while squaring off against a simultaneous cyberattack on electric, oil and natural gas infrastructure.
The weeklong stress test is scheduled to take place this November on Plum Island, a restricted site off the coast of New York that houses a Department of Homeland Security animal disease center.
DOE's goal is to "gain insights into how industry, with DOE support, would execute response to a significant cyber incident," according to planning documents obtained by E&E News.
The exercise reflects DOE's growing interest in preparing for digital threats to U.S. energy systems, an issue of "vital importance," according to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. It will also offer an early test for the new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, billed as a shot in the arm for DOE's handling of hacking threats.
"It's in our national security interest to continue to protect these sources of energy and to deliver them around the world," Perry said at a cybersecurity conference in New York earlier this week. "Taking care of that infrastructure, from the standpoint of protecting it from cyberattacks — I don't think it's ever been more important than it is today."
Grid-gas ties
Liberty Eclipse is expected to highlight the grid's reliance on natural gas as a fuel for power generation, a dependency that DOE officials worry could be exploited by hackers.
This summer, a leaked DOE memo proposed bailing out coal and nuclear power plants on security grounds, suggesting the nation's web of natural gas pipelines is "difficult to protect" from physical or cyber disruption (Energywire, June 4).
Grid security experts and some government officials have said it's hard to conclude that certain types of power generation are at greater risk for cyberattacks.
"I don't know that we've been able to make that judgment — remember that we don't have perfect visibility," Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for DHS's Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, told reporters earlier this week. "They're definitely a target, [but] the electric sector has a lot of resilience built into it."
Grid reliability consultant David Hilt said the huge increase in natural gas-fired power generation in recent years has introduced a "chicken and egg" problem in some parts of the U.S. in the event the lights go out.
"There are obviously some cybersecurity concerns, from both sides ... the natural gas is pumped up the pipeline by electric pumps," he said. "From an interdependency standpoint: Is everybody working together, and does everybody understand where the critical paths might be?
"I think it's good that DOE and others do these [exercises], because utilities need to get organized," Hilt said.
Testing 'blackstart'
Liberty Eclipse is set to feature a two-day tabletop exercise for grid, oil and gas executives in mid-October, ahead of the operational drill that kicks off Nov. 1. The event is not to be confused with a 2016 energy cybersecurity exercise with the same name.
The second phase of Liberty Eclipse 2018 stands out for its focus on "blackstart" recovery, the step-by-step method for restoring electricity following massive blackouts.
Utilities can't just flip a few switches to bring the lights on following a major shutdown. In fact, power plants typically need an initial jump of electricity before they can start generating it.
Power companies rely on diesel generators and other blackstart sources to choreograph "cranking paths" for bringing the grid on its feet. Once enough pockets of electricity have been brought online, operators can sync up the islands with the wider grid.
The process can take many hours, even in the most favorable circumstances.
During Liberty Eclipse, DOE plans to incorporate simulated cranking paths provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has been developing ways to speed up grid restoration following a major cyberattack. The exercise will include replicas of substation equipment so the utility industry can rehearse how it would handle a crippling cyberattack aimed at blocking participants from restoring power.
"Together, [participants] will work to energize a blackstart cranking path by detecting the attack, cleaning malicious influence, and restoring crank path digital systems to operation," the DOE states in a planning memo from last month.
Past grid cybersecurity exercises, such as the biennial GridEx event organized by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., have shied away from testing "blackstart" capabilities for fear of derailing other goals. "Doing this would limit the ability of all participants to remain fully engaged throughout the exercise," NERC has said in GridEx planning documents from past years. The grid overseer pointed out that it tests blackstart capabilities in separate exercises.
Like GridEx, Liberty Eclipse's organizers plan to put out an after-action report with lessons learned and strategies for shoring up the grid in the face of new hacking threats. The goal is to make the Liberty Eclipse series a recurring, regionally focused supplement to NERC's GridEx.
"Each iteration of the series will strive to build upon lessons learned from previous cybersecurity exercises impacting the energy sector," DOE planning documents state.
The agency's five-year plan for energy cybersecurity, prepared in March, first disclosed DOE's intention to host a new cyber-focused exercise this year. DOE said it wants to quintuple industry participation by 2019 (Energywire, May 15).
Time for caution
DOE has led region-specific grid security exercises in the past, in conjunction with NERC and the National Association of State Energy Officials, among others.
Alice Lippert, a former senior advisor in DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, welcomed the revived exercise program. "It allows for better communication, so if an event does happen, they can respond more quickly and understand where the gaps are," she said.
Lippert helped direct several security exercises before leaving DOE in 2015 to work as an independent consultant.
Cybersecurity was a recurring theme, distinct from DOE efforts to prepare for hurricanes and weather-related threats.
"Cybersecurity is different: there's an unknown component," Lippert said. "Most of it is the forensics: trying to figure out where it's coming from."
A cyberattack isn't known to have ever caused a power outage in the U.S., though Russia-linked hackers have managed to reach the control system of at least one small power generator in a recent incident (Energywire, Aug. 1).
Lippert pointed out that utilities can come across challenges when working to restore networks found to have been infected.
"Say some system is taken down, and there's an impact. You don't know if there's some additional threat in your system before you put that all back together and get it up and running," she said. "You may be a little more cautious."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/08/03/stories/1060092675
-
'Cyber Hygiene': Reducing Human Error Key Part of Fight Against Digital Attacks
Aug 3, 2018 | Platts
By Jasmin Melvin
To protect US energy systems from a continuous barrage of cyberattacks, policymakers and industry players are homing in on a non-digital defense system: improving people's awareness and changing the way they think about cybersecurity.
As attackers change their targets and strategies, addressing the human element of cyberrisks is essential, according to US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Neil Chatterjee.
"You can have all of the best and fanciest equipment and the best threat intelligence, but if the employees in your organization don't adhere to basic cybersecurity practices, like not clicking on suspicious links, then all that work is for naught," Chatterjee said. "This kind of focus on basic what I call cyber hygiene is something we are going to need to ingrain into ourselves as a society as we become more connected and therefore more vulnerable to cyber threats."
OPERATION TECHNOLOGY
Bruce Walker, assistant secretary for the US Department of Energy's Office of Electricity, said cyber threats to the energy sector were long focused on the information technology side of the industry, but attention has increasingly turned to operational technology. The IT side includes digital communication, data and other material that is connected to the internet in some capacity. The operation technology side has the systems that manage the movement of electrons through the grid and molecules through pipelines.
Even with more attention going towards operational technology, the techniques being used by hackers are often the same in trying to find an entry point into the system, Walker said. This has kept an emphasis on educating power sector employees and addressing the human element of risks to the grid.
DOE's Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model program "gets into people not opening emails that are unknown and being a bit more sensitive to anything that could give anybody access to their systems," Walker said of the public-private partnership developed to aid big and small companies with evaluating, prioritizing and improving their cybersecurity capabilities.
At Southwest Power Pool, employee education and the type of shift in mindset that Chatterjee advocated are already in play. Employees are not only told about phishing but tested with programs to see if they would fall for schemes, according to Barbara Sugg, SPP's vice president of IT and chief security officer. "The concept of 'see something, say something' is prevalent here."
STAYING UP TO DATE
For companies and regulators alike, keeping up to date on the continuously evolving nature of cybersecurity is at the heart of defending against cyber threats.
To aid this effort, DOE established a distinct Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response, or CESER, to more acutely focus on near-term, actionable ways to mitigate threats to the grid. Walker is currently serving double duty as acting assistant secretary of CESER. Karen Evans, the national director for US Cyber Challenge, is awaiting US Senate confirmation to become the permanent head of the new office.
Information sharing can be a double-edged sword, however. There are "countless" information flows identifying cyber threats and so-called indicators of compromise, according to John Bryk, a cyber and physical threat intelligence analyst with the Downstream Natural Gas-Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The deluge of information can be challenging to sort through.
Cyber strategists and analysts have to be judicious with the parameters they set up to filter these feeds, striking a balance between winnowing down the information to find what is useful and inadvertently excluding relevant threats.
THREAT ANALYSIS
"You have to do an intel threat analysis and figure out what it really means to you and to the members [of your industry]," Bryk said. "Out of all those threats, all those billions of bits that come across every day, hopefully we are hitting the right one."
Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, noted that industry is using a risk matrix that allows all threats to be considered and approached differently. Industry squashes high-likelihood, low-consequence attacks on a daily basis from less sophisticated hackers' efforts to access the network.
But high-consequence, low-likelihood events involve near-peer nation-states and other advanced threat actors that necessitate partnering "really closely with the government," said Aaronson, who also serves as secretary for the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council. The council is the main liaison between the federal government and power sector to help monitor threats, share information and prepare for potential future disruptions to the system.
"We do have to give that an awful lot of attention because at the end of the day our only responsibility as critical infrastructure providers is to provide a reliable product to support national and economic security," Aaronson said.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/080318-cyber-hygiene-reducing-human-error-key-part-of-fight-against-digital-attacks
-
Husky Energy Refinery Explosion Echoes Exxon’s Torrance Blast
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sam Pearson
An explosion at a Husky Energy Inc. refinery in Superior, Wis., that injured 11 of the company’s workers and contractors came during a planned maintenance shutdown of the fluid catalytic cracking unit, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said Aug. 2.
That same type of refining equipment was cited as the cause of a 2015 explosion at the Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery in Torrance, Calif. Both the Husky Energy and ExxonMobil refineries had hydrofluoric acid on site that did not ignite but prompted concerns the damage could have been much worse. ExxonMobil sold the Torrance refinery to PBF Energy Inc. in July 2016 for $537.5 million.
The update provides new detail into the events at the refinery, which remains shut down.
“Our goal here is to provide information to this company, as well as any other refinery in the United States, about how this accident occurred and what can be done to prevent it going forward,” Kristen Kulinowski, a member of the chemical safety board and acting interim executive, told reporters from Superior on Aug. 2.
During the explosion, a piece of debris flew about 200 feet in the air, striking an aboveground storage tank containing 50,000 barrels of asphalt, the safety board said. The asphalt ignited, creating a large fire that sent 11 workers and contractors, and 25 others, to area hospitals.
Husky Impact
Recovering from the blast has taken a significant toll on operations, Husky Energy said in its second quarter earnings report July 26.
The refinery is not expected to operate normally for another 18 to 24 months, the company said. It has spent about $53 million as a result of the explosion, some of which will be paid by the company’s insurance. Husky Energy bought the refinery from Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP for $435 million in August 2017.
A spokeswoman for Husky Energy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Bloomberg Environment Aug. 2.
Completing the full report could take another 18 months, Kulinowski said.
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/husky-energy-refinery-explosion-echoes-exxons-torrance-blast
-
Trump’s Failed Infrastructure Plan Is Open Road to a Democratic House Majority
Aug 2, 2018 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.)
The road to a midterm Democratic House Majority is clear. The American people are fed up with empty promises for a big infrastructure plan to rebuild the nation's economy. Democrats must hold the president accountable for failing to deliver on his biggest campaign promise.
Democrats cannot and should not, however, rely on a strategy of resistance to the Trump agenda alone.
We need to be affirmative and talk about infrastructure, a policy that gives people the possibility of a better life. The catalyst to a new era of economic prosperity. A policy goal that helps make other important policy goals possible: deficit reduction, health care, education and the environment.
Unlike the Republican tax bill, benefiting the wealthy and corporations, infrastructure benefits the entire economy and pays for itself with a strong, cascading multiplier effect. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) states $1 of public infrastructure investment produces $1.60 in economic activity.
Experts say a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan over five years would create 34.5 million jobs. That's 6.9 million jobs each year and 575,000 jobs each month. Good paying jobs in construction trades, and in supply, materials, design and engineering industries. This would represent the single greatest period of job growth in American history.
Infrastructure jobs could add $300 billion or 1.5 percent growth annually to the American economy. When added to current 2.5 percent growth projections, our economy could grow 4 percent or more over the next several years. The last time it reached that level, nearly 20 years ago, 22 million private sector jobs were created and the federal budget had a $300 billion surplus.
House Republicans once spoke of the moral horror of passing massive debt onto the next generation. They have lost all credibility on this issue now. The damage they have done to the economy is real. Their debt and deficits will suppress future growth. While they will have to explain that to the public, the president and his record that will most influence voter behavior this year. People have already factored into their voting equation the president's boorish and petulant behavior. His phony infrastructure plan and other policy failures are energizing the Democratic base and will move independent voters to Democrats in midterm elections.
It is shameful that the Trump infrastructure plan has not been more carefully scrutinized. Perhaps this is because virtually no one takes Trump's plan seriously. Despite the big talk and sloganeering about Making America Great Again, the president's plan would theoretically spend only $20 billion, each year, over ten years, which is nearly equal to what Americans' spent on "nation building" in Iraq and Afghanistan. In reality, the Trump plan will never produce a single road or bridge.
The need for infrastructure investment shows through America’s 54,000 structurally deficient bridges, thousands of broken and pot holed roads, and hundreds of congested airports, landports and seaports. It is also in the infrastructure we don't see like the old, broken sewer and lead based water systems threatening our drinking water and environment.
Americans know infrastructure is important for future growth and public safety. It is at the core of what made America great.
President Abraham Lincoln called infrastructure “land improvements.” His political philosophy was an energetic but limited government that could do the big things that mattered most. Canals, ports and railroads opened the American frontier to economic prosperity. The transcontinental railroad connected America’s coasts and forever transformed our economy.
Sadly, the nation's economy has underperformed for two decades. We are starved for a new era of prosperity. What happened to government that makes smart investments to unleash the nation’s full potential? Nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan failed us. Let's try nation building at home - in America.
My Republican House colleagues often lament Congress should run like a business. Well the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business lobby, is urging Congress to go big on infrastructure and pushing a "vehicle user fee" to pay for it. What's missing is leadership from Washington.
Businesses succeed when investment leads to growth. Without investment there is no growth. Where there is no growth businesses languish. The same is true for nations.
Infrastructure represents a winning strategy on the road to a Democratic House majority and for Americans desperate for good jobs and strong economic growth.
There is a stirring in the American spirit today. Voters want something affirmative. Congressional Democrats need to go big on infrastructure. To affirmatively rebuild and lift the nation, and offer a better way of life for all Americans.
Higgins represents New York’s 26th District and is Vice-Ranking Member on the House Committee on Ways and Means.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-budget/400127-trumps-failed-infrastructure-plan-is-open-road-to-a
-
EPA Prepares for Next Ozone Battle While Keeping Obama Standards (2)
Aug 3, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid
The EPA staked out the next battleground over federal ozone pollution requirements despite its decision not to change the standards set in 2015 at this time.
The Environmental Protection Agency must review the standards every five years with the next iteration to be completed by 2020. As part of that upcoming process, the EPA intends to consider the role naturally occurring pollution or emissions blowing in from other countries play in causing violations of the federal requirements. It is a move that some Western states and industry groups have long sought, but environmental advocates call it illegal.
The EPA told a federal appeals court Aug.1 that the upcoming ozone standards review will line up with former Administrator Scott Pruitt‘s May 9 Back to Basics memo , which said the agency previously failed to weigh those background concentrations of ozone pollution when reviewing its standards. Changes to the standards could result from that review.
While the EPA told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that it won’t revisit the 2015 ozone standards now, which were set at 70 parts per billion by the Obama administration, the agency’s filing previews future fights.
Girding for FightIt is illegal for the EPA to consider those naturally occurring pollution levels when making a decision about whether exposure to ozone is harmful to the public and environment, said Earthjustice attorney Seth Johnson, who is representing the Sierra Club, American Lung Association and other environmental groups in challenges to the 2015 standards.
“The only thing EPA can consider in reviewing a national ambient air quality standard is the health impacts of that pollutant in the air,” Johnson told Bloomberg Environment in an Aug. 2 email. “At that point, it doesn’t matter where the pollution comes from.”
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
Ground-level ozone forms when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides—emitted by burning of fossil fuels—react in the presence of sunlight. Even at low levels, ozone can cause respiratory problems, especially in children, people with asthma, and older adults. Tightening the ozone standards could force states to impose more stringent pollution controls on industries and vehicles.
Murray Energy Corp., the nation’s largest underground coal mine producer, which initiated the challenges against the ozone limits in 2015, told Bloomberg Environment that it was “extremely disappointed” with EPA’s decision. “Murray Energy will continue to the fight to preserve our jobs and livelihoods, and we will work to prevail in our litigation,” the company wrote in an Aug. 2 statement.
Arizona is among a coalition of 10 challenging the 2015 ozone standards. But the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality wouldn’t comment on the EPA’s decision to keep the 2015 limits. Arizona and other states argued that those standards unfairly force them to impose costly pollution controls on businesses as a result of emissions that blow in from other regions like Mexico and neighboring states and beyond their control.
Among industry groups that are challenging the 2015 ozone standards, the American Petroleum Institute welcomed the EPA’s decision to consider background contributions in its upcoming review.“We will continue to work with EPA and other stakeholders to see that air quality standards better reflect the body of science and other considerations to protect the public health with an adequate margin of safety,” Howard Feldman, API’s senior director of scientific and regulatory affairs, told Bloomberg Environment.
‘Considerably More’
The National Association of Manufacturers too welcomed the EPA’s decision to focus on background ozone and other concerns related to how states implement the ozone standards, saying “there is considerably more to be done.”
At the same time, the association was disappointed the EPA chose not to reconsider the 2015 limits, especially as states will now have to implement those standards in areas out of compliance, requiring costly controls on smog-forming pollutants.
“These issues have not gone away, and now manufacturers must now grapple with them,” Ross Eisenberg, the association’s vice president for energy and resources policy, told Bloomberg Environment in an Aug. 2 statement.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club said it would remain “vigilant” against attempts by the industry to weaken the standards in the long term.
“At a time where science and public health are constantly under attack by the reckless Trump Administration, we remain concerned about the Administration’s longer term plans to develop new, weaker smog standards - a key item on the wish list of fossil fuel executives,” Mary Anne Hitt, senior director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a Aug. 1 statement.
The Sierra Club has received funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Environment is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.
(Updated with reaction from Murray Energy Corp. in the ninth paragraph.)
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/epa-prepares-for-next-ozone-battle-while-keeping-obama-standards-2
-
Not All EPW Republicans Sold on Wheeler as Permanent EPA Chief
Aug 3, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Anthony Adragna
Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have been impressed with Andrew Wheeler's steady hand at the helm of the EPA in his early weeks as acting administrator, but some aren't ready to endorse him to take the top job permanently yet.
Though Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) used Wheeler's first appearance at the committee on Wednesday to urge President Donald Trump to formally nominate him to replace the scandal-scarred Scott Pruitt, some senators said they’d wait and see how Wheeler handles tough issues, especially on the perennially contentious Renewable Fuel Standard.
“I need to sit down and visit with him some more, because I’m not sold yet,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told POLITICO on Wednesday ahead of her breakfast meeting with him and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Thursday.
“He’s a very qualified individual, [but] we’ll see whether or not he’s able to respond to the questions we’ve asked,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), another strong backer of the biofuels program. The three Midwest lawmakers had been sharply critical of the waivers that Pruitt granted to refiners allowing them to shed their ethanol mandates, and Ernst and Rounds pressed him to expand ethanol sales during Wednesday's hearing.
Wheeler has sought to strike much different tone at the agency during his first weeks, reaffirming a pledge to operate transparently in a sharp contrast to the secrecy that marked Pruitt's tenure.
But there’s little appetite among Republicans for a new nomination battle before the midterm elections this November, and they acknowledge that any effort would be especially difficult given they effectively hold just a 50-49 edge with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) absent battling brain cancer.
Also complicating their task is the 2017 Supreme Court decision that prevents Wheeler from holding the acting administrator role if he were nominated as a permanent replacement for Pruitt. And under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, acting officials can serve no more than 210 days in their roles.
Still, Wheeler did receive the support of three red-state Democrats — Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.) — along with every Republicans for his confirmation as deputy administrator in April. Some Wheeler supporters argue those Democrats would have a hard time voting against him if the administration gave him the nod.
“You would have several of the endangered species on the Democrat side who would want to use that as a way to try to minimize their opposition that’s out there,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), for whom Wheeler worked as a senior aide for many years, told reporters.
Wheeler hasn't weighed in publicly on whether he wants the job permanently and EPA did not respond to request for comment. But he won a key endorsement during Wednesday's hearing from Barrasso, who said he was “very impressed with how he has started his tenure as the head of the agency” and declared he would be an “excellent administrator.”
Inhofe acknowledged divisions among Republicans about EPA's handling of the biofuel issues, but said he’d be “shocked” if anyone’s concerns about led them to block Wheeler from leading the agency permanently.
“It’s just not going to happen,” he said. “Time is on his side because the more time Andrew Wheeler is performing, the more faith people are going to have in him. His sense of fairness is going to be contagious to a lot of people.”
Other EPW Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Richard Shelby (Ala.), indicated they’d support Wheeler for the job permanently.
Multiple senators said there was no urgency to nominate anyone, including Wheeler, since they had little appetite to add another hard issue to the chamber’s already tight schedule that includes moving on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and passing spending bills — all before the midterm elections.
“It’s always good to have somebody permanent in these positions, but I don’t see that happening before November or who knows if it would happen even before the end of the year,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who's also undecided on whether Wheeler should get the job full-time, told POLITICO. “There’s a lot going on.”
Capito speculated that the Senate could take up a nominee before the end of the year, but said she favored giving Wheeler some time to “settle in” before trying to fill the EPA job permanently.
The overwhelming majority of Democratic senators and the environmental community have condemned Wheeler’s rolling back the Obama-era fuel economy standards, and his support for overhauling the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and the waters of the U.S.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who led the opposition to Wheeler's selection as deputy administrator, urged Trump to nominate someone to the position soon so the Senate can conduct rigorous oversight and said Wheeler "hasn't been sufficiently vetted" to serve as acting EPA head.
"I recognize that he has restored some basic, bare-minimum transparency measures to the agency but I have advised him he needs to take much stronger actions to halt Scott Pruitt’s corporate hand-outs and fully avoid his own conflicts of interest," Udall said in a statement. "The next EPA Administrator must truly put American’s health and safety first — not the bottom lines of corporate polluters, and Andrew Wheeler has a long way to go to show me he is the right person for this job.”
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/08/not-all-epw-republicans-sold-on-wheeler-as-permanent-epa-chief-720309
-
East Coast States Warn EPA's CSAPR 'Closeout' Is Unlawful, Inadequate
Aug 3, 2018 | Inside EPA
East Coast states are warning EPA against finalizing its proposed finding that its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) emissions trading program fully satisfies Clean Air Act requirements to curb interstate ozone pollution, telling the agency the proposal is based on faulty and unlawful assumptions about the problems of ozone transport.
At an Aug. 1 public hearing on the issue hosted by EPA in Washington, D.C., officials from New York, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland denounced the proposal, along with the Ozone Transport Commission (OTC), which represents air regulators from 12 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
EPA's June 29 proposed determination finds that the Obama-era CSAPR will enable 20 states covered by the existing trading program to meet the 2008 ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion (ppb) by 2023. This absolves the states from the duty to submit further state implementation plans (SIPs) to address pollution transport issues related to the 2008 standard. Further, EPA would have no obligation to establish additional control requirements for sources in these states.
But East Coast states and environmentalists say the finding rests on flawed and unlawful assumptions, and must be scrapped. Instead, EPA should require upwind states to curb their plants' emissions by either adding new pollution controls, or running existing controls more, the states argue.
States point to several key errors in EPA's reasoning, for example saying that the 2023 target date is much later than many air law deadlines for states to attain the NAAQS, and hence unlawfully arbitrary.
Also, EPA's air quality modeling assumes continued application of regulatory programs that the Trump administration has threatened to downgrade or scrap outright, they say.
Ben Grumbles, Maryland's environment secretary, said in his testimony to the EPA public hearing, “We are concerned that the closeout rule is closing off all the strategies we have” to combat interstate air pollution. Grumbles noted that EPA has proposed to deny petitions from Maryland and other East Coast states for direct regulation of power plants causing ozone NAAQS attainment problems downwind. In those denials, EPA suggests states rely on other mechanisms to address interstate transport, such as CSAPR or individual SIPs.
Further, the agency has indicated it will not craft another federal rule like CSAPR to address transport issues under the stricter 2015 ozone NAAQS of 70 ppb, leaving it to states to instead submit SIPs by Oct. 1 to address the issue. CSAPR set up a program to reduce nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants, setting caps on states' emissions that utilities could meet by cutting air pollution or purchasing compliance credits.
Maryland's most significant concern is the 2023 target date the rule relies on, Grumbles said. 2023 is “well past any Clean Air Act attainment date,” and is “too late.” Maryland asks that EPA “rescind the closeout proposal,” and require either that upwind states submit SIPs based on more accurate computer modeling, or that the agency impose federal implementation plans (FIPs) instead.
'Sound Science'
New York air regulator Jared Snyder said “EPA disregarded sound science by adopting a speculative and critically flawed” analysis making “unreasonably optimistic” assumptions.
EPA includes the benefits of several programs such as light-duty vehicle emissions standards and oil and gas drilling emissions rules, and restrictions on “glider” vehicles that use old engines in new chassis, that the Trump EPA is proposing to roll-back. EPA cannot reasonably rely on these emissions benefits if they are inherently uncertain, critics said at the hearing.
“EPA needs to do the job that it is required to do by the Clean Air Act,” because progress on interstate air pollution “has stalled,” Snyder said.
Paul Farrell, an air regulator from Connecticut, said EPA has “turned the Clean Air Act on its head,” and that the air law does not allow a “wait and see approach” until 2023.
The proposal amounts to an abandonment of the “co-operative federalism” that the Trump administration claims to support, Farrell said. Connecticut, like other states in the region, believes EPA has underestimated ozone pollution blowing into the area from the Midwest and South.
Dave Foerter, executive director of the OTC, said “we see an unenforceable future in your modeling,” because there is no guarantee power plants will reduce their emissions. EPA relies on average emissions levels using “optimistic” modeling, but “relying on averages is flawed reasoning,” Foerter said.
Rather, EPA should focus on “days that matter,” which are typically hot summer days with high ozone. Banking and trading of CSAPR allowances has undermined the incentive for plants to run existing controls, Foerter said.
Speaking to Inside EPA after the hearing, Foerter disputed comments made to reporters July 31 by EPA air policy chief William Wehrum that the EPA is taking “aggressive action” to combat interstate pollution transport.
Delaware air regulator David Fees told the hearing “the delays must end. Looking to 2023 is frankly outrageous,” when the implementation of the 2008 ozone NAAQS has already been delayed so long.
Meanwhile, Neil Gormley, on behalf of environmental groups Earthjustice, Sierra Club and Appalachian Mountain Club, also stressed that the focus on NAAQS attainment by 2023 is unlawful, but further argued that EPA's approach unlawfully disregards the concerns of environmental justice communities. Poor and minority communities suffer more than others from high ozone levels, and EPA has failed to conduct any environmental justice impact assessment for its “closeout” rule, he said. “This is illegal, and it is wrong,” Gormley added.
EPA took written comment on the proposal through Aug. 1, and is under a court-ordered deadline to finalize it by Dec. 6.
The CSAPR update rule is “clearly missing something,” and to be “aggressive,” EPA would have to require optimization of existing pollution controls at upwind plants. With respect to “close-out,” of CSAPR or equivalent efforts, “we haven't reached that point yet,” Foerter said.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/east-coast-states-warn-epas-csapr-closeout-unlawful-inadequate
-
Environmental Riders Hobbling Efforts to Finish First Minibus
Aug 2, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Nancy Ognanovich and Jack Fitzpatrick
Disputes over environment-related policy riders in a House Energy and Water spending bill may lead to that measure being dropped from the first package of spending bills that GOP leaders are determined to complete in September, lawmakers and aides said.
House Republican pressure to include funding for a nuclear waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and roll back or block Obama-era programs in their version of the Energy and Water legislation is meeting strong Democratic opposition and is slowing work on reaching a final agreement on the three-bill minibus ( H.R. 5895 ) both chambers passed in July and sent to conference.
Republican leaders may decide to drop the Energy and Water spending bill from the minibus if they can’t resolve the dispute over riders and it threatens overall progress on finalizing the package, according to GOP lawmakers and aides familiar with the process.
The developments hint at the first cracks in Republican leaders’ strategy to get three minibus packages covering nine of the 12 annual spending bills finished by the time the federal government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
Besides the first minibus now in conference, the Senate passed a second package (H.R. 6147 ) containing the Interior-Environment, Financial Services, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, and Agriculture-FDA bills. The Senate may consider a package the week of Aug. 13 that combines the Defense and Labor, Health, and Human Services bills.
Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander(R-Tenn.) said delays in reaching agreement on his portion of the minibus that also includes the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch spending bills. But he said he still hopes to resolve the disputes soon.
Alexander said he and Energy and Water ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) failed during a recent meeting with House Energy and Water Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and ranking member Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) to reconcile their competing bills.
Senate Milcon-VA Subcommittee Chairman John Boozman (R-Ark.) said negotiators still are working to find more money to fund the VA Mission Act dealing with veterans’ health care ( Public Law 115-182 ) in the Milcon-VA bill. But he said most other issues have been resolved.
“Actually, there are a lot more problems with the Energy and Water bill and that’s what’s holding that minibus up,” Boozman said.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said the bipartisan plan he’s been pushing with ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) calls for keeping the spending bills free of such riders in order to expedite their progress.
“We can’t load these bills up if we want to move them,” Shelby said. Shelby said he hoped that the Energy and Water measure won’t be dropped from the three-bill package.
The House Energy and Water spending bill included funding for Yucca but the Senate, as in previous years, omitted the funds. The House also wants provisions to repeal the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S. rulemaking, block the National Ocean Policy, and withhold funds for the operations of the Federal Columbia River Power System. All are opposed by Democrats.
`Get Over It’
Inclusion of the Yucca funding could create political headaches for Republicans, particularly Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) who faces a difficult re-election battle this fall. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose party currently has only a one-seat advantage, is pushing a legislative strategy aimed at keeping control of the chamber in the midterm election.
Appropriator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Senate Republicans are currently sold on keeping controversy out of the spending bills and House Republicans should follow suit if they want to have a shot at getting the measures done this fall.
“This is the way these bills are supposed to be done,” Blunt said. “They’re just going to have to get over it.”
While senators have touted their efforts to avoid inserting contentious policy matters into appropriations bills, House Republicans expect their Senate counterparts to budge at least a little, Simpson said in an interview last week.
“They’re famously saying they have no riders in their bill, but they do,” Simpson said. “It’s just the ones that the Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans have agreed on. But they’re still riders.”
Money for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is a significant sticking point, Simpson said.
Funding for an unfinished South Carolina mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility has also sparked a debate, Simpson said. The House bill would provide $335 million to continue construction on the facility, which would convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. The Senate bill calls for the termination of the project, providing $220 million in closeout costs. The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act ( H.R. 5515 ), which Congress sent to the president yesterday, includes a measure that would block any action to close the facility.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) opposed the Senate spending bill’s language and has criticized a Department of Energy plan to close the facility in his home state.
Stopgap Vehicle
Keeping the first minibus free of controversy is particularly important as it is seen as a likely vehicle for a must-pass continuing resolution that McConnell and Ryan plan to advance in September to keep the government operating when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, aides said.
A CR attached to a popular veterans’ funding bill would be hard to vote against and likely would pass muster with the White House, where President Donald Trump has issued several shutdown threats, they said. The Energy and Water bill could be attached to a different package, they said, or wait with three others for action later in the fall.
But former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who served on the House Appropriations Committee, said there also is a good chance House Republicans will simply back away from the riders.
“It’s very frustrating to House members but in the Senate the minority is very empowered,” said Kingston, now with Squire Patton Boggs. “I think the legislative branch is very adverse to the divisive politics of a shutdown.”
With assistance from Jack Fitzpatrick
https://bnanews.bna.com/environment-and-energy/environmental-riders-hobbling-efforts-to-finish-first-minibus
-
Rare GOP Carbon Bill Got Shrugs from Big Oil. Here's Why
Aug 3, 2018 | E&E Climatrewire
By Nick Sobczyk
Political posturing began quickly last week when Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo introduced the first Republican-led carbon tax legislation in nearly a decade.
Environmental groups, center-right climate advocates and even some oil companies issued statements of praise for the effort, if not the substance, and conservative organizations promptly bashed the bill as a regressive tax on the poor. It was a remarkable reaction to a bill that observers unanimously expect not to pass.
Meanwhile, trade organizations that represent the world's largest oil companies and manufacturers have stayed silent, stuck in the middle of competing interests and deterred by a Congress that won't pass much of anything, much less a carbon tax.
Spokespeople for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither organization has taken a public position on Curbelo's bill.
American Petroleum Institute spokeswoman Sabrina Fang said the group "has not taken a position on a carbon tax" and went on to tout the role of natural gas in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
"The United States leads the world in cutting carbon emissions with clean natural gas produced through advanced technologies like hydraulic fracturing that are helping to drive carbon emissions to 25-year lows," Fang said. "That's good for our air and our water and proves that environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive."
To some extent, that kind of circumspect stance is telling, said one conservative consultant who works on the issue. The fact that they have not taken a stance either way is no accident.
Curbelo's bill would put a $24-per-ton tax on carbon, with 70 percent of the revenue going to the Highway Trust Fund, as a replacement for the federal gasoline tax.
Models that accompanied the bill's introduction suggest that the biggest loser would be coal, with crude oil production staying roughly the same and natural gas production ticking down 5 to 8 percent by 2030 (Greenwire, July 23).
The upshot is that members of API and other trade groups, to varying degrees, stand to lose from a carbon tax, the consultant said.
But in other ways it's much the same as any other issue. The major trade groups also have members taking opposing public stances, causing divisions that make it easiest for the trade groups to simply stay out of it, particularly on a bill from a junior member who might lose his seat in November.
"Trade associations tend to be driven by the lowest common denominator, which in most instances is conflict avoidance," said Mike McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist.
A marker bill?
Still, some environmental and center-right groups see Curbelo's bill as an important marker, a jumping-off point for a congressional push to come.
It shows there are Republicans willing to build a coalition and make a push for serious carbon tax legislation, even if it has to wait until 2020, when there could be a president in the White House who does not openly doubt climate science.
There are other conservative environmental organizations pushing for legislation to reduce carbon emissions. And some of the same companies that pushed for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation through the U.S. Climate Action Partnership in 2009 and 2010 have maintained their public voice on climate change or joined up with organizations like the Climate Leadership Council.
"This is happening in a different moment than five or 10 years ago," said Joseph Majkut, director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center.
But energy lobbyists don't see it that way. Curbelo's bill won't pass, and a carbon tax might not take hold in Congress even if Democrats take control of the House.
Seven Democrats voted in favor of an anti-carbon-tax resolution from Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) last month, and more would likely defect from their party if real carbon tax legislation came to the floor, energy lobbyists said.
An array of conservative think tanks and organizations have launched their own carbon tax opposition campaigns. And in the oil and gas industry, President Trump's steel tariffs have given groups like API bigger issues to tackle.
That all leaves little incentive for trade organizations and companies to launch substantial opposition — or provide support — in the near term.
"I suspect that most of the major industrials right now have their hands full with the uncertainty around tariffs, and this just isn't a front-burner issue for them at the moment," said National Audubon Society President David Yarnold. "Bottom line, I don't think it says one thing or the other about whether they consider this good or bad or viable legislation."
But conservative climate advocates are taking solace in the fact that big oil companies and trade groups haven't dismissed Curbelo's bill out of hand.
A wide-ranging group of companies — including BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC — last week sent a letter of praise for Curbelo's bill, calling it "an opportunity for both parties to engage in substantive dialogue on the risks and opportunities posed by climate change" (Greenwire, July 25).
Exxon Mobil Corp. did not sign the letter. But a company spokesman took a similar stance, saying the bill will "help generate a constructive discussion."
"We support constructive discussion of policy options to reduce emissions," said Exxon spokesman Scott Silvestri. "We've long supported a revenue-neutral carbon tax."
Climate change advocates should be making use of tentative support from oil and gas companies, Majkut said.
"A PR person at an oil company is not going to endorse a junior congressman's bill on carbon pricing so early on," he said. "I think it's a big show that they were willing to say, 'Thank you for your thoughtful approach, we think we should be having more conversations like this.'"
'Money to back up their mouths'
At the same time, the oil companies like BP, Shell and Exxon have been saying the same thing for years, and some environmentalists say their rhetoric isn't much different from how they talked about Waxman-Markey nearly a decade ago.
"It's absolutely empty words," said RL Miller, chairwoman of the California Democratic Party's environmental caucus and president of Climate Hawks Vote. "If they start spending money to back up their mouths, then I will believe it."
McKenna said he doesn't expect a lobbying push from the energy industry on either side, at least on the Curbelo bill.
"Just another energy tax," he said. "I wish they would vote on it."
But Exxon did lobby on another carbon pricing bill from Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii in the second quarter of 2018, according to lobbying disclosure forms.
The company has supported through the Climate Leadership Council a version of carbon pricing that would include a so-called liability shield to protect oil companies from civil lawsuits over climate change damages. Neither bill by Curbelo or Whitehouse includes such a provision, which Miller called a "get-out-of-jail-free card."
The company did not respond to specific questions about its lobbying efforts, but Silvestri said Exxon's priorities include low administrative burdens and a replacement for "the patchwork of literally thousands of regulations, laws and mandates today that have the effect of putting a price on carbon in a costly, inefficient way."
With November around the corner, major oil companies have largely continued giving to Republicans who overwhelmingly oppose carbon pricing and climate change legislation.
Of Exxon's 20 largest contributions in the 2018 cycle, 19 went to Republicans. The company has given $10,000 to Curbelo, according to campaign records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
BP, meanwhile, has given $18,775 to Scalise — the sponsor of the anti-carbon-tax resolution. The donation is BP's second-largest contribution in the 2018 cycle.
There's ample reason for BP to donate to Scalise — whose district encompasses prime oil and gas territory and was affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill — outside of carbon tax legislation. The company has also given generously to House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Scalise's Democratic counterpart.
"BP has long believed that the threat of climate change is an important long-term challenge that justifies global action," a company spokesman said. "BP supports a well-designed price on carbon that is clear, flexible, efficient and can be applied consistently across the economy."
That back-and-forth in the lobbying and political spending records has stayed much the same since the last time major climate change legislation took hold on Capitol Hill, said Elliott Negin, a senior writer with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"There's a pronounced disconnect between what the companies say they support and who they fund on Capitol Hill," he said. "They snub members of Congress who introduce carbon tax bills, and they continue to reward the members of Congress who routinely vote against a carbon tax with more campaign funding."
Still, it may be too early to tell exactly where the money will go if carbon tax legislation ever gets a real chance to pass the House, said Yarnold of the Audubon Society.
"At the moment, people see this as a really interesting set of ideas," he said, "but not something that they have to act on."
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/08/03/stories/1060092673
-
IG to Assess Post-Hurricane Air Monitoring in South Texas
Aug 2, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Sean Reilly
EPA's inspector general announced plans today to scrutinize federal and state regulators' handling of air monitoring after Hurricane Harvey slammed the Houston area a year ago.
Harvey, which hit the Texas coast as a Category 4 storm last August, caused heavy damage to refineries and chemical plants, mostly notably when an Arkema Inc. facility flooded and blew up.
EPA came under fire for downplaying air pollution worries even though stationary monitors had been taken out of service during the storm. Later reports showed that South Texas oil and gas facilities had released nearly 1 million pounds of hazardous air pollutants (Greenwire, Sept. 5, 2017).
The IG's review will specifically examine whether monitoring by EPA and Texas addressed potential high-risk areas and flagged possible health concerns, James Hatfield, head of the air directorate in the IG's audit office, said in the memo to EPA air chief Bill Wehrum, EPA Region 6 Administrator Anne Idsal and Barry Breen, acting head of the agency's Office of Land and Emergency Management.
The review will also look at how well any such concerns were communicated to the public, Hatfield wrote.
The project will provide value by examining how EPA "determines where to monitor air quality during and after a disaster and how to communicate the results of that monitoring," he said.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/08/02/stories/1060092009
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
Add recipients
Suggested