Preview Newsletter
AM ACC Clips Report - October 29, 2018
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(ACC Mentioned) LyondellBasell CEO Appointed President of ICCA
Oct 29, 2018 | Hydrocarbon Engineering
By Alex Hithersay
LyondellBasell has announced that its CEO Bob Patel has been appointed president of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA). -
(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Lobby Paid Author of Key Government Report
Oct 29, 2018 | The Times
By Oliver Wright
... address criticism of the evidence it presents. It does not point out that one of the studies he cites was financially supported by the American Chemistry Council. -
EPA Courtroom Error Spurs Back-and-Forth on Secret Chemicals, Safety
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
All data regarding the health effects and safety of a chemical must be clearly linked to that substance even if the identity of the compound is shielded, an environmental group reiterated to a federal court. -
(ACC Mentioned) A Landmark Study On BPA Leaves Scientists at Odds
Oct 26, 2018 | The Scientist
By Shawna Williams
It was a bold plan, and even the person who conceived of it gave it slim odds of getting off the ground: government and academic scientists, sharing samples and data from the same cohorts of rats dosed with bisphenol A, would try to reach an overall conclusion on whether the ubiquitous food-packaging chemical has deleterious effects on health. -
(ACC Mentioned) "My Family Has Been Plagued': Willowbrook Residents Raise Cancer Concerns About Sterigenics at Senate Committee Hearing
Oct 26, 2018 | NBC Chicago
By Sandra Torres
Hundreds of Willowbrook residents voiced their concerns Friday at an Illinois Senate committee hearing about what they said are dangerous emissions produced by the Sterigenics facility in their community. -
Frustration Mounts with Military, EPA at PFAS Meeting
Oct 26, 2018 | The Intelligencer
By Kyle Bagenstose
At a Thursday meeting between lawmakers, federal officials, and residents, frustrations flared over the military and EPA response to local water contamination. -
UK Waste, Chemical Companies Worry Over No-Deal Brexit
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K. waste management and chemical companies are afraid they will have to pay the price for the government’s lack of adequate planning for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit in five months. -
(ACC Mentioned) Why Plans to Turn America’s Rust Belt into a New Plastics Belt Are Bad News for the Climate
Oct 28, 2018 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Sharon Kelly
The petrochemical industry anticipates spending a total of over $200 billion on factories, pipelines, and other infrastructure in the U.S. that will rely on shale gas, the American Chemistry Council announced in September. -
(ACC Mentioned) A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry
Oct 28, 2018 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Sharon Kelly
The shale gas industry has been trying to build demand for fossil fuels from its fracked oil and gas wells by promoting the construction of a new petrochemical corridor in America's Rust Belt and expanding the corridor on the Gulf Coast. -
(ACC Mentioned) Can Shale Gas Rebuild The Region's Manufacturing Base?
Oct 26, 2018 | 90.5 WESA
By Julie Grant
The Ohio Valley has long been known for coal and making steel, but the future, according to some predictions, is natural gas and plastics. -
Driven by Trump Policy Changes, Fracking Booms on Public Lands
Oct 27, 2018 | The New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Hiroko Tabuchi
The parade of trailer trucks rolling through Jay Butler’s dusty ranch is a precursor to a new fracking boom on the vast federal lands of Wyoming and across the West. -
EPA’s Wheeler Touts 'Certainty' Agenda in Shale Country Appearance
Oct 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler was back in Pittsburgh on Wednesday to reassure an oil and gas industry audience that his agency under President Trump is “removing regulatory barriers and leveling the playing field for American companies.” -
Facing Suit, EPA Plans To Delay State Deadlines For Landfill Methane Rule
Oct 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
EPA is floating a proposal that would delay the existing deadline until mid-2019 for states to submit compliance plans for Obama-era methane rules for landfills, arguing the plan would align with its separate proposed power sector greenhouse gas rule that similarly extends state compliance deadlines. -
CP Chem Developing New Cracker, Derivatives: Phillips 66 CEO
Oct 26, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays
Chevron Phillips Chemical is working on initial designs and permits for new steam cracker and associated derivatives, with plans to make a final decision to move ahead in late 2019 or early 2020, Phillips 66 CEO Greg Garland said Friday. -
Five Energy and Environment Ballot Questions to Watch
Oct 28, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Voters in various states will be weighing in next month on high-stakes ballot initiatives that seek to implement major changes to environment and energy policies. -
All About: Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells
Oct 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
As many as 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells dot the U.S., many leaching methane and toxics into the air and groundwater, and even into buildings and homes. About two-thirds of these wells are not capped and those that are plugged are often sealed with cement using 1970s-era methods and materials. -
Chevron Reaches $160 Million Settlement over Refinery Accidents
Oct 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
hevron and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Mississippi Department of the Environment announced on Oct. 25 a settlement worth more than $160 million to resolve claims that the company violated provisions of the Clean Air Act. -
Oil's High-Tech Drillers Face New Security Risks
Oct 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
"Press a button, and off you go," said Des Murphy, gesturing toward a massive drill planted at the entrance of the Shale Insight energy conference here. -
Washington Could Be the First State to Charge for Carbon Emissions That Cause Climate Change
Oct 28, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
The bride had asthma. The scenic Seattle skyline — the ideal backdrop for photographs — was shrouded in smoke from wildfires. And Perfectly Posh Events, the wedding planner, had to scramble for an indoor venue in the middle of summer, usually the best time of the year for an outdoor exchanging of vows. -
Democrats Target Trump Environmental Rollbacks if They Win House
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Democratic lawmakers are quietly making plans to use hearings and investigations to focus attention on the Trump administration’s environmental agenda if they win control of the House of Representatives. -
A New Target in the Fight Against Plastic: Paper Cups
Oct 29, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Saabira Chaudhuri
The growing backlash against plastic waste has a new target: paper coffee cups.
Congressional Hearings - There are no hearings to report at this time.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News - There are no clips to report at this time.
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) LyondellBasell CEO Appointed President of ICCA
Oct 29, 2018 | Hydrocarbon Engineering
By Alex Hithersay
LyondellBasell has announced that its CEO Bob Patel has been appointed president of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA).
Patel will lead the board of the organsation for a two-year term beginning on January 1, 2019.
The ICCA's members represent over 90% of worldwide chemical sales, and the organisation brings together 62 chemical associations around the world, including the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic).
https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/petrochemicals/29102018/lyondellbasell-ceo-appointed-president-of-icca/
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(ACC Mentioned) Plastics Lobby Paid Author of Key Government Report
Oct 29, 2018 | The Times
By Oliver Wright
A government health adviser who wrote a report stating that reusable containers could increase the risk of food poisoning had accepted money from plastic packaging lobbyists.
David McDowell was paid by Pack2Go, a group representing convenience food packaging makers across Europe, to report on the risk from reusable coffee cups and other products. His findings have been used to lobby the government before today’s budget, which could impose a tax on single-use plastic cups.David McDowell has denied any conflict of interest
Professor McDowell is acting chairman of the government’s advisorycommittee on the microbiological safety of food.
In press releases, Pack2Go cites the professor’s work for a committee that advises the Food Standards Agency and his warning of the “significant risk of increased foodborne illness” if regulators “blindly promote reusable alternatives to...
Access to full text unavailable – subscription required.
Story can be found here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plastics-lobby-paid-author-of-key-government-report-8r5gqgcf3
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EPA Courtroom Error Spurs Back-and-Forth on Secret Chemicals, Safety
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
All data regarding the health effects and safety of a chemical must be clearly linked to that substance even if the identity of the compound is shielded, an environmental group reiterated to a federal court.
The Environmental Defense Fund Oct. 25 recapped arguments it made in a lawsuit challenging an Environmental Protection Agency rule (RIN 2070 AK24) implementing some confidential business information provisions of the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments.
The group’s letter followed a notice Phillip Dupre, a Department of Justice attorney representing the agency, sent the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Oct. 17 about a mistake he made during recent oral arguments.
Dupre told Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland and Judges Patricia A. Millett and Harry T. Edwards that during the Oct. 12 arguments, he inadvertently described the agency’s plans for a special code required by TSCA as a proposed rule.
The EPA’s plans actually are explained in a notice it published June 27, Dupre said. The distinction matters because EPA notices, as opposed to rules, are not binding commitments. That means the EPA intends to follow the plans it described in that notice, but it is not obliged to.
Link to Health, Safety DataDupre’s notice summarizes the EPA’s system for a special code, called a “unique identifier,” under the amended TSCA, that can be used to shield the identity of a chemical the agency allows to remain undisclosed.
A chemical’s identity refers to details such as the materials from which the molecule is made, how it is manufactured, and how its atoms are arranged.
These chemical identities are used by the agency to protect manufacturers’ confidential business information. The EPA is supposed to place the special code on health and safety data it receives about a chemical without disclosing the chemical’s specific identity.
According to the original and amended TSCA, sound business justifications may exist to keep chemical identities secret, but information about the ways the chemical may injure people or the environment must be public.
TSCA Inventory UpdateChemical manufacturers have reasserted their need to keep previously confidential chemical identities secret as they worked with the EPA to update the TSCA inventory, the agency’s list of chemicals that are or have been made and sold in the U.S.
The EDF’s lawsuit focuses on the confidential business information substantiations the EPA rule required during that inventory update.
Primarily, the environmental group says the 2017 agency rule that laid out the inventory update and substantiation process failed to provide the public access to chemical information as the law requires.
The unique identifier issues arises as part of the challenge, however, because public access to health and safety data is enabled by including the unique identifiers on the TSCA inventory, Robert P. Stockman, the EDF attorney, wrote in the group’s response to Dupre’s letter.
The inventory should provide the identifier and related information that would enable the public to piece together all publicly available information about the same compound, EDF said.
In an earlier brief filed in the case, the EPA said it will more fully address the unique identifier requirements of TSCA in a future rulemaking.
Meanwhile, the EPA expects to publish its first list of chemicals that use unique identifiers to protect their confidential identities by the end of November, Dupre’s letter said.
The case is Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 17-1201, 10/25/18.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-courtroom-error-spurs-back-and-forth-on-secret-chemicals-safety
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(ACC Mentioned) A Landmark Study On BPA Leaves Scientists at Odds
Oct 26, 2018 | The Scientist
By Shawna Williams
It was a bold plan, and even the person who conceived of it gave it slim odds of getting off the ground: government and academic scientists, sharing samples and data from the same cohorts of rats dosed with bisphenol A, would try to reach an overall conclusion on whether the ubiquitous food-packaging chemical has deleterious effects on health.
“The way I thought about it initially was, why would anybody want to do this?” says Jerry Heindel, who was then a health sciences administrator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and has since retired. He thought a regulatory agency would be unlikely to take the risk that their previous conclusions—namely, bisphenol A (BPA) is safe for human at typical exposures—would be proven wrong by such a project. But as he saw it, there was a need for partnership. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was declining to consider troves of academic data on BPA’s effects on the grounds that their study designs didn’t meet its criteria, while the agency’s own studies focused on endpoints with dubious relevance to human health, according to Heindel.
The FDA agreed to the idea of the partnered study, dubbed CLARITY-BPA, and it commenced under the direction of the agency, NIEHS, and the National Toxicology Program in 2012. At the time, Heindel “thought we were doing something good,” he recalls. Now, as the results roll out and FDA and the CLARITY-BPA grantees outside the agency prepare to produce their final report, he’s not so sure.
Some critics, including those funded by the program, have gone public with their concerns about the study design and interpretation of the data. Earlier this week (October 23), the Endocrine Society held a webinar for media in which Heather Patisaul, an endocrinologist at North Carolina State University who participated in the study, said the agency’s early statements about its results indicate that “FDA has put a stake in the ground, they’ve said that BPA is safe, and they’re very reluctant to back away from this stake.”
The webinar and other criticisms lobbed at FDA by scientists who are intimately familiar with CLARITY-BPA indicate the likely failure of a program undertaken at great expense and effort to close a gulf between the FDA and many academics regarding BPA’s health effects. As those involved in CLARITY prepare a final, integrated report for release next year, deep divisions remain about whether it’s safe for humans to consume low levels of the hormone-like chemical.
The goal of the project was to study a wide range of potential health effects from BPA exposure, and generate data to be used in making regulatory decisions. The NIEHS put up $30 million for the seven-year program.
The agreed-upon protocol for the study was that the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) would start the experiment. Scientists there gave Sprague-Dawley rats a daily dose of BPA, either prenatally through puberty or prenatally and for their entire year or two of life. Some control rats received no BPA or hormones, while other, positive controls were dosed with ethinyl estradiol, a synthetic hormone. Fourteen academic scientists who had successfully applied to participate in the study were sent tissue samples from the rats. Grantees used the samples to test BPA’s effects on the brain, reproductive organs, the heart, and other tissues and functions, while the NCTR conducted its own tests, called the core study.
All of the raw data from the core study and grantees are now available on the National Toxicology Program’s website, and the FDA released its report on the core study in late September, finding that lower-dose effects of BPA “were not dose responsive, sometimes occurring in only one low or intermediate dose group, and did not demonstrate a clear pattern of consistent responses within or across organs within the stop- and continuous-dose arms and sacrifice times.”
Some grantees have published peer-reviewed reports of their findings from the study. Patisaul, who focused on the brain, found that BPA’s effects included altering gene expression in the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus of newborn rats. The University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gail Prins, whose paper is pending publication, says her findings were similar to those of previous studies she’s conducted, namely, that low exposure to BPA during development increases the risk of prostate cancer for rats later in life.See “BPA Exposure Alters Behavior and Brain Development in Mice: Study”
Two of the grantees did not find clear effects from exposures to low-dose BPA, points out Steve Hentges of the American Chemistry Council, an industry group unaffiliated with CLARITY, in an email to The Scientist. Those studies, led by Norbert Kaminski of Michigan State University and Kim Boekelheide of Brown University, were on immune function and testes and sperm, respectively. Hentges agrees with FDA’s assessment that low-dose effects seen in the core study were not biologically relevant, and says that the lack of dose-responsiveness was just one criterion used in making that judgment. “Although the CLARITY Core Study is complex, its conclusion is quite straightforward. . . . The results clearly show that BPA has very little potential to cause health effects, even when people are exposed to it throughout their lives,” he says.
Other experts disagree. “As a scientist, I look at their data and I think some of those low-dose effects are very biologically plausible,” Prins tells The Scientist. “These are toxicologists, they are not endocrinologists, and they don’t understand that effects at a low dose but no effects at high dose are very biologically plausible.” While toxicologists are taught that the dose makes the poison, she says, endocrinologists commonly observe effects of hormones at lower levels that disappear at higher levels because the molecules can trigger different receptors depending on their concentration.
Last month, in a webinar hosted by Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Green Science, Prins, Heindel, and two other researchers argued the results so far indicate BPA does affect health at low doses—that is, at the levels most Americans are exposed to through products such as food containers and receipts.
The following day, September 13, the FDA hosted its own webinar previewing the results of the core study; the description reads, in part, “Results of the NCTR toxicity studies indicated that BPA produced adverse effects at high doses, but not at the low end of the dose range tested, consistent with its activity as a weak estrogen.” The webinar’s presenter, NCTR research pharmacologist K. Barry Delclos, stated early on that “there are no conclusions based on the results.” But he then suggested that statistically significant effects seen at lower doses in the study were not “biologically relevant” for several reasons—they occurred only in the puberty arm of the study, not the one that went on for the rats’ lifetime, for example, and did not increase in severity along with the dose of BPA. (FDA declined to make Delclos or another spokesperson available for an interview about the study.)
At the October 23 webinar, Patisaul cited “concern from the Endocrine Society and others that FDA is jumping the gun a little bit in its conclusion that BPA in food packaging is safe,” as its core study data have not yet been integrated with that of the grantees to produce the final report.
Critics of FDA’s handling of CLARITY-BPA also cite concerns with the study’s design. In the Endocrine Society webinar, the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Laura Vandenberg, who was not involved in the project, said there were discrepancies between the core study’s data on the effect of the positive control, ethinyl estradiol, and those of previous FDA experiments. “What I was shocked to find was that these studies were not replicable. . . . That, to me, suggests that there’s a much deeper story here” about the reliability of regulatory agencies’ toxicity studies, she said.
Prins tells The Scientist there were aspects of the study design that also gave her pause. For example, “they stressed the hell out of the rats by putting a tube down their throats every single day to administer the BPA,” even as pups, and that stress may have been a confounding factor. The scrutiny of CLARITY-BPA by its grantees reveals, Heindel says, that the guideline studies regulatory agencies perform to gather data for use in policymaking are “not as great a study as everybody thinks they are.”
Pat Hunt, who studies mammalian germ cells at Washington State University and who was, in 2003, one of the first researchers to report the effects of BPA on mice, says the difficulty in making a regulatory decision about the chemical illustrates the need for a fundamental change in how such substances are evaluated. BPA “is a good demonstration of how wonderfully facile chemistry is now, because you can create replacement bisphenols and go from one chemical like BPA to a family of 50 or more,” she says, making it “impossible to even think about really regulating these chemicals effectively, or even testing them.”
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/a-landmark-study-on-bpa-leaves-scientists-at-odds-65004
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Oct 26, 2018 | NBC Chicago
By Sandra Torres
Hundreds of Willowbrook residents voiced their concerns Friday at an Illinois Senate committee hearing about what they said are dangerous emissions produced by the Sterigenics facility in their community.
A woman who lives less than a mile from the company described persistent issues her oldest daughter has experienced for years, insisting it's all because of the emission of ethylene oxide, a gas used by Sterigenics to sterilize medical devices.
"Since she was in second grade, she started to experience coughing fits," said Gabriela Rios, a Willowbrook resident. "Fits so violent and uncontrollable that it would end up with her vomiting. This would happen every day, in the daytime, at night when she was sleeping, in school."
The Illinois Senate Environment and Conservation Committee hearing in downtown Chicago was the first of many to allow members of the public to share their concerns about the facility in Willowbrook.
The committee's website listed more than 1,700 witness slips against Sterigenics and about 13 in support of the company, though not everyone will get the chance to speak.
After the meeting, Willowbrook residents detailed plans to deliver a petition to Gov. Bruce Rauner, asking him to shut down the facility.
"I had breast cancer," said Jeanne Hochhalter, who grew up and lived in Burr Ridge. "Unknown reasons, no genetic history, no bracket genes and a myriad of other health effects. It all clicked in August, when this all came out."
"My home is located the closest to this facility, and my family has been plagued with several health problems," Gabriela Tejeda-Rios said.
Backlash against the company has been brewing for months with concerns about the emission of ethylene oxide, but the company maintains these emissions have been within legal limits.
"It is important to note that EO occurs naturally. There is far more EO produced within our own bodies than the EPA characterizes as a 'risk level' in its IRIS risk assessment," read a joint statement from the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois, iBio and the American Chemistry Council. "Indeed, the risk value used is far below levels found in nature and is 19,000 times lower than the normal, naturally-created levels of EO in the human body."
The companies called an Aug. 22 report about ethylene oxide "scientifically flawed," noting the agency that wrote the initial report clarified it to say it "is based on assumptions that are unrealistic and worst-case measurements that are not appropriate for regulatory decision-making purposes."
"We firmly believe that Willowbrook residents have a right to live and work in a safe and healthy environment," the statement read. "Unfortunately, an array of inaccurate and misleading information about ethylene oxide (EO) sterilization and the Sterigenics facility has raised understandable yet unfounded fears among the public that may quickly lead to real harm for patients in Illinois and throughout the country."
Tejeda-Rios said she thinks there are too many similar stories from local residents for the findings not to be true.
"There are just far too many stories, far too many instances that are the same to ignore," she said. "It cannot be a coincidence."
"Please help us shut them down," Hochhalter said, "and thank you for your continued support."
The Senate committee will have another hearing on Nov. 14 in Springfield.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/health/willowbrook-residents-raise-sterigenics-concerns-at-senate-committee-hearing-498718611.html
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Frustration Mounts with Military, EPA at PFAS Meeting
Oct 26, 2018 | The Intelligencer
By Kyle Bagenstose
At a Thursday meeting between lawmakers, federal officials, and residents, frustrations flared over the military and EPA response to local water contamination.
Warminster resident John Kolb rose from his seat and walked about 30 feet to confront, face to face, the federal bureaucracy he said ruined his life. By the time he got to the microphone, he was crying.
“I’ve listened to everything you’ve said, and I haven’t heard one thing from any of you concerned about the people who have come down with cancer,” Kolb said. “Nobody cares about us.”
Kolb made the emotional appeal to a panel of federal officials gathered in Newtown Township on Thursday to field questions on water contamination along the border between Bucks and Montgomery counties.
The meeting, organized by U.S. Rep Brian Fitzpatrick, R-8, of Middletown, brought in representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, as well as Maureen Sullivan, a deputy assistant secretary of defense and the Department of Defense’s lead on regulatory compliance.
The agencies are now in their fourth year overseeing a crisis in the region, after municipal drinking water wells in Warminster, Warrington and Horsham were found to contain toxic perfluorinated compounds at levels about what the EPA says is safe. The water authorities in those towns have since worked to eliminate the chemicals, also known as PFAS, from their water supplies. But at least 70,000 residents were believed to have been exposed when the contamination was discovered, and uncounted numbers of past residents may also have been exposed.
The chemicals are suspected to have originated in firefighting foams used over decades at three area military bases: the now-shuttered Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster and Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove, as well as the active Horsham Air Guard Station.
Kolb, who lives just south of the former Warminster base, said he and his wife had both been diagnosed with aggressive forms of cancer, and both his daughters’ health has been impacted. He said health care costs have cleaned out his savings and his retirement, and that several neighbors have also been made sick.
“I now have to work just to pay next month’s bill,” Kolb said. “I’m not seeing anything being discussed here, from you folks, at a level where you say ‘OK, we want to really find out what the impact on this particular area is.’”
Residents of communities dealing with PFAS contamination elsewhere in the county also attended. Vickie Landis, a resident of East Rockhill, lives near the site of a 1986 tire fire where the firefighting foams were suspected to have been used by a responding military unit. Dozens of nearby private water wells have been found to contain the chemicals.
Landis said she’s a real estate agent in the area, and that while some residents understand the situation and how to take precautions, others don’t or can’t afford to pay for filtration.
“Not everybody can do that. Not everybody knows how,” Landis said. “I’m here on behalf of all the neighbors that don’t know.”
The frustrations of Kolb and Landis echo those made previously by other residents over the past years: that the pace and scope of response to the contamination is inadequate. Several local officials also needled the federal representatives Thursday, saying they needed to respond more robustly.
“I just want to tell these people to get their act together,” Fitzpatrick said after the meeting. “They’re all finger-pointing.”
The federal officials largely repeated Thursday what they’ve been saying throughout the process, including that they are following cleanup regulations and guidelines and have prioritized the issue.
Richard Mach, director of environmental compliance with the Navy, said the department was doing things differently than with past contaminations of other chemicals. Instead of starting from the source and working their way out, they instead jumped to sampling off-base water sources in an attempt to find and limit exposure.
“We wanted to be more aggressive than we have been in the past,” Mach said.
Air Force representative Otis Hicks said the Air Force had also worked to replace the firefighting foams with varieties thought to be less toxic. But, they still have to store some varieties in order to put out jet fuel fires as quickly as military regulation requires.
But much of the focus of local officials Thursday were further down in the weeds.
EPA vs. ATSDR
A primary concern was the discrepancy in safety levels put forth by the EPA and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The EPA has a 70 part per trillion (ppt) drinking water advisory it says is safe for all people. The military uses it as a threshold to determine when to pay for the contamination of public or private water supplies. The advisory applies to the combined total of two of the more common PFAS: perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.
The ATSDR, on the other hand, has developed its own safety numbers. And while the agency doesn’t have authority to set drinking water limits, it recently released comparable numbers that suggest a limit of 14 ppt for PFOS to protect children (52 for adults) and 21 ppt for PFOA (78 for adults).
The ATSDR’s numbers, which are part of an ongoing draft process, were the cause of some controversy earlier this year. As previously reported, emails obtained by the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists appear to show officials from EPA, DOD and the White House expressing concerns about an earlier version of the study and the potential “public relations nightmare” the discrepancy in the numbers could cause, as one unnamed White House official wrote.
The emails were part of a series of high-profile issues at EPA that eventually forced the resignation of former administrator Scott Pruitt.
Little has apparently advanced since the emails, which date to last winter, were publicly released in May. Sullivan told local officials Thursday she was still confused by the discrepancy.
“I’m a little bit concerned about this too,” she said. “I don’t understand how the numbers from the EPA relate to the numbers that came from ATSDR.”
State Rep. Todd Stephens, R-151, of Horsham, asked ATSDR regional director Lora Werner about the discrepancy. She said the answer was complicated.
“We look at numbers a little differently than EPA,” she said. “That doesn’t change the fact that EPA (could) use our information as they consider the next steps.”
Locally, the Warminster, Warrington and Horsham water authorities have all enacted plans to remove the chemicals down to nondetectable levels out of concern the EPA’s numbers might be too high. But the authorities are paying millions of dollars, which they pass on in large part to their water customers to pay for the plans, as the military only abides by the EPA’s 70 ppt standard.
Stephens asked Sullivan why the military couldn’t just choose to use lower levels such as the ATSDR’s figures. She responded the military is legally limited to only using the EPA’s figures.
“Then respectfully I think we need to change the law,” Stephens responded.
Cleanup
Also at issue is cleanup of the contamination, which in large part has yet to begin. The military has spent several years sampling and investigating the extent of the contamination, while working to ensure residents are not exposed above 70 ppt.
The chemicals remain unregulated, and local officials asked what would happen if the EPA listed them as official hazardous substances or set a formal drinking water standard. Sullivan responded she thought little would change to the military’s approach.
“We believe we have already done all the steps, or are in the process of all the steps,” required under official standards, Sullivan said.
One particular area of concern is Hartsville, split across the Warminster and Warwick township line, where several private wells contain the chemicals above 70 ppt but have not yet been connected to public water. The source of the chemicals there is under dispute, with the military potentially pointing fingers at a local firehouse.
Sullivan said the military, EPA and DEP were all still working to determine how to move forward. The cost to connect seven impacted homes is estimated to be about $220,000, officials said.
After the meeting, Fitzpatrick pointed to the issue as an example of discord on the issue. He said he urged the different federal agencies to come up with a plan to address the overall contamination issue, put a price tag on it, and present it to Congress.
“It’s just very frustrating,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s so much fighting over funding. We’re the appropriators (and) we’re telling them this is a really important problem.”
http://www.theintell.com/news/20181026/frustration-mounts-with-military-epa-at-pfas-meeting
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UK Waste, Chemical Companies Worry Over No-Deal Brexit
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ali Qassim
U.K. waste management and chemical companies are afraid they will have to pay the price for the government’s lack of adequate planning for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit in five months.
Companies say their exports to the European Union face bureaucratic and financial restrictions if Britain leaves the bloc next March without a back-up trade deal in place. To make matter worse, they add, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, known as Defra, has failed to make any contingency plans.
Prime Minister Theresa May failed to secure any trade agreement at the Oct. 18-19 summit of all EU leaders addressing a Brexit settlement.
No-deal Brexit essentially means the U.K. leaves the EU at 11 p.m. March 29, 2019, and any arrangements between the two cease immediately.
‘Stranded’ WasteWaste companies in particular are worried about “the extent of any border and customs disruption in the event of a no-deal,” said Pat Jennings, head of policy and communications at lobby group Chartered Institution of Wastes Management in Northampton.
U.K. waste companies send about 3 million metric tons of trash to European facilities for treatment. Now they fear they will be forced to reapply for the existing approvals they were granted under EU rules to ship waste to European facilities outside the U.K.
They also worry about “additional administrative burden that might arise for the process of shipment notification,” Jennings told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 26.
Waste exports also could be stuck at various points along the supply chain like ports or transfer stations Robert Corijn, chairman of RDF Industry Group in Bristol, told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 26. The RDF, a waste management group, represents companies that collect nonrecyclable mixed waste.
Waste collectors in turn could be forced to postpone the collection of waste from businesses and, potentially even households, Corijn said.
The reapproval process could take as long as six months if waste exporters apply for new notifications at the same time, resulting in 1.8 million metric tons of waste “stranded” in the U.K., a parliamentary committee told Secretary of State for Environment Michael Gove in an Oct. 23 letter.
Chemical ReactionU.K.-based chemical companies have their own concerns about a no-deal Brexit.
Currently, U.K. chemical companies export to the EU through the bloc’s REACH law (Regulation No. 1907/2006 on the registration, evaluation, and authorization of chemicals). Through that mechanism they share information and communicate safe use of their products in exchange for a license to market chemicals in EU markets.
But without a deal in place, the U.K. will cease to be part of REACH and would be required to duplicate pre-existing data that companies need to prove their products are safe.
A spokeswoman for Steve Elliott, chief executive of the Chemical Industries Association in London, told Bloomberg Environment in an Oct. 25 email that “many companies do not hold, nor do they have access to” all the required data.
“At best, companies may be able to gain permission to study summaries to prove their chemicals are safe to use, which in itself involves a significant cost to U.K. companies,” the spokeswoman said.
As the EU Energy and Environment Subcommittee said in its letter to Gove, many chemical companies “may not own the rights to the data that proves their chemicals are safe to use.”
Defra “is working hard to carry out extensive preparations to make sure environmental, welfare, and biosecurity standards will continue to be met in a way that supports trade and the smooth flow of goods,” spokeswoman Paola Salcedo told Bloomberg Environment Oct. 26.
Gove is planning to respond officially to the concerns raised in the subcommittee’s letter.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/uk-waste-chemical-companies-worry-over-no-deal-brexit
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Oct 28, 2018 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Sharon Kelly
The petrochemical industry anticipates spending a total of over $200 billion on factories, pipelines, and other infrastructure in the U.S. that will rely on shale gas, the American Chemistry Council announced in September. Construction is already underway at many sites.
This building spree would dramatically expand the Gulf Coast’s petrochemical corridor (known locally as“Cancer Alley”) — and establish a new plastics and petrochemical belt across states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
If those projects are completed, analysts predict the U.S. would flip from one of the world’s highest-cost producers of plastics and chemicals to one of the cheapest, using raw materials and energy from fracked gas wells in states like Texas, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Those petrochemical plans could have profound consequences for a planet already showing signs of dangerous warming and a cascade of other impacts from climate change.
The gathering wave of construction comes as the Trump administration works to deregulate American industry and roll back pollution controls, putting the U.S. at odds with the rest of the world's efforts to slow climate change.
Trump announced in June 2017 that the U.S. had halted all implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement and intends to fully withdraw. America is now the world’s only state refusing participation in the global agreement to curb climate change (after Syria, the final holdout, signed in November 2017).
This petrochemical industry expansion — much of it funded by foreign investors — makes America’s refusal to participate in the Paris Agreement all the more significant, because much of this new U.S.infrastructure would be built outside of the greenhouse gas agreement affecting the rest of the globe.
If American policy makers approve this wave of new plastics and petrochemical plants with little regard to curbing climate change and reducing fossil fuel use, environmentalists warn, they’ll be greenlighting hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into projects at risk of becoming stranded assets.From Rust Belt to Plastics Belt
Some of the largest and most expensive petrochemical projects in the U.S. are planned in the Rust Belt states of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, a region that has suffered for decades from the collapse of the domestic steel industry but that has relatively little experience with the kind of petrochemical complexes that are now primarily found on the Gulf Coast.
In November 2017, the China Energy Investment Corp., signed a Memorandum of Understanding with West Virginia that would result in the construction of $83.7 billion in plastics and petrochemicals projects over the next 20 years in that state alone — a huge slice of the $202.4 billion U.S. total. Those plans have run into snags due to trade disputes between the U.S. and China and a corruption probe, though Chinese officials said in late August that investment was moving forward.
The petrochemical industry’s interest is spurred by the fact that the region’s Marcellus and Utica shales contain significant supplies of so-called “wet gas.” This wet gas often is treated as a footnote in discussions of fracking, which tend to focus on the methane gas, called “dry gas” by industry — and not the ethane, propane, butane, and other hydrocarbons that also come from those same wells.
Those “wet” fossil fuels and chemical feedstocks are commonly referred to as “natural gas liquids,” or NGLs, because they are delivered to customers condensed into a liquid form — like the liquid butane trapped in a Bic lighter, which expands into a stream of flammable gas when you flick that lighter on.
Ethane can represent a surprising amount of the fossil fuel from a fracked shale well, particularly in the Marcellus. For every 6,000 cubic feet of methane (the energy equivalent of the industry’s standard 42 gallon barrel of oil), Marcellus wet gas wells can produce up to roughly 35 gallons of ethane, based on data reported by the American Oil and Gas Reporter in 2011.
And U.S. ethane production is projected to grow dramatically. By 2022, the region will produce roughly 800,000 barrels of ethane per day, up from 470,000 barrels a day in 2017, according to energy consultant RBN Energy.
That supply glut is driving down ethane prices in the Rust Belt.
“The lowest price ethane on the planet is here in this region,” Brian Anderson, Director of the West Virginia University Energy Institute, told the NEP Northeast U.S. Petrochemical Construction conference in Pittsburgh in June.
Chemicals and the Climate
The petrochemical and plastics industries are notoriously polluting, not only when it comes to toxic air pollution and plastic waste, but also because of the industry’s significant greenhouse gas footprint — affecting not only the U.S., but the entire world.
“The chemical and petrochemical sector is by far the largest industrial energy user, accounting for roughly 10 percent of total worldwide final energy demand and 7 percent of global [greenhouse gas] emissions,” the International Energy Agency reported in 2013. Since then the numbers have crept up, with the IEA finding petrochemicals responsible for an additional percentage point of the world’s total energy consumption in 2017.
Carbon emissions from petrochemical and plastics manufacturing are expected to grow 20 percent by 2030 (in other words, in just over a decade), the IEA concluded in a report released October 5. A few days later, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that by 2030, the world needs to have reduced its greenhouse gas pollution 45 percent from 2010 levels, in order to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to a less-catastrophic 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
The petrochemicals industry has so far drawn relatively little attention from oil and gas analysts and policy makers. “Petrochemicals are one of the key blind spots in the global energy debate, especially given the influence they will exert on future energy trends,” Dr. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director, said in a statement this month.
“In fact,” he added, “our analysis shows they will have a greater influence on the future of oil demand than cars, trucks and aviation.”
The new investments, which will rely on decades of continued fracking in the U.S, offer the oil and gas industry a serious hedge against competition from renewable energy, even in the event that climate policies push fossil fuel energy to the margins.
“Unlike refining, and ultimately unlike oil, which will see a moment when the growth will stop, we actually don’t anticipate that with petrochemicals,” Andrew Brown, upstream director for Royal Dutch Shell, told the San Antonio Express News in March.
The planned infrastructure could also help bail out the heavily indebted shale drilling industry financially by consuming vast amounts of fossil fuels, both for power and as a raw material.
The American Chemistry Council has linked 333 chemical industry projects, all announced since 2010, to shale gas — that is, gas that is produced using fracking. Forty-one percent of those projects are still in the planning phase as of September, according to the council, and 68 percent of the projects are linked to foreign investment.
State regulators in Texas and Louisiana have already issued permits that would allow a group of 74 petrochemical and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects along the Gulf Coast to add 134 million tons of greenhouse gases a year to the atmosphere, an Environmental Integrity Project analysis found in September. The group said that was equal to the pollution from running 29 new coal power plants around the clock.
The expansion of plastics manufacturing in America also has environmentalists worried over a plastics pollution crisis. “We could be locking in decades of expanded plastics production at precisely the time the world is realizing we should use far less of it,” Carroll Muffett, president of the U.S. Center for International Environmental Law, told The Guardian in December 2017.
Petrochemical Paradox
The petrochemical industry transforms ethane and other raw material into a huge range of products, including not only plastic, but also vinyl, fertilizers, Styrofoam, beauty products, chemicals, and pesticides.
The petrochemicals industry itself straddles an uncomfortable fence when it comes to renewable energy and climate change. A significant portion of its revenue comes from “clean” technology sectors, as it provides materials used to make batteries and electric cars.
One report last year concluded that roughly 20 percent of the industry’s revenue comes from products designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the American Chemistry Council cited the industry’s role supplying “materials and technologies that improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions,” as it opposed Trump’s decision to drop out of the Paris Agreement.
But petrochemical manufacturers are also heavily reliant on fossil fuels. They need them to power and supply a dreamed-of “manufacturing renaissance,” as the ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute explained as it pushed for Trump to abandon the Paris Agreement.
Plans to use American shale gas would also link petrochemicals to the expansion of fracking, which carries its own environmental concerns. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark study on fracking and drinking water concluded in 2016 that fracking has led to water contamination and poses continued risks to American water supplies.
In addition, though conversations about climate change usually focus on carbon emissions, the gas industry has such a bad methane leak problem that using natural gas can be even worse for the climate than burning coal.
Pittsburgh and Paris
Climate implications make a petrochemical build-out risky, not only from an environmental perspective, but also from a fiscal perspective, Mark Dixon, co-founder of NoPetroPA, which opposes fracking-based petrochemicals projects, told DeSmog.
One plant, Shell’s $6 billion ethane “cracker” plant currently under construction in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, has permits to pump 2.25 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year into the air near Pittsburgh, roughly equal to the annual carbon pollution from 430,000 cars.
Industry advocates say the region can produce enough ethane to support up to seven more ethane cracker plants like Shell’s.
“We’re trying to drop our emissions 50 percent by 2030,” Dixon said, referring to Pittsburgh’s highly touted plans to comply with international climate targets despite the federal government’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. “The Shell cracker alone will decimate that.”Stranding Assets
International negotiators met in Bangkok in September to hash out details on how the Paris Agreement will be implemented. The U.S., which participated in talks despite the Trump administration’s intention to withdraw from the accord, faced criticism over working to delay clarity over the agreement’s financing (nonetheless, a top UN negotiator praised “good progress” from the talks).
While the Paris Agreement is not directly binding, globally there has been discussion of using trade agreements and tariffs to pressure countries that fail to keep up with their carbon-cutting commitments.
In February, the European Union (EU) declared that it will not sign new trade agreements with any country that refuses to get on board with the Paris Agreement.
“One of our main demands is that any country who signs a trade agreement with EU should implement the Paris Agreement on the ground,” France’s foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne told the French Parliament. “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement.”
“They’re already shooting across the bow, saying look, you’ve got to implement the Paris climate agreement,” Dixon told DeSmog. “We could very well spend 10 years building an infrastructure to support fracking all over the region, crackers, ethane, plastics, everything, then have Europe say, ‘sorry, you can’t do that. You have to shut it down.’”
In other words, whether or not the U.S. puts its signature on the climate pact’s dotted line, the pressure from trading partners to reduce greenhouse gas pollution — and the underlying concerns about the rapidly warming climate — could remain the same.
That said, while the U.S. is the only country to reject Paris on paper, it is far from the only country on track to miss its targets aimed at warding off catastrophic climate change. Only Morocco and The Gambia are projected to hit “Paris Agreement Compatible” targets, according to the Climate Action Tracker (whose rating tracker includes many major polluters but not all countries worldwide).
The EU itself currently earns a rating of “insufficient” from the group (China is ranked “highly insufficient,” while the U.S. and four other nations earned the worst “critically insufficient” grade).Closing Windows
The next several years will determine the future of petrochemical production for decades to come, crucial years when it comes to the fate of the climate, if industry gets its timing right — particularly in the Rust Belt.
“The window to make this all work is not forever,” Charles Schliebs of Stone Pier Capital Advisors told the NEP Northeast U.S. Petrochemical Construction conference in June. “It’s maybe two to five years.”
That means key decisions may be made while Donald Trump remains in office — though state and local regulators will also face important calls over permits and construction planning.
For some living near the center of the planned petrochemical expansion, the problem is readily apparent.
“We’re not going to be able to double down on fossil fuels,” Dixon said, “and comply with the Paris climate agreement.”
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/28/petrochemical-industry-america-rust-belt-plastics-fracking-climate
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(ACC Mentioned) A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry
Oct 28, 2018 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Sharon Kelly
The shale gas industry has been trying to build demand for fossil fuels from its fracked oil and gas wells by promoting the construction of a new petrochemical corridor in America's Rust Belt and expanding the corridor on the Gulf Coast. To help demystify terms like “natural gas liquids” and “cracker plants,” DeSmog has begun building a guide to some of the equipment and terms used in the plastics and petrochemical industries.
This guide, which will expand over time, is intended to serve as an informal glossary of sorts and an introduction to what happens to fossil fuels that are transformed into chemicals, plastics, vinyl, Styrofoam and a variety of other materials.
Petrochemical Production and the Climate
These fossil fuels have a significant global warming impact of their own. The methane leaks associated with the natural gas drilling and distribution industry are so pronounced that many experts say burning natural gas for electricity is worse for the climate than burning coal.
While hydrocarbons that are used as raw materials for petrochemical products aren’t burned (and therefore don’t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), that leaky infrastructure still results in methane pollution. Methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, capable of warming the climate about 86 times faster than an equal amount of carbon dioxide during the first decade after it’s released to the atmosphere.
Making petrochemicals also requires a huge amount of energy — some of the largest petrochemical plants like crackers may have their own power plants on site — and that energy comes from burning fossil fuels.
Executives from major oil and gas companies, wary of the impacts that carbon dioxide pollution controls might have on their long-term prospects, have told investors that they see petrochemicals as the place where demand for fossil fuels will continue to grow, even if the world takes serious action on climate change.
THE NATURAL GAS LIQUIDS (NGLs)
“WET GAS” FROM THE WELL: Oil and gas aren’t the only things that come out of a well. There’s also wastewater and the natural gas liquids, or “wet” fossil fuels, an array of hydrocarbon molecules that flow up to the surface alongside oil, water, and methane, the main ingredient in the natural gas used to heat homes and generate electricity. These “wet” hydrocarbons can represent a surprisingly high proportion of a shale gas well’s production. For every 1,000 cubic feet of methane, some Marcellus Shale wet gas wells can produce up to roughly 9 gallons of natural gas liquids, according to datareported by the American Oil and Gas Reporter in 2011.
Ethane: Ethane often represents the biggest cut of NGLs from a shale gas well. At room temperature and pressure, ethane is a colorless and odorless gas. Because of its two carbon atoms, ethane is sometimes referred to by the industry as C2.
Ethane “contributes to climate change in three ways,” DeSmog reportedin 2016 after researchers found that ethane pollution from the Bakken shale oil field was so severe that it had raised ethane levels in the atmosphere worldwide, “as a greenhouse gas itself (though it's extremely short-lived in the atmosphere so these effects are relatively fleeting), by extending the lifespan of the powerful greenhouse gas methane (because it consumes compounds that help break methane down), and because it helps to form smog, which the researchers described as ‘the third-largest contributor to human-caused global warming after carbon dioxide and methane.’”
Some drillers leave their ethane mixed in with the methane they sell as natural gas — but natural gas buyers and pipeline companies often set limits on how much ethane can be left in the mix. Once the right infrastructure is built, the petrochemical industry can take ethane and use it to make ethylene (see below).
Propane: Familiar to many from the backyard BBQ grill, propane is the second most-common NGL. It has been marketed as a “green” fuel because it produces less carbon than gasoline or diesel when burned as a fuel for cars and trucks. In 2016, market research firm IHS found that shale drilling was causing U.S. exports of propane to reach record levels. Roughly 6 million homes in the U.S. relied on propane for heating that same year, according to MarketWatch, and the fuel is also widely used in the agricultural industry.
The petrochemical industry can transform propane into propylene (which can then become the plastic polypropylene) as well as ethylene and other petrochemical building blocks. Propane has three carbon atoms per molecule, so it’s sometimes referred to as C3.
Butane: Another colorless, odorless, and flammable gas, butane is the fuel inside cigarette lighters and some camp stoves. Butane burns hot, but it can also be chilled and used as a refrigerant, because it stays in liquid form until temperatures reach 220 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). It’s also often blended into gasoline for cars and trucks. The petrochemical industry can turn butane into ethylene, as well as acetic acid and the building blocks for resins.
Natural Gasoline/Pentanes Plus: Hydrocarbons with five or more carbon atoms per molecule (C5+) are often referred to in the oil industry as natural gasoline. This mix of NGLs tends to reach its boiling point at or around the same range of temperatures and pressures as gasoline and is often blended into vehicle fuels or used to process tar sands. Pentane, or C5, is also used in the manufacturing of Styrofoam.
The Building Blocks
These materials, sometimes called olefins, are half-way to becoming consumer goods like plastics or chemicals. They’re often produced by “cracking” NGLs (see “crackers” below). While many consumers have never heard their names, they’re the ingredients that form many of the plastic and petrochemical products that wind up on store shelves.
Ethylene: Ethylene is prized by the petrochemical industry, because it can be turned into polyethylene, Styrofoam, PVC, solvents, ingredients used in shampoos and beauty supplies, and a huge array of other products. Over 60 percent of the ethylene made worldwide ends up as polyethylene — and most polyethylene, in turn, is used to make packaging, according to the American Chemistry Council. Plastic packaging has come under fire from environmentalists, who argue that it makes little sense to use something that is so long-lived for a product that’s designed to be almost immediately discarded. Scientific American reports that single-use plastics and plastic packaging can remain in the environment for over 500 years, causing harm to wildlife, getting into the seafood that people eat, and polluting the world’s oceans.
Propylene: In the petrochemical industry, propylene can be used as a fuel — attractive because it burns hotter than propane — or it can be used as a raw material. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s propylene is turned into the plastic polypropylene, 2007 figures show. The remaining third might wind up in acrylic fibers (sometimes called “artificial wool” and used to make socks, carpets, and more), artificial rubber, ABS plastics (the plastics Lego blocks are made from), or flexible foam found in furniture and automobiles.
Methanol: Although methanol is so often made from wood that it’s also known as “wood alcohol” or “wood spirit,” it can also be made from shale gas. One company, U.S. Methanol, is currently working ondismantling methanol plants in Brazil and Slovenia and moving them to West Virginia, where they will be used to make methanol from shale gas. Methanol is used to make formaldehyde and acetic acid, which in turn can become paints, adhesives, resin, and insulation.
Separating NGLs
Separators and Condensate Tanks: A blend of crude oil, natural gas, NGLs, and wastewater flows up to the surface when an oil and gas well comes online. On the well pad, or at processing stations connected to a group of wellheads, gases and liquids can be separated. Inside separators, gases like methane rise to the top as fluids collect below and are stored in tanks. Tanks near a gas well might hold wastewater (sometimes called brine) or they might hold NGLs in liquid form.
This 2016 FLIR video by environmental group Earthworks shows emissions from condensate tanks at a gas well in Payne County, Oklahoma.
Processing Plant: Processing plants can separate out the various hydrocarbons from oil and gas wells more thoroughly than can be done on a well pad. The mix of fluids and gases travels through gathering lines, which are less-regulated, generally smaller-bore pipelines, from the wellhead to a centralized processing plant. At a processing plant, water vapor can be removed through a process called glycol dehydration, which uses a desiccant to absorb water vapor. NGLs can be separated out at processing plants using a similar process or by taking advantage of the fact that each hydrocarbon has different boiling and freezing points, so gas streams can be chilled, heated, or put under differing pressures to isolate NGLs. In the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that gas processing capacity grew nearly 10-fold from 2010 to 2016, when it hit 10 billion cubic feet a day.
Cryogenic Plant: Cryogenic separation is a gas processing method that takes advantage of the fact that methane stays gaseous at very low temperatures, so cryogenic separators chill the combined gases, then send them through a small diameter pipe into an expansion chamber. There, the methane continues flowing as a gas, but most NGLs condense into liquid forms and drop down into the bottom of the expansion chamber.
Fractionation: Fractionators finish the job of separating out NGLs and generally consist of de-ethanizers, depropanizers, debutanizers, and deisobutanizers. As the gas stream passes through towers, where they encounter different pressures and temperatures, a single type of NGL is pulled out of the blend. This Shell Oil video from the 1950s uses a mix of animation and live footage to walk viewers through the science behind the process of separating out different types of hydrocarbon:
In the Rust Belt region, fractional capacity is projected to reach 1.1 million barrels (bbl) a day in 2019, up from 41,000 bbl/day, according to the EIA.
Shipping
NGL Pipeline: Building out an NGL-reliant industry requires the construction of a massive array of pipelines, including the gathering lines that connect wells to processing plants (like the Revolution pipeline that exploded in September 2018, seven days after first going into service) and pipes to carry specific NGLs to buyers, like the Mariner East pipeline project (plagued by construction problems) and Shell’s proposed Falcon pipeline, which will feed its $6 billion ethane cracker plant in Potter County, Pennsylvania. NGL pipelines may also carry ethylene, propylene, and chlorine. The American Chemistry Council estimates that roughly 500 miles of new NGL pipelines passing through Pennsylvania over to Kentucky, will be required to support a new Rust Belt petrochemical corridor.
Compressor Station: At pipeline compressor stations, condensate and wastewater can collect as gas is compressed to propel it across long distances. Those higher pressures can cause liquids to separate out. You may see condensate tanks at these compressor stations.
NGL Export Terminal: When raw ethane and propane are exported for processing overseas, specialized shipping terminals are required to load up liquefied NGLs for transportation by sea. The Marcus Hook terminal in Chester County, Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia, connects to the Mariner East 1 pipeline, and Energy Transfer is currently working on connecting two larger bore pipeline systems, the Mariner East 2 and the Mariner East 2X, to the export terminal as well.
Barge: Cracker plants, which are huge petrochemical complexes, are often built on the banks of rivers, not only because finished products, like tiny plastic beads, can be shipped away by barge, but also because the plants themselves often require pieces of equipment that are too large to transport by road or rail. For example, the de-ethanizer and the C2 splitter at Shell’s Potter Township ethane cracker were both massive, clocking in at a respective 200 feet and 187 feet tall and each weighing hundreds of tons. They arrived at the cracker plant by barge on the Ohio River, as it would have been almost impossible to bring them to the site by road. When companies scout out locations where cracker plants can be built, they must often look for river-side acreage for this reason.
The Gas Station
NGL Storage Site: One of the biggest logistical headaches that the natural gas industry faces is that fact that its product often is, as the name suggests, a gas. Gases are difficult to store and supplies must closely match demand or prices can become fickle. With natural gas liquids, storage can be easier — but to accommodate the volumes of NGLs coming from the Marcellus Shale, the industry still must find huge underground salt formations where companies can store NGLs underground under the conditions to keep them liquid. Once these NGL storage sites are built, they can serve as “gas stations” for ethane crackers — the gigantic plants at the heart of the petrochemicals industry. A single NGL storage site can support multiple crackers. One such site, the Mountaineer NGL storage site, is planned for Monroe County, Ohio. DeSmog has previously reported on the ways that state regulators in Ohio, who have never been faced with permitting a site like Mountaineer, were caught unprepared in what Mountaineer officials called “a relatively undefined setting” for regulation.
Mountaineer, which is expected to cost $500 million, is not the only NGL storage site that experts predict will be hitting drawing boards in the region. In June, an “investment banker/equity capital markets expert who requested anonymity” told Kallanish Energy, a trade publication, that he expected $10 billion in funding for new NGL storage would be available. A $10 billion investment would translate into storage sites with the capacity to store 75 million to 100 million barrels of ethane, ethylene, propane, and propylene, according to the American Chemistry Council.
Transforming Raw Materials
Ethylene Cracker/Ethane Cracker: Cracker plants are huge petrochemical complexes that play a major role in the production of plastics, and they’ve been referred to as the heart of the petrochemical industry. Inside ethylene crackers (which are used to make ethylene), hydrocarbon molecules like ethane or naptha are heated up to temperatures that can reach 1,580 degrees Fahrenheit — as hot as flowing volcanic lava — or higher. At those temperatures, molecular bonds crack apart, and ethylene, propylene, and other byproducts form. These are quickly fed into quenching systems to freeze the cracking process and prevent other unwanted substances from forming. Various contaminants, like tar and coke, must be removed, and propylene and ethylene and other petrochemical building blocks are separated out.
From there, ethylene can be purified, so that sulfur, ammonia, and other impurities are pulled out, and then exposed to a catalyst, causing a chemical reaction that creates polyethylene. That polyethylene can then be shaped into tiny plastic pellets called nurdles (the raw material for producing many plastic products), and hauled away to buyers by truck, rail, or barge.
Often, processing, fractionation, and catalyzation is done on-site at ethane cracker plants. For example, Shell’s ethane cracker under construction in Pennsylvania is designed to accept raw natural gas and transform it into polyethylene all on site.
Historically, many crackers used naphtha, which is derived from crude oil instead of ethane, but with the growth of the shale drilling industry, unwanted ethane supplies have grown, driving prices to historic lows. Crackers that use ethane as a feedstock for ethylene might be referred to as either ethane or ethylene crackers.
“Nine new crackers are expected to come online in the U.S. by 2020 representing 10.7 million tonnes/year of new ethylene capacity,” trade publication Petrochemical Update wrote in October 2018.
Propane Dehydrogenation (PDH) Plant: Propane can similarly be turned into propylene, using a process called dehydrogenation. The American Chemistry Council predicts that the Appalachian region can support two new PDH plants, both with the capacity to turn propylene into 490,000 metric tons of polypropylene resin a day.
Downstream Manufacturing Site: Once the building blocks for the petrochemicals industry, like ethylene and propylene, are made, the range of synthetic materials that can be produced from those building blocks becomes enormous. Paints, vinyl, foams, surfactants (or soap-like products), pesticides, and much of the full repertoire of the modern chemicals industry can be formed from the byproducts of the oil and gas industry.
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/28/field-guide-petrochemical-plastics-industry
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(ACC Mentioned) Can Shale Gas Rebuild The Region's Manufacturing Base?
Oct 26, 2018 | 90.5 WESA
By Julie Grant
The Ohio Valley has long been known for coal and making steel, but the future, according to some predictions, is natural gas and plastics. Richard Regula, is a commissioner in Stark County, Ohio, and is working to expand the petrochemical industry.
“What’s going to happen in this region in the Utica and Marcellus Shale plays is going to impact us positively for the next 100 years in my opinion, at least 50,” Regula said.
More than 2400 gas wells have been drilled using hydraulic fracturing in Ohio since 2012.
Regula is talking not only about the cheap gas from that, but the spinoff industries and development many expect. Excitement has been building since the announcement in 2016 that Shell should be building an ethane cracker plant in Beaver County.
Right now, the ethane, which is a component of the natural gas that’s produced at the region’s wells, is exported to China, Europe or piped to the Gulf Coast.
Building a petrochemical hub
Shell’s $6 billion facility along the Ohio River in Pennsylvania will “crack” the ethane at very high temperatures to make ethylene locally.
“Ethylene is a major raw material that goes into the making of polyethylene,” explained Heather Rose-Glowacki of the trade group, American Chemistry Council. “And polyethylene goes into thousands of products that are used by people every day.”
Polyethylene is used to make everything from plastic bags to car parts to medical devices. A study by the American Chemical Council looked at the ethane supply in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky. They concluded that there could be up to five ethane crackers supported in the region, creating an Appalachian petrochemical hub as an alternative to the Gulf Coast.
Supporters of this idea like to repeat these numbers: 12,000 manufacturers who use plastics are already located within a day’s drive–600 miles–of the region.
But those manufacturers don’t have access to a local supply of polyethylene.
“Right now, this industry operates using product that is transported from the Gulf Coast,” said
Iryna Lendel, Director of the Center for Economic Development at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. Ethane crackers close the loop between gas wells and plastic manufacturers.
“That’s the whole point–to link our oil and gas that we are pumping out, to use this, refine it, and use this within the region,” Lendel said.
A decision is expected soon about construction of a second ethane cracker, a $10 billion dollar facility would be built along the river in Ohio. A company called Mountaineer NGL storage could start storing natural gas liquids, like ethane, in salt caverns in the region as soon as next year.
According to Lendel, the region would also need more plastic and resin manufacturing, more chemical manufacturing, and more petroleum refineries to build the supply chain for a real petrochemical hub.
“The more product we refine within the region, the more and longer we keep this product within our economies and the more we capture benefits and economic wealth,” she said.
More than 75,000 people in Ohio are already employed in the plastics industry, second nationally to California, according to the Plastics Industry Association. Pennsylvania has 47,000 people working in plastics.
Local economies expecting a boost
Officials in Stark County, Ohio say the Shell cracker is already creating new business interests there.
Ray Hexamer, president of the Stark Economic Development Board, finds it exciting. In the past six months, three companies have come to them looking at opportunities in the plastics industry.
“So, what it means for Northeast Ohio–they’re good paying jobs, those jobs will elevate the economic environment for our community. We all get lifted by a rising tide,” Hexamer said.
A new, yet to be published study by economists at Washington and Jefferson College,south of Pittsburgh, bolsters that argument. It finds that counties with ethane crackers have higher individual earnings than the national average, more than $5,600 per year. The study found that counties adjacent to cracker plants also saw an earnings boost.
What about the environment?
But of course, locking the region into a petrochemical hub of gas wells, pipelines, chemical cracking and plastics manufacturing is concerning to many people.
Outside a meeting of Marcellus Shale industry leaders in Pittsburgh this week, about 60 people, including members of various native tribes, gathered to protest. Standing where the Allegheny meets the Ohio River, Sharon Day of Minnesota, a member of the Ojibwe Nation, remembered her walk along 980 miles of the Ohio a few years ago.
“This a beautiful, beautiful river,” she said. “It has undergone so much stress and pollution over the years, that it’s going to really require effort by everybody to make her healthy again.” The Ohio River is the drinking water source for five million people, and many people fish and boat on it.
While supporters of petrochemical development say they trust regulators to protect public safety and the environment, Cheryl Johncox, of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, based in Columbus, Ohio, doesn’t think they should.
“We can’t assume the regulators are taking care of it anymore,” she said.
Johncox pointed to the recent explosion of a natural gas pipeline that destroyed a home in Pennsylvania as an example of the safety concerns. When it comes to keeping the air and water clean, Johncox gave a litany of regulatory rollbacks underway by the current administration in Washington.
“They are trying to gut the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, all the components,” she said. “The methane emissions program; they’re attacking the Ohio River Water Sanitation Commission. There’s a no holds barred on those protections.”
The region can't pass up this chance to rebuild its industry
In Ohio, Stark County Commissioner Richard Regula doesn’t see reason for concern about the environment. His family has a long history in Ohio politics, including his father Ralph Regula’s 18 terms in Congress.
“My father was the founder of the Ohio EPA, and I’m carrying on his legacy to protect the environment,” Regula said. “But to me this is a once in a lifetime, or once in a generation opportunity.”
Regula is pushing for roadway improvements to help expansion of a Marathon oil refinery in his county, and looks forward to all the jobs he says he expects in the coming years.
http://www.wesa.fm/post/can-shale-gas-rebuild-regions-manufacturing-base#stream/0
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Driven by Trump Policy Changes, Fracking Booms on Public Lands
Oct 27, 2018 | The New York Times
By Eric Lipton and Hiroko Tabuchi
The parade of trailer trucks rolling through Jay Butler’s dusty ranch is a precursor to a new fracking boom on the vast federal lands of Wyoming and across the West.
Reversing a trend in the final years of the Obama presidency, the Trump administration is auctioning off millions of acres of drilling rights to oil and gas developers, a central component of the White House’s plan to work hand in glove with the industry to promote more domestic energy production.
Seeing growth and profit opportunities at a time of rising oil prices and a pro-business administration, big energy companies like Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, and Anschutz Exploration are seizing on the federal lands free-for-all, as they collectively buy up tens of thousands of acres of new leases and apply for thousands of permits to drill.
In total, more than 12.8 million acres of federally controlled oil and gas parcels were offered for lease in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, triple the average offered during President Barack Obama’s second term, according to an analysis by The New York Times of Interior Department data compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that advocates budget discipline.
Like the acreage offered for lease, the acreage actually leased by energy companies on federal lands hit its highest level last year since 2012, the height of the initial fracking boom in the United States. After 2012, a combination of Obama administration policy decisions and lower oil prices slowed demand for new drilling rights, a trend reversed since President Trump took office.
That reversal has been propelled in part by the Interior Department’s willingness to go along with industry pressure to weaken rules that govern how these federal lands can be used, as regulators follow detailed industry scripts for rollbacks in protections for wildlife, air quality and groundwater supplies, documents show.
The push amounts to one of Mr. Trump’s most comprehensive and controversial policy initiatives. It underscores the administration’s eagerness to reshape regulation at the behest of industry, and is playing out more immediately and visibly across big parts of the country than many of the other changes he is making to federal management of the environment.
As the bustling traffic on Mr. Butler’s central Wyoming ranch suggests, the boom is already starting to transform this rural landscape at a tremendous pace. The number of drilling rigs operating in the state has doubled since 2016 — and more are on the way. As many as 5,000 new oil wells are being planned in Converse, a county of about 14,000 people, along with 1,970 miles of new roads.
Mr. Butler’s ranch sits atop federally owned, below-ground mineral rights that the Interior Department has leased out, and he charges drilling, fracking, pipeline and other crews for the right to cross his property.
The leases give fossil fuel companies the right to drill for the oil and gas beneath the land at any point in the coming decade. Once the wells have been drilled — and the companies start to pay a 12.5 percent royalty on any oil or gas they extract — they can hold onto the producing leases indefinitely.
Mr. Butler’s cellphone rang every few minutes as a different contractor called.
“We are going seven days a week,” Mr. Butler said one recent afternoon at his cattle ranch here, watching as the trucks navigated a rutted pathway he calls his private toll road.
The surge in activity has been bolstered by the Trump administration’s eagerness to comply with the industry’s requests to roll back federal rules touching on almost every aspect of oil and gas companies’ operations here.
A successful push by industry lobbyists has changed internal policies that govern how frequently new federal leases are offered, how quickly drilling permits are approved and how much the companies pay in royalties on oil and gas that they extract from the federal lands. The administration, at the industry’s request, also cut the time the public has to challenge federal land sales.
The Interior Department is also moving to ease restrictions that had limited access to certain critical wildlife habitats, such as the mating grounds used by the sage grouse, a chubby bird with a small head and long tail that is famous for the colorful dance the male birds perform each spring.
The population of sage grouses in Wyoming — home to an estimated 40 percent of their global population — slumped over the past decades, but had started to recover after an intense effort to protect their mating grounds. Now, for two years in a row, the estimated male bird population has dropped nearly 30 percent according to state counts, declines that in the past have been attributed to surging energy production.
But perhaps the most visible shift — and real-world consequence — involves the watering down, completed in August, of an Obama-era rule intended to curb the flaring or venting of methane, an earth-warming gas that is roughly 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The hillsides here in Wyoming now light up like a birthday cake from the flaring at oil and gas production sites, which blaze through the day and night. Production has so outpaced the construction of new local pipelines that companies simply vent or burn off methane into the High Plains air at a rapidly increasing rate, state data shows. Through July, energy companies had flared or vented 72 percent more methane in Wyoming compared with two years ago, approaching levels seen before a national effort to reduce such emissions was starting.
Oil and gas industry executives have celebrated these and other rollbacks as well as the surge in federal leasing, after years of complaining that Obama administration policies discouraged them from drilling on public lands.
“The president, love him or hate him, he’s doing what he said he would do in Washington,” Samantha McDonald, who until August served as a top lobbyist at the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said during an industry event in Houston. “He’s been actively pursuing a deregulatory agenda that has had millions of dollars of impact.”
The move is generating windfalls for the companies involved.
“The Powder River Basin in Wyoming is quickly establishing itself as the growth engine of the company,” Chesapeake Energy told investors in its most recent earnings report. The company expects oil and gas production in the region to more than double in 2019 compared with this year.
To proponents, the Trump administration is putting government-owned land to good use, with big returns for taxpayers.
Nationally, oil production on federal lands is rising at an extraordinary pace, jumping 25 percent in the first seven months of this year compared with 2016, the last year of the Obama administration.
That boom has driven up government revenue from lease sales and royalties collected from oil and gas production on federal lands, which is shared with the states. Wyoming received $669 million from federal oil, gas and coal sales last year, money it uses to help pay for its schools, roads and other needs. One federal lease sale in New Mexico last month brought in nearly $1 billion worth of bids, more than the total lease sale revenuefrom all sales nationwide in 2017.
“This historic lease sale shows what is possible when we leverage the vast natural resources we have in our country, using innovation, best science and best practices,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in September, celebrating the result of that particular lease sale, adding that critics of the Trump administration’s efforts to increase energy production “are eating their words and once again President Trump’s policies are bearing fruit for the American people.”
But the Interior Department has offered so much land through auctions in the last two years that the majority have failed to attract any bidders. Even so, the overall amount of land actually leased — in deals signed with oil and gas companies or investors — was 1.2 million acres in 2017, according to the agency, more than double the amount from the previous year, and reached 1.35 million acres this year.
As Western states reap the benefits from these sales, they are also confronting the risks that the administration’s policies could scar iconic American landscapes, threatening wildlife and endangering public health.
Trump-era leases have given oil and gas companies access to drilling rights in areas that are known habitats for threatened species, and immediately next to preserved landscapes like the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, famous for its ancient pueblos, rock art and other archaeological sites.
“The American West embodies the American spirit and that is at risk here,” said Jeremy Nichols, the energy program director at WildEarth Guardians, a nonprofit group that has filed more than a dozen protests and lawsuits over lease sales in the West. “The open spaces, clean air, wild rivers — this is all part of fabric of the American West, and it is being torn apart, acre by acre, by this unfettered oil and gas leasing.”
The stack of pending “permits to drill” sat in a neat pile nearly three feet high on Randy Sorenson’s desk at the Wyoming regional office of the Bureau of Land Management, the division of the Interior Department that oversees an inventory of 700 million acres of so-called mineral rights in the United States. The land is concentrated in 12 Western states.
“These are just the ones that made it my desk yesterday and today,” Mr. Sorenson said on a recent morning.
That stack is likely to grow. Mr. Sorenson is preparing for a February lease sale of as much as 780,000 acres in Wyoming, the largest such sale he can remember in decades.
The allure to energy companies in this part of the state starts with geological formations laden with rich layers of oil and gas deposits.
“I call it the potato chip can,” Mr. Sorenson said, explaining that there is satisfaction, at least for the oil companies, at every level.
Anschutz, controlled by Philip F. Anschutz, a Colorado-based billionaire and a major funder of Republicans running for Congress, has bought up almost 90,000 acres of public lands since 2017.
The company expects to drill 20 wells this year in the Powder River area with the two rigs it has in the county, and plans to bring in another two rigs by 2020, pushing its planned oil production from its current level of about 5,000 barrels a day in Wyoming to more than 60,000 within four years, company documents show.
The industry’s enthusiasm for drilling in the region has been supported by its lobbying campaign for deregulation.
The efforts started during the Obama administration, when the oil and gas industry groups like the Western Energy Alliance and the Independent Petroleum Association of America sued the Interior Department in attempts to reverse a slowdown of oil and gas lease sales. At the same time, the groups were moving to block new rules such as a mandate that the companies disclose the fracking chemicals they use.
Weeks after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, senior administration aides, urged on by the industry, began to reverse the Obama-era policies, documents show.
“Yesterday afternoon we, BLM & Solicitor’s Office, had a preliminary discussion on possible settlement conditions with the Western Energy Alliance,” said one February 2017 email from Kathleen Benedetto, a geologist and former executive at an oil and gas consulting firm, whom Mr. Zinke named as a senior adviser at the Bureau of Land Management.
The outcome of that meeting became public this year, when the Interior Department sent a detailed “instruction memorandum” to field offices nationwide, ordering them to eliminate “unnecessary impediments and burdens” limiting the ability of the department to offer more land for lease. The steps included cutting down the amount of time that individual citizens or groups have to file protests challenging any oil and gas lease to 10 days, from a month.
The agency also notified the Bureau of Land Management offices that they would now have no more than six months to decide on nominations by the oil and gas industry of federal land they wanted to lease. Previously, that process often took more than a year, during which the Interior Department had to decide if the land should be kept available as pristine wild lands, or designated for other uses, such as farming or hiking.
That was just the start of a flurry of revisions to rules under the Trump administration that have reflected the industry agenda. In June 2018, the department issued a second memo that allowed Bureau of Land Management offices to skip the comprehensive environmental studies that have historically been conducted before issuing new leases. Field offices could instead use bureaucratic loopholes known as categorical exclusions and other measures that allowed officials to do away with environmental assessments, letting them “expedite the processing” of permits to drill, the memo said.
Trump-era rollbacks of Interior Department rules that govern methane releases, and a requirement that oil and gas companies disclose fracking chemicals they use on federal land, also followed intervention by industry.
In July 2017, Kathleen M. Sgamma, the president of the Western Energy Alliance, wrote to the Interior Department, arguing that the Obama-era sage grouse rules were far too protective. The measures included “overly expansive and burdensome” buffers, such as a requirement that drilling not take place within 3.1 miles of areas where the male birds gather for their annual courtship displays.
“These provisions are contrary to the president’s executive order” to promote energy independence, Ms. Sgamma wrote.
Ms. McDonald, then a top lobbyist at the Independent Petroleum Association of America, also intervened on behalf of oil companies like Chesapeake, ConocoPhillips and EOG Resources, pushing for specific changes in zones set up in Wyoming to protect sage grouses.
“To ignore the problem," Ms. McDonald wrote in a July 2017 email, could “jeopardize several dozen projects in Wyoming.” A top ConocoPhillips executive had reached out the previous day with a similar plea, reinforcing the industry’s demand.
Ms. McDonald followed up the next month, asking Timothy Williams, a senior official at the Interior Department, if the bureau had “been able to resolve this map discrepancy in Wyoming yet?” Two minutes later, he responded, “We are working on it. I have let the secretary know as well.”
Last summer, Mr. Zinke proposed a new policy that reflected the changethe oil companies had requested. A final action is expected soon.
Representatives for ConocoPhillips, Chevron and EOG, together with energy industry associations, said that they were committed to responsibly extracting oil and gas from public lands.
“We will continue to work with regulators to ensure that regulations are cost-effective, scientifically based and not duplicative, overly burdensome or in conflict with other regulations,” Daren Beaudo, director of media relations at ConocoPhillips, said in an email. Chesapeake and Anschutz declined to comment.
Faith C. Vander Voort, the Interior Department’s deputy press secretary, said in a statement that actions the agency had taken were smart regulatory overhauls that were “fostering increased investment.” The changes were based largely on requests from the states, which were now benefiting from that increased investment, not industry players.
“It is an empty criticism launched by special interest groups who are not interested in facts,” she said.
The “Notice of Competitive Oil and Gas Lease Sale” was published on the first day of August: a detailed list that ran on for 134 pages notifying any interested bidders that 355,819 acres across Wyoming were about to be put up for auction.
Minimum bids as low as $2 an acre would be accepted for these 350 different parcels, including a series of plots that are just east of the Bighorn National Forest, one of the oldest national forests in the United States.
“Bidding starts on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018 at 7:30 a.m. Mountain time,” the notice said, in all capital letters.
The advertisement drew intense and immediate interest from the industry, with 116 different companies, including EOG, Anschutz and Chesapeake, registering for the internet auction.
But it was not just the oil industry that took notice. The pending auction drew formal protests from 10 conservation and environmental groups who argued that the sale was about more than simply bolstering the nation’s “energy dominance.”
The land on the auction block included mule deer migration corridors and sage grouse mating areas, the protests noted. Drilling on these plots would push up air pollution and ozone levels in a state that has suffered from bad air quality during the last natural gas boom, the groups argued.
It also might deplete critical groundwater supplies needed for area ranchers, they said. One oil and gas project in Converse County alone is expected to consume as much as 55 million barrels of water a year — or 124,100 barrels of water for each oil and gas well drilled.
“Our organizations generally support the judicious leasing and responsible development of the public’s oil and gas resources when done in the right place and after full disclosure of the environmental impacts that will result from development,” said Bruce Pendery, a Utah-based lawyer for the Wilderness Society. “We have concluded that with respect to this proposal, none of those basic guiding tenets have been achieved.”
Not just environmental groups are concerned. In Utah, the National Park Service, itself a division of the Interior Department, tried to stop the sale of a collection of leases next to the Hovenweep National Monument, known for its mesas, ravines and recovered ruins of prehistoric villages. Its pleas were ignored, and the department sold those parcels for as little as $3 an acre in March.
Even Gov. Matthew Mead of Wyoming, a Republican who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from energy companies, admonished interior officials this year for excluding Western states in changes the agency was making to sage grouse protection efforts.
“We ask that you involve the Western governors in these initiatives at the earliest point possible,” Governor Mead wrote in January in a letter that Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado also signed.
More recently, the Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to a 140,859-acre project in western Wyoming — one that will feature as many as 3,500 new wells — in an area that also includes one of the world’s most important winter habitats for sage grouse, said Tom Christiansen, who served as Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s sage grouse coordinator until last month.
Drilling there will mean as much as $2.2 billion in new federal revenue over the life of the project, the Bureau of Land Management said in its approval document signed at the end of August. But counts of sage grouse populations in Wyoming over the last two years have already declined about 30 percent, he said. Though the decrease could be weather-related, there is real concern over the effect drilling could have on vital areas where the birds live.
“Literally, thousands of the birds winter there,” he said. “We are talking about the highest density population in Wyoming of sage grouse, which has the highest density population in the world. I am very concerned.”
Some ranchers in Wyoming now worry that oil and gas development will consume so much water that not enough will be left over for the cattle that graze on their land.
“If you lose water, you lose everything,” said Terry Henderson, whose extended family has been working land in the Converse County area as far back as the 1800s. “You can’t stay here if you don’t have water.”
Ms. Vander Voort, the Interior Department spokeswoman, said the agency had taken steps to limit the impact of the drilling, including lease stipulations that ban oil and gas companies from occupying the surface of the land in certain sensitive migration corridors. “Developing our resources and protecting the environment are not mutually exclusive,” she said in a statement. The agency at times has also delayed certain lease sales, after objections are raised, including some to the north in Montana this year, and it has now decided to remove some of the land slated to be sold during a December lease sale in Wyoming.
Many landowners and ranchers — like Mr. Butler — welcome the surge in oil production, and are convinced that the work can move ahead without harming the environment for residents, farm animals and wildlife.
Even as the trucks buzzed across his land — five drilling rigs were working nearby — he had hunters on his property using bow and arrows to take down a pronghorn antelope, whose population is so large it still needs to be culled.
He has also worked hard to cultivate sagebrush — the bitter-smelling, prickly plants that the sage grouse depends on for cover and food — on his ranch, earning him status as a certified conservation rancher, even as the oil industry tears up parts of his land.
Mr. Butler sells off access to chunks of his property — moving cattle if necessary — to oil and gas companies to allow them to build gas compressor stations, drilling pads, pipelines and other equipment necessary to serve the wells — collecting payments for each deal.
“There is a healthy tension between the landowners and oil and gas,” Mr. Butler, a retired high school biology teacher, said as he offered a tour of his ranch via his dust-filled pickup truck. “We all have a vested interest to make sure these resources are developed responsibly.”
The day before the Sept. 18 auction, the Bureau of Land Management issued a decision that concluded the leases “do not constitute a major federal action that will adversely impact the quality of the human environment.”
Then, hours before the auction began, the agency formally rejected the protests from environmental groups with a letter peppered with 30 instances of the word “deny.”
“After a careful review, the B.L.M. has determined that the protests to the parcels in this sale will be dismissed or denied,” said the letter, signed by Duane Spencer, the deputy state director.
All but 37 of the 348 parcels up for sale attracted bidders, with one of the highest bids coming from Chesapeake, the Oklahoma-based oil and gas company, which paid just over $2 million for 200 acres of land.
Environmental groups continue to fight back. This past week, the bureau was forced to delay a planned December sale of almost 600 parcels in sage grouse habitats in Wyoming after a federal judge temporarily reinstated the Obama-era policy of allowing more time for public comment in areas where the birds breed.
Out on the federal land, the drilling crews are already working day and night to bore new wells deep into the earth. The crews work 12-hour shifts, in two-week stints, some of them spending their off hours inside cramped trailers set up just below the drilling tower.
“We get paid to dig holes,” said Kyle Heinrich, 24, who was taking a break from a Chesapeake drilling site in Converse County, in a muddied hard hat and overalls with huge metal clips he uses to attach himself to the giant rigs.
As a herd of pronghorn antelope grazed nearby, the sun set over an otherwise empty landscape. “There is a lot of talk,” he said, “about this area blowing up.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/climate/trump-fracking-drilling-oil-gas.html
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EPA’s Wheeler Touts 'Certainty' Agenda in Shale Country Appearance
Oct 26, 2018 | Natural Gas Intelligence
By Jamison Cocklin
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler was back in Pittsburgh on Wednesday to reassure an oil and gas industry audience that his agency under President Trump is “removing regulatory barriers and leveling the playing field for American companies.”
Wheeler traveled to the Pittsburgh region to tour a Range Resources Corp. well site earlier this year on his first official trip outside of Washington, D.C. after being named acting administrator in July when Scott Pruitt resigned. He addressed the Shale Insight conference on Thursday, just two years after Trump received a warm reception from conference attendees when he was on the campaign trail.
Under Trump, Wheeler said, the EPA has finalized 28 deregulatory actions and has another 49 deregulatory actions in the works.
“Our goal is to free you to do what you do best, which is to innovate, create and produce,” he said in touting the less onerous methane emission rules the agency has proposed. Wheeler, who Trump said this week could be nominated to lead the agency officially, framed his presentation to the industry audience through the lense of certainty, and providing more of it not just for the regulated community, but for state regulators as well.
“The states are the primary implementers and enforcers of our environmental laws and programs, those closest to the issue are often best suited to address it, not bureaucrats in Washington,” he said.
Wheeler said the EPA has been trying to work more closely with states to rebalance regulatory roles. Those efforts, he added, have led to an “oil and gas action plan.”
For example, EPA is in the process of developing a new owner audit program tailored for the oil and gas sector that would “make it easier for the regulated community to self disclose and correct violations.
“We recognize that some in industry have been reluctant to take advantage of self-audit programs because they’re wary of EPA using that information against them for federal enforcement.” To counter that perception, Wheeler said the agency would sign a memorandum of understanding with Wyoming on Friday to “make clear” that EPA won’t use information provided under a state audit program to target enforcement.
Following EPA’s proposal in September to roll back some of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards for oil and gas, Wheeler said the agency is drafting a policy proposal assessing whether it makes sense to separately regulate methane.
“We will assess whether the entire oil and gas sector should be regulated as one source, given significant differences between production and processing and storage and distribution, or whether those should be split into separate sources,” Wheeler said. “If the source was split, it is not clear that the relative greenhouse gas emissions would be high enough to trigger the significant contribution criteria that is the prerequisite to setting a performance standard for recovering a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.”
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration has been working in recent years to implement a broad plan to cut industry emissions in Pennsylvania, including methane. Permitting requirements for unconventional natural gas wells and some midstream facilities that were aimed at cutting air pollution took effect in August. State officials also have said that Trump’s plans to roll back some regulations won’t affect Wolf’s plans to curb emissions.
Wheeler reiterated that the agency is also trying to streamline its operations to improve the way it deals with industry and other stakeholders by tracking permits and legal actions. An effort is also underway, he said, to focus more on compliance than enforcement.
“I’m not advocating for letting people off the hook or reducing fines,” he said, “but rather I’m advocating for making enforcement decisions in a timely and consistent manner.” Enforcement efforts, Wheeler added, would primarily be focused on heavily populated nonattainment areas as opposed to more remote parts of the country, where the EPA expects industry to better comply with rules and regulations on their own.
Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, was confirmed by the Senate last April as deputy EPA administrator. While Pruitt resigned in the face of numerous abuse of power allegations, Wheeler has faced criticism over his background.
He previously served as chief of staff for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), and worked at the EPA during the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations. He most recently worked as a principal at FaegreBD Consulting. Wheeler also is a former lobbyist and has represented Murray Energy Corp., which has sued the EPA over proposed changes to National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
His remarks Wednesday at Shale Insight, where about 1,000 attendees were expected for the three-day conference sponsored by the region’s leading trade groups, were delivered as environmental organizations, tribal members and other industry opponents had gathered for a demonstration march in the street to oppose the conference and its message.
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/116251-epas-wheeler-touts-certainty-agenda-in-shale-country-appearance
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Facing Suit, EPA Plans To Delay State Deadlines For Landfill Methane Rule
Oct 26, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Lee Logan
EPA is floating a proposal that would delay the existing deadline until mid-2019 for states to submit compliance plans for Obama-era methane rules for landfills, arguing the plan would align with its separate proposed power sector greenhouse gas rule that similarly extends state compliance deadlines.
The power sector rule, which EPA has dubbed the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, serves as a narrow replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. It also would “modernize” 1975 implementing regulations for section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the statute under which both the landfill and utility rules were issued.
The new landfill proposal, signed Oct. 23, will be open for comment for 45 days once it is published in the Federal Register.
The Obama landfill rules for existing facilities, issued in August 2016, required states to submit compliance plans within nine months, or by May 30, 2017. However, the Trump administration has signaled that it will not aggressively enforce that deadline and only three states -- California, Arizona and New Mexico -- have submitted plans.
The agency's new proposal would extend the deadline until August 2019, giving states a full three years to submit plans, which is consistent with the ACE rule's proposed changes to the 111(d) implementing rules.
“This would ensure consistent treatment of all states and state plans, avoid confusion regarding deadlines, and allow the EPA to undertake a completeness review for state plans already submitted to the EPA,” the agency says.
On the same day as EPA unveiled the new proposal, the Justice Department (DOJ) on behalf of EPA flagged the proposal in ongoing litigation brought by a coalition of California and seven other states over the agency's lax implementation of the landfill standards.
DOJ's Oct. 23 notice simply sought to “notify” the court that EPA has issued the proposal. If finalized, however, the rule could lay the groundwork for the agency to eventually argue the case is moot.
Judge Haywood Gilliam of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is currently considering DOJ's Aug. 7 motion to dismiss the suit, after briefing concluded on that motion earlier this month.
'Work, Effort and Time'
EPA says that giving states three years to submit compliance plans for section 111(d) rules would align with the statute's direction that state plan requirements be “similar” to state implementation plans (SIPs) for EPA's national ambient air quality standards issued under section 110.
“Due to the amount of work, effort, and time required for developing state plans, the EPA has determined that extending the submission date of state plans from [nine] months to [three] years is appropriate,” the proposal says. “This change would allow states more time to interact and work with the EPA in the development of state plans and minimize the chance of unexpected issues arising that could slow down eventual approval of state plans.”
EPA is also proposing to extend the period that it has to approve or disapprove state plans from the current four months to a year. Under the air law, if states do not submit a satisfactory plan, EPA must issue a federal compliance plan.
Further, it would extend from six months to two years the amount of time EPA has to issue such a federal plan for the landfill standards.
In summary, the proposal means that EPA would not be forced to issue any federal plan until early 2023, after factoring in the various deadlines for plan submission and review.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/facing-suit-epa-plans-delay-state-deadlines-landfill-methane-rule
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CP Chem Developing New Cracker, Derivatives: Phillips 66 CEO
Oct 26, 2018 | Platts
By Kristen Hays
Chevron Phillips Chemical is working on initial designs and permits for new steam cracker and associated derivatives, with plans to make a final decision to move ahead in late 2019 or early 2020, Phillips 66 CEO Greg Garland said Friday.
Garland also said the joint venture of Phillips 66 and Chevron was evaluating capacity increases "across multiple product lines" to bottlenecks in existing units, including the company's newest 1.5 million mt/year cracker just east of Houston that started up in early 2018.
He did not disclose volumes or further details of the new units in development or debottlenecking projects during Phillip 66's quarterly earnings call on Friday, but he noted that such projects that squeeze more capacity from existing assets "are the easiest ones to do" with the highest returns.
"So we'll prosecute those," he said.
CP Chem is among US petrochemical producers that have built new crackers and derivative units -- mainly polyethylene -- in light of abundant cheap ethane feedstock unearthed by the domestic natural gas boom. The company started up two new 500,000 mt/year PE plants at its Sweeny, Texas, refining, chemical and natural gas liquids complex in September, and followed up with the new cracker at its Cedar Bayou site in Baytown in the first quarter this year. Hurricane Harvey's assault on the Texas coast delayed those startups, the cracker in particular as the Cedar Bayou site took on up to eight feet of water in places when the storm parked over southeast Texas for several days.
Those plants are among eight new crackers and 13 new PE plants starting up between 2017 and 2019, with more to come in 2020 and beyond.
In recent months producers have seen ethylene margins narrow as feedstock ethane prices rise sharply as new cracker ramp-ups hiked demand, but fractionation and pipeline infrastructure to process and move ethane to markets lagged behind. US ethane prices surged to 61 cents/gal on September 18, beating 60 cents on back-to-back trading days for the first time since July 17-18, 2012. Ethylene prices rose accordingly, reaching 23 cents/lb FD USG, according to S&P Global Platts data.
Ethane prices have since retreated to 33 cents/gal on Thursday, near levels last seen in July.
"Ethane kind of had a wild ride in the high 30s, more than doubled back down at the high 30s and it's below that today," Garland said. "And I think the industry just had a hard time keeping up with that, so it did cause some margin compression."
The industry will "be at this tension point" until more fractionation capacity comes online next year and in 2020, he said. Phillips 66 is among companies adding such capacity with two fractionators under construction along with additional storage at its Sweeny complex. In the interim, he said export propane prices would set the ceiling for ethane prices, while ethane's fuel value would set the floor.
"There's plenty of ethane, we just need the frac capacity to get it out," Garland said.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/102618-cp-chem-developing-new-cracker-derivatives-phillips-66-ceo
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Five Energy and Environment Ballot Questions to Watch
Oct 28, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama
Voters in various states will be weighing in next month on high-stakes ballot initiatives that seek to implement major changes to environment and energy policies.
From banning offshore drilling off to levying what would be the country’s first tax on carbon dioxide emissions, the Nov. 6 ballot measures aim to push back on dominant forces at the state or federal level.ADVERTISEMENT
Millions of dollars have been spent on both sides in some of the fiercest battles, with some being viewed as test cases for policies that could be enacted by other states or on a national scale.
Here are five of the most consequential initiatives facing voters on Election Day.
Washington state carbon tax
Initiative 1631 has attracted international attention, and contributions from across the country, with more than $25 million spent in opposition and $12 million in support, according to state records.
The measure would charge companies $15 for each metric ton of carbon dioxide they emit, increasing by $2 each year until Washington meets its 2035 climate goal of 25 percent below greenhouse gas emission levels from the 1990s. The money would go toward clean air and water projects, as well as to community health initiatives.
Supporters see the vote as a crucial test of the most strongly supported methods for charging polluters for the environmental harm caused by greenhouse gases.
“Initiative 1631 is the sensible step Washington needs to hold big polluters accountable and invest in real solutions help make clean energy more affordable for more people,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), a leading proponent of the proposal, said in a statement. “Here's the thing — big oil companies, the same industry trying to destroy our federal environmental protections, are doing everything they can to stop this Initiative from winning in November.”
Opponents counter that it would raise costs for families and businesses.
“Initiative 1631 is an ineffective, costly and unfair energy tax that would force Washington families and small businesses to pay billions in higher costs for gasoline, electricity and natural gas — costing households $440 in the first year alone, increasing every year with no cap,” said Dana Bieber, spokeswoman for the official No on 1631 campaign. “All the while exempting the state’s largest polluters, providing no specific spending plan and no real accountability.”
Colorado oil and natural gas drilling restrictions
Proposition 112 would require oil and natural gas wells be at least 2,500 feet from homes, schools, hospitals, waterways and other areas deemed “vulnerable,” more than double the current 1,000 ft. threshold.
That would put as much as 95 percent of the state off-limits to drilling, according to industry estimates. That’s a big deal in the state that ranks No. 6 in the country in both oil and natural gas production, and it’s why the proposal is opposed by the oil industry, Republicans and even some of the state’s high-profile Democrats: gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jared Polis, Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
“Coloradans need to know exactly what is at stake: private property rights, more than 100,000 good- paying jobs, more than $1 billion in taxes for schools, parks and libraries, and our nation’s energy security,” said Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. “A half-mile setback is a blatant attempt by activists to ban oil and natural gas in Colorado and put working families on the unemployment line.”
But the proposal’s backers are optimistic about their chances, especially after a poll this month by the University of Colorado found that 52 percent of voters support the ballot initiative.
Anne Lee Foster, an organizer with Colorado Rising, said the proposal grew out of frustrations in the state’s oil and gas areas, where some people felt companies and state regulators weren’t sufficiently protecting residents.
“We’ve decided to take the power back into our own hands and run a ballot initiative to create our own protections for our communities,” she said.
Florida offshore drilling ban
Amendment 9 would enshrine in Florida’s constitution a ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling in state waters, which extend out 3 miles on the Atlantic coast and 9 miles in the Gulf of Mexico.
The drilling restrictions are already on the books, so the amendment would make it harder to reverse them. The state’s House voted in 2009 to repeal the offshore drilling ban. And even though the Senate never took up the measure, it nonetheless spooked drilling opponents who now want the question taken out of lawmakers’ hands.
“We need further protection in the state constitution, because we cannot risk the potential for drilling and the oil spills and the pollution that always come with drilling,” said Susan Glickman, Florida director at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The oil industry argues the amendment is unnecessary because the restrictions have been in place for years. They also say it will make it harder to start drilling if it’s necessary in the future.
“The amendment is redundant to a state law that prohibits oil and gas exploration in state waters and has remained in place for more than 30 years,” said David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council.
“Changing the constitution is filled with time constraints that are not practical should a major global situation occur that exploration could become necessary for national security. A law change is not constrained this way.”
A vote in favor of the amendment is also seen as a symbolic move against the Trump administration’s proposal to allow drilling in federal jurisdiction in the Gulf of Mexico. A handful of other states opposed to the Trump administration’s drilling ban have also recently implemented bans on drilling within the waters they oversee, including New Jersey, California and Oregon.
Due to a decision by Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission, the drilling ban amendment also would ban vaping in restaurants and other enclosed workplaces.
California fuel tax repeal
Voters in California, a state where ballot initiatives are commonplace, will consider a Republican-backed measure to repeal a 2017 law that boosted gasoline and diesel taxes by 12 cents and 20 cents per gallon, respectively. Last year’s law also began annual, automatic increases that would stop if the initiative passes.
With California’s notoriously high cost of living and the highest fuel taxes in the country, supporters think Proposition 6 has a good chance of passing.
“The gas tax is a real symbolic catch-all for the myriad of failures in California government,” said Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego city council member and leader of the organization supporting the proposition. “It really does reflect that in California, we have a legislature that has no care, no regard, no understanding of the cost-of-living impacts of the policies that they are enacting.”
Opponents of the measure have accused its supporters of using the initiative as a way to boost turnout among GOP voters, thereby helping Republican congressional candidates in districts where they’re at risk. They note that Republicans in the California House delegation helped fund the signature drive for the measure.
“I don’t care why someone joined our coalition,” DeMaio said. “I just care that they’re here and we’re dedicated to the same common goal, which is provided tax relief to working families by repealing the gas tax.”
Opponents also say the proposal would deprive the state of badly needed infrastructure funds.
“The fact is, Prop 6 doesn't lower gas prices and will end up costing California drivers more in the long run,” Michael Quigley, executive director of the California Alliance for Jobs, said in a statement. “The only guarantee is that Proposition 6 will immediately eliminate $5 billion annually in existing transportation funds dedicated to transportation improvements – making our roads, bridges and transportation system less safe and more congested.”
Nevada renewable energy mandate
Nevadans will be voting on Question 6, a proposal that would double the Renewable Portfolio Standard — the minimum portion of electricity that utilities must get from renewable sources — to 50 percent by 2030.
That would make the sunny Silver State one of the top in the nation for renewable mandates.
“We spend more than $700 million on fossil fuels that we import to be burned in our power plants every year,” said Kyle Roerink, spokesman for the Yes on 6 campaign. “What we’re saying is that’s not good enough for one of the sunniest and most geothermal-rich states in the nation. We could be doing a lot better.”
Eugene Hoover, a representative of the No on 6 campaign, told KRNVthere’s no need to change the state’s energy mix.
“Natural gas is our largest use of generating power in the state right now; currently, I think we should continue with that,” he told the station. “It is very affordable for us and it is very affordable for the families across Nevada.”
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/413433-five-energy-and-environment-ballot-questions-to-watch
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All About: Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells
Oct 29, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Leslie A. Pappas
As many as 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells dot the U.S., many leaching methane and toxics into the air and groundwater, and even into buildings and homes. About two-thirds of these wells are not capped and those that are plugged are often sealed with cement using 1970s-era methods and materials. Roughly a quarter of those wells are in the Appalachian Basin.
The wells aren’t limited to the countryside. In 2016, residents of an apartment building in Wheeling, W.Va., had to evacuate after oil from a well abandoned in 1908 started seeping up through their basement tiles.
Many abandoned wells were drilled before regulatory agencies even existed. With no environmental regulation during the nation’s early stages of oil and gas development, many wells weren’t closed down or plugged properly after the drilling stopped.
States are stepping up in various ways to address the challenges the wells pose. In Colorado, the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has warned state lawmakers that the rate of new orphan wells is going up every year and identified 244 that need to be cleaned up. California recently passed laws to encourage capping of its 21,000 idle oil wells.
And in Pennsylvania, which by conservative estimates has at least 100,000 abandoned wells, the state Department of Environmental Protection has been working since 1989 with communities and nonprofits to identify and map them. The DEP also has launched an online tool in Allegheny County in hopes the public will help them find more abandoned wells.
But the problem, as always, is money: It can cost more than $500,000 to plug a well depending on its location, depth, and condition.This All About appeared in today’s First Move, which is delivered at 7:45 a.m. on weekdays.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/all-about-abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells
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Chevron Reaches $160 Million Settlement over Refinery Accidents
Oct 26, 2018 | Chemical & Engineering News
By Jeff Johnson
hevron and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Mississippi Department of the Environment announced on Oct. 25 a settlement worth more than $160 million to resolve claims that the company violated provisions of the Clean Air Act.
The violations center on the act’s risk management plan provisions, which are triggered by accidental releases of hazardous chemicals with serious consequences for human health and the environment.
The accidental releases occurred at Chevron refineries in Richmond, Calif.; Pascagoula, Miss.; and El Segundo, Calif., in 2012 and 2013. Combined, the incidents caused the death of one worker, endangered 19 others, and induced 15,000 residents to seek medical aid.
The agreement calls for Chevron to spend $150 million to replace piping, institute new operating parameters and alarms for safer operations, improve piping inspections, and improve inspection training.
At the Richmond refinery, failure to replace a long-ignored corroded pipe led to a fire and community evacuation in 2012, according to an investigation by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. The accident and CSB investigation led to an overhaul of California refinery regulations.
Chevron will also conduct a pilot study of safety controls and make safety improvements at all its U.S. refineries. The company will pay a $3 million civil penalty and implement supplemental environmental projects worth more than $10 million for fire and emergency response equipment in communities near Chevron refineries in California, Mississippi, and Utah, as well as a refinery formerly owned by Chevron in Hawaii.
The terms of the settlement remain subject to final court approval.
This latest agreement comes on the heels of several similar ones related to the incident in Richmond. Under a settlement reached last year with the California Occupational Safety & Health Administration, Chevron will spend $25 million to replace the refinery’s carbon steel piping and develop systems to monitor piping and warn plant operators when equipment should be replaced. Chevron also agreed to lead several emergency response workshops and pay $1 million in California civil penalties.
Under a separate agreement with the city announced in May 2018, Chevron will pay $5 million to the community to resolve legal disputes arising from the accident.
Additionally, the company has embarked on a $1 billion project to modernize the Richmond refinery and has agreed to pay some $90 million to the city for job training, scholarships, greenhouse gas reduction projects, solar power installations, and other community projects, a company spokesperson says.
Separately at the federal level, EPA is reviewing the risk management plan provisions that Chevron violated and led to the settlement. Those provisions had been updated under the Obama administration. The changes, however, were opposed by the oil and chemical industries and the Trump administration is working on revising them again.
https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrial-safety/Chevron-reaches-160-million-settlement/96/web/2018/10
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Oil's High-Tech Drillers Face New Security Risks
Oct 29, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak
"Press a button, and off you go," said Des Murphy, gesturing toward a massive drill planted at the entrance of the Shale Insight energy conference here.
Murphy, a regional technical manager for Halliburton Co., was touting his company's "smart" drilling tool for reaching oil and gas trapped in shale rock formations scattered across Appalachia.
The oil field service giant's "iCruise" technology takes hundreds of measurements per second, connecting with computers that translate data and direct subtle changes to an underground path.
But could that constant data stream — or the rotary steerable drilling system itself — be hacked?
Murphy says the scenario as unlikely but acknowledged, "That's always possible.
"Whenever we're using a lot of automation, we need to make sure if it's done remotely, it's over a highly secure network," he said.
As automated, digital technologies take root in the oil and gas sector, security risks that once seemed far-fetched have crept into the mainstream. At the annual Shale Insight conference here in Pennsylvania, cybersecurity issues reached the main stage for the first time, with presentations from a cybersecurity CEO and the former head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, Navy Adm. Michael Rogers.
When asked about cybersecurity practices, many attendees were quick to deflect, acknowledging the issue's importance while professing little familiarity with the threats. Executives, salespeople and consultants, rather than security specialists, populated the audience.
"We're trying to scare them, honestly," said Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate who moderated a cybersecurity panel at last week's conference. "This isn't a problem that is even on their radar screen."
Santorum, who now sits on the board of cybersecurity firm @Risk Technologies, said companies can't rule out the risk of disruption, despite the scarcity of real-world cyberattacks that have physically harmed oil and gas infrastructure. "Most of this stuff doesn't happen — until it happens," he said.
Last week's Shale Insight conference, hosted by the Pittsburgh-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, covered everything from methane emissions to oil and gas development on public lands. Acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler delivered a keynote address Tuesday morning outlining Trump's deregulatory agenda and promising attendees that "you have a new champion in the White House."
A group of environmentalist protesters picketed the conference Wednesday morning, and attendees were cautioned not to wear their badges outside the conference area in a downtown Pittsburgh convention center.
Matt LaVigna, CEO of the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, urged energy companies at the conference to consider "hacktivists" — perhaps acting to support environmental causes — as they assess cybersecurity risks. He pointed to actions by the hacking group Anonymous two years ago that were timed alongside protests from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over development of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota.
"If you're an executive in this room ... you're not doing your company justice if you haven't been trained to know what cyberthreats are out there," he said.Hacking the pipelines
Rogers, who retired from his role leading the NSA and Cyber Command earlier this summer after serving under both the Obama and Trump administrations, offered a sobering assessment of cyberthreats facing oil, gas and electricity companies.
"There shouldn't be any doubt energy infrastructure, from production to distribution, remains a target of high interest to some nation-states," he said in a closing keynote address Thursday. "They continue to conduct reconnaissance to try to understand that infrastructure, and they continue to develop capabilities to try to put that infrastructure at risk."
Rogers indicated that he was less worried about the oil and gas drillers in the crowd and more concerned about hacks of energy transmission and distribution.
"If you shut down distribution, then ultimately you bleed the system dry in a relatively short period of time," he said. "Quite frankly, the business model we have as a society is just-in-time delivery — most consumers are not retaining, on premises, significant energy reserves."
Some energy officials in the Trump administration have pushed for propping up "fuel secure" power generation facilities, such as coal and nuclear plants that store fuel onsite.
In a draft policy memo leaked earlier this summer, the Department of Energy suggested gas-fired power plants may be less secure from cyber and physical threats due to their reliance on far-flung pipeline infrastructure.
DOE proposed offering an economic lifeline to ailing coal and nuclear plants on national security grounds, given that competing natural gas now accounts for the largest share of U.S. electric power production. Insiders say the draft plan has run aground at the White House.
Rogers spent much of his keynote address praising U.S. oil and natural gas producers for unlocking more "flexibility" with any U.S. dealings with foreign energy superpowers like Russia and Saudi Arabia. He also said the U.S. power grid — "whether it's coal-fired or natural gas-fired" — has some built-in advantages against hackers.
"There's no one master killswitch, if you will, for the power grid," he said. "That helps us from a defensive standpoint, and it gives us a measure of redundancy and control."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/10/29/stories/1060104569
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Washington Could Be the First State to Charge for Carbon Emissions That Cause Climate Change
Oct 28, 2018 | The Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
The bride had asthma. The scenic Seattle skyline — the ideal backdrop for photographs — was shrouded in smoke from wildfires. And Perfectly Posh Events, the wedding planner, had to scramble for an indoor venue in the middle of summer, usually the best time of the year for an outdoor exchanging of vows.
“I’ve lived in Seattle my whole life. This is not something I remember growing up with,” said Holly Olsen, owner of the business. “Clearly there has been some kind of change that happened.”
What’s happened is climate change. It has contributed to the dry conditions that fueled forest fires, blanketing Seattle with smoke this year. It has altered the acidity of the oceans, damaging oyster farms in Seattle’s Puget Sound. And now, climate change has made its way onto the Nov. 6 ballot, in the form of a statewide initiative that would impose a $15-a-ton fee on carbon emissions that cause global warming.
If the measure is adopted, Washington would become the first state in the nation to tax carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.
The drive has sparked a fight for votes that pits big oil refiners against a coalition of environmental groups, unions, Native American groups, communities of color, liberal business leaders like Bill Gates, and Gov. Jay Inslee (D).
The battle has already set a new Washington state record for spending on a ballot issue. The Clean Air Clean Energy coalition to say “yes” on the ballot has raised nearly $14.8 million, including $1 million each from Gates and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Big oil companies belonging to the Western States Petroleum Association — including Koch Industries — have given $26.2 million, according to the state’s Public Disclosure Commission.
“I have three grandkids, and I’d like them to have a shot at a healthy Washington,” Inslee said. But two consecutive years of smoky wildfires have shown that “unfortunately it is not just for our children but also for our lives.”
Win or lose, Washington’s Initiative 1631 is a case study in how thorny the politics of carbon pricing can be — starting with the name. Calling it a tax might please economists, but could be fatal politically. The measure’s supporters call it a fee.
“If something is a fee it makes it much more difficult for the legislature to use the money raised for things not directly related to what it’s supposed to do,” said Gregg Small, executive director of Climate Solutions. Seventy percent of the revenue is earmarked for renewable energy investment, and 25 percent for water and forests.
“People want a fee on pollution, not a tax,” pollster Frank Greer said. “People want to do something about carbon pollution and see those funds invested in a clean energy economy.”
Support is heavy in the bigger cities of Seattle and Spokane, and among young voters and suburban women — a lot like the voters Democrats hope to win over. And the bout of bad summer air quality, which rivaled Beijing’s, still looms in people’s minds.
“It is definitely a thing that has become a concern for couples,” Olsen said. She said those making plans for 2019 ask: “Should this be a regular thing to expect in summer?”
In a Crosscut/Elway Poll, Initiative 1631 drew 50 percent approval among the 400 registered voters polled. Thirty-six percent said they opposed the initiative, while 14 percent were undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 5 points.
Stuart Elway has polled on 90 initiatives and only 16 have passed when drawing less than 50 percent support in October. “It’s right on the cusp,” Elway said. “There’s no cushion.”'
We have to pedal faster'
One reason the initiative has a chance is the difference between it and other carbon tax proposals, including one currently being promoted in the nation’s capital by a group of leading economists and former Cabinet members and lawmakers. The group, led by former Treasury Secretary James A. Baker and former Secretary of State George Shultz, supports a revenue-neutral plan that would tax carbon emissions and send identical refunds, or dividends, to households.
Washington state tried a similar idea two years ago, combining a carbon tax with other tax cuts.It failed to win the support of unions or even some environmental groups.
This time, the initiative reflects a variety of stakeholders. Jeff Johnson, president of the Washington State Labor Council, is on board. The measure would exempt eight energy-intensive manufacturing plants, pour fee revenue into clean energy projects, fund training and early retirement plans for affected workers, and create an appointed board that would allocate revenue in the future.
One of the exempted facilities is the biggest emitter of all, a coal-fired power plant owned by TransAlta, which had already agreed to close its plant by 2025. Exemptions would also go to paper companies, aircraft manufacturers and an aluminum smelter — all highly sensitive to international competition. Indian tribes that do not pay sales taxes would also be exempt.
But oil refiners would have to pay.
Some climate experts criticize the fee for being too small. After kicking in at $15 a ton, the fee would increase $2 a ton a year until 2035. It would raise more than $1 billion annually by 2025.
Riding in his car earlier this month on his way to meet with Gates, the governor conceded the criticism.
“It is a small signal,” Inslee said. “But it is a signal of intent. And it does accelerate over time. You need that plus investment to move the carbon needle.”
Inslee is widely considered a potential presidential candidate for 2020, and his embrace of the measure could distinguish him from other presidential hopefuls. He avoids the “T” word — taxes — and stresses investment in renewable “infrastructure” and “clean energy” jobs.
To him, the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which warned that “unprecedented” action was needed over the next decade, was “an eye-opener.”
“However fast we had to pedal before, we have to pedal faster now.”'Our fate is already sealed'
The state’s biggest oil companies argue that the carbon initiative isn’t going to make a dent in global warming.
The Western States Petroleum Association said that “climate change should be addressed at national and international levels” and that state-level policy “would have a negligible impact on mitigating climate change but could have a significant negative impact on our state’s businesses.” It said that the carbon fee would initially boost gasoline prices about 14 cents a gallon.
The oil companies have set up an organization called No-on-1631 whose spokeswoman Dana Bieber took aim at exemptions, especially the coal plant. Inslee, however, said that to do otherwise would violate the contractual agreement to close the plant. Moreover, the objective of the fee is to change behavior, not raise money.
The campaign is awkward for two major oil companies that publicly support carbon taxes in general. Shell, which runs the state’s second largest refinery, has neither contributed to the “no” campaign nor endorsed the initiative, disappointing some people in the company.
BP, by contrast, has given $9.6 million in cash to defeat it, the largest amount for any single company. In a letter to a state house representative, BP refinery manager Robert K. Allendorfer called the initiative a “poorly designed policy that would disrupt Washington’s economy without achieving significant reductions in carbon emissions.”
Quoting a study by NERA Consulting, which often works for the oil and gas industry, Bieber said that the measure would cost the average Washington state household $440 a year at the gas pump and on utility bills. She said it would raise $30 billion over 15 years and create “an unelected board of political appointees who can spend money any way they choose.”
Noah Kaufman, an economist at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, noted that “groups withholding support for a carbon tax until a policy comes along that perfectly matches their priorities and is devoid of compromises to overcome real-world constraints are likely to be waiting a long time.”
Supporters of the carbon fee argue that NERA did not take into account changes in people’s behavior, the initiative’s objective.
Inslee says that Washington voters won’t be convinced by the oil-backed group.
“Given what the oil industry has done — unfettered, unlimited in time or amount — to the one atmosphere we have, it shouldn’t cause a lot of angst or tears to be simply asking them to not treat our atmosphere like a sewer,” he said.
Outside the petroleum industry, many executives have backed the initiative.
“You may be skeptical about this idea. I know I was. How can one state make a difference on a global problem like climate change?” Gates wrote in an open letter. “But I overcame my doubts.” He called climate change the “toughest problem humanity has ever faced” and said the initiative would send a “clear market signal.”
Taylor Shellfish, a family business that has been plying the waters of Puget Sound since 1890 and now employs 700 people, has already been getting clear signals of climate change.
A decade ago, it lost 75 percent of the oyster larvae critical to producing baby oysters. The family consulted a leading expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but the diagnosis wasn’t good: Carbon dioxide that had been stored in the ocean was disrupting the coastal ecology, causing a shortage of carbonate ions. That made it impossible for the tiny larvae to build shells without using up the energy they need to build feeding organs in the same crucial 48-hour period.
“Probably the most difficult part of the message is that the water upwelling along the Washington coast is actually 30 to 50 years old and it’s been circulating at depths,” Bill Dewey, the company’s senior director of public affairs, said. “So even if the world stops burning fossil fuels today, our fate is already sealed for the next 30 to 50 years. The ocean is going to continue to get more acidic because of what is already absorbed and in the pipeline.”
The family is trying to adapt, using sea grasses and kelp that absorb carbon dioxide.
“Ours is actually an encouraging story,” Dewey said. “But we’ve also been trying to use this experience to broaden policymakers’ awareness of what the effects are of carbon pollution and the importance of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.”
But in a sign of how difficult it is to rally people around a single proposal: Dewey said the Taylors, an old Republican family that has supported Democrats and Republicans alike, were staying “neutral” on the carbon fee initiative.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/climate-change-tests-voters-in-washington-state/2018/10/27/2d52ea82-d3af-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html?utm_term=.908ab0efb3b1
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Democrats Target Trump Environmental Rollbacks if They Win House
Oct 26, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Democratic lawmakers are quietly making plans to use hearings and investigations to focus attention on the Trump administration’s environmental agenda if they win control of the House of Representatives.
Because they are less likely to capture the Senate, Democrats would have limited opportunities to enact laws. But they can assert themselves in the House—and complicate President Donald Trump’s deregulatory efforts—by using time-honored strategies of burying agencies in oversight requests and hauling federal officials to Capitol Hill for grillings.
“The Democrats will become live players,” said Republican strategist Mike McKenna, who has advised the Trump administration on energy policy. “They won’t be able to set the tone, but they will be able to occasionally play offense, something they haven’t been able to do.”
Hearings and document requests would focus on science, the process agencies have employed to reverse Obama-era policies and allegations of corruption in government, according to House Democratic aides who asked for anonymity discussing plans before Election Day.
Among the topics they would explore with their newfound authority to convene hearings: moves to shrink national monuments, expand offshore drilling, and ease limits on pollution.
Renewable EnergyDemocrats also anticipate eventually advancing legislation to encourage renewable energy, limit oil drilling, bolster a land conservation program, and boost the cost of coal mining on federal land.
A top priority will be “holding the Trump administration accountable” for “dangerous policies” that exacerbate climate change, said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey who could lead the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We also have serious concerns with how Trump’s EPA has consistently sided with the special interests over people’s health and the environment.”
Aggressive oversight hearings would be a marked change from the current climate on Capitol Hill, where administration actions have gotten scant scrutiny from Republicans reluctant to vigorously question the work of the Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, and Energy Department.
“When we have the gavels, it’s a huge difference,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. “We can have those type of hearings, including oversight on EPA, to hold them accountable for protecting the environment and for being there to deal with environmental issues concerning climate change. It gives us the opportunity to conduct oversight, and it gives us an opportunity to put a spotlight on what America needs to do.”
The House Natural Resources Committee will dig into the Trump administration’s drafted five-year plan for selling oil and gas leases in coastal waters—and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s surprise promise in January that he would keep new platforms away from Florida.
Critics said the pronouncement provides fodder for future lawsuits over offshore drilling and alleged it was a political ploy designed to help Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
Committee Democrats could find common ground collaborating on an energy bill with Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Democrats view the Murkowski measure as a chance to renew and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, an effort previously stymied by Republican opposition in the House.
Scientists’ StatureThe House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to home in on the EPA, examining decisions that could have diminished the stature of scientists in the agency, as well as its work to scale back pollution curbs on oil wells and power plants. The panel also could shine a light on the Trump administration’s efforts to scuttle the Energy Department’s successful loan guarantee program and promote small modular coal plants.
Right now, the leaders of federal agencies effectively “are in a witness protection program—we don’t see them, we don’t know them, people would have a hard time picking them out of a lineup,” said Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “That won’t be the case after six months of Democratic control.”
Democrats can draw inspiration from 1984, when they used their control of Congress to relentlessly scrutinize how former President Ronald Reagan’s EPA was hiring industry insiders, easing regulations and dramatically scaling back enforcing environmental violations.
Adversarial HearingsLawmakers hauled EPA officials to Capitol Hill for adversarial oversight hearings. The House of Representatives even went so far as to charge Reagan’s EPA administrator with contempt after she refused to relinquish subpoenaed documents. And Congress’ investigation of influence peddling at the agency led to an indictment of the EPA official running the Superfund program for cleaning up toxic waste dumps.
Now, Democrats plan to use broad document requests to seek out information, sometimes renewing inquiries originally lodged last year. Those requests have the potential to overwhelm agencies, stealing mind-share from government employees and distracting them from regulatory work.
“All the agencies over there are so short staffed that just dealing with responding to the House will tie them up,” said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protections Program.
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.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/democrats-target-trump-environmental-rollbacks-if-they-win-house
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A New Target in the Fight Against Plastic: Paper Cups
Oct 29, 2018 | The Wall Street Journal
By Saabira Chaudhuri
The growing backlash against plastic waste has a new target: paper coffee cups.
Paper cups sourced from sustainable forests have for years been hailed as a more environmentally friendly option than plastic foam, with Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. andMcDonald’s Corp. recently pledging to switch to paper.
But paper cups are attracting new scrutiny, because they contain a tightly bonded plastic lining that needs to be separated before the paper can be recycled. The process requires specialist facilities, meaning most cups, even if put in the recycling bin, end up as trash. Paper cups have catapulted into the spotlight as consumer awareness rises about how plastic water bottles, bags, straws and other products used just once before being thrown away are ending up in oceans and hurting the environment.
The backlash is particularly apparent in Europe.Starbucks this summer started charging a five pence (7 cent) levy for paper cups in the U.K., a world first for the chain. British lawmakers this year suggested a levy on disposable coffee cups or even an outright ban in the next five years if recycling targets can’t be met. A new report published Monday by European trade body, the Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group, says just one in 25 paper cups is recycled in the U.K.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament approved a ban on single-use plastics such as straws, cutlery and cotton swabs. It said European Union countries would have to reduce the use of plastic cups by setting reduction targets or levying charges.
Awareness has risen in the U.S. too, with a wave of bans targeting plastic straws, and China’s recent ban on imported waste is drawing further attention to the issue. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. starting Monday is rolling out a ban on paper cups at its U.S. offices, after previously scrapping such cups in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In a memo to staff this month, the firm asked its Americas employees to bring their own mugs to work saying the region consumes more than eight million nonrecyclable cups each year.
An Australian Senate report in June recommended that single-use plastics be scrapped by 2023. Taiwan has said it would ban cups among other single-use plastic items by 2030.
The scrutiny comes as coffee grows in popularity. The number of coffee shops in the U.S. jumped 16% between 2012 and 2017, according to research firm Mintel. In the U.K., they rose 28%, resulting in billions of takeaway cups.
Concern about the impact of plastic waste on ocean life was sparked in the U.K. by the BBC’s “Blue Planet II” documentary last year, which spurred a wave of media coverage. Footage, including of a dead albatross chick whose stomach had been pierced by a plastic toothpick, horrified viewers and propelled lawmakers and companies to commit to reducing single-use plastic.
“Blue Planet created big concerns about plastic packaging,” said Katherine Rolfe, sustainability strategy manager for London’s Heathrow Airport, which is striving for all 13.5 million disposable coffee cups used on-site each year to be recycled. “That’s when we started to look very specifically at which bits of packaging being produced at the airport were big ones we should focus on.”
Starbucks is internally testing a paper cup containing a bioliner rather than a plastic one. The company has invested in U.K. startup Frugalpac whose cup—with an easy-to-separate waterproof film—can be processed by regular recycling facilities. Frugalpac Chief Executive Malcolm Waugh estimated the cup, which is made from recycled paper and eschews the waterproofing chemicals used in regular paper cups, costs about 12 pence, about double that of a Starbucks cup.
Several U.K. chains offer discounts to customers who bring in their own reusable cups, with Pret a Manger this year doubling the saving to 50 pence. Starbucks also offers discounts in many markets.
The makers of paper cups defend their products, saying the focus should be on ensuring they are properly recycled. The cups must be collected separately so they can be trucked to facilities that have the ability to separate the lining from the paper.
“There is the capability to recycle a paper cup in its current form; it’s just getting the product to our paper mills that’s the challenge,” said Stefan Pryor, market sector manager for U.K. paper mill James Cropper PLC.
Costa Coffee is paying waste collectors 140% extra per metric ton of cups to incentivize collection, and it is accepting cups from rivals in its in-store recycling bins. The U.K. coffee chain, which Coca-Cola Co. agreed to buy for $5.1 billion in August, has pledged that up to 500 million cups, the equivalent of its annual takeout sales, will be recycled a year by 2020.
The efforts are starting to bear fruit. The U.K’s current paper cup recycling rate is a big improvement from 2016 when just one in 400 were recycled according to industry estimates. There are currently 4,500 recycling points for customers to return cups in the U.K. according to the paper cup recycling trade body, which estimates the recycling rate will improve to one in 12 cups next year.
Ultimately, though, companies say, consumer habits must change. The answer to waste, said Colleen Chapham, vice president of global responsibility for Starbucks, “is not using a disposable cup to start with.”
But changing consumer behavior is tough. Starbucks in 2008 said 25% of its cups would be reusable by 2015. Three years later it slashed the target, saying 5% of drinks made in its stores would be served in cups brought in by consumers by 2015. Ms. Chapman said the original target “was a goal set prior to really understanding the impact the human behavior piece would have.”
In the U.S. though, just 1.8% of Starbucks beverages are currently served in reusable cups. The recent 5 pence fee in the U.K. has encouraged just 5.8% of Starbucks customers to opt for reusable cups, compared with 2.2% before, according to data from a trial in 35 London stores.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scrutiny-of-paper-coffee-cups-stacks-up-1540810800?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
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