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ACC PM 23/11/18
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UK Chemicals Face Up to 6.5% EU Tariff Under 'No Deal' Brexit
Nov 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Will Beacham
UK imports and exports of petrochemicals to the EU27 and most other major trading partner countries will face up to 6.5% World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariffs in the event of a “no deal” Brexit, according to analysis provided by Europe’s trade group Cefic. -
(ACC Mentioned) Inside a Corporate Giant’s Fight to Thwart a Massive Pollution Tab
Nov 23, 2018 | Politico
By Annie Snider
Chemical industry giant 3M is waging an aggressive campaign to stave off new regulations and potentially billions of dollars in damages stemming from a contamination crisis that has fouled tens of millions of Americans’ drinking water. -
Oil Prices Hit New Low For The Year
Nov 23, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Morgan Gstalter
Oil prices on Friday fell to their lowest point in a year and are on track for the largest one-month drop since 2014.
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UK Chemicals Face Up to 6.5% EU Tariff Under 'No Deal' Brexit
Nov 23, 2018 | ICIS
By Will Beacham
UK imports and exports of petrochemicals to the EU27 and most other major trading partner countries will face up to 6.5% World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariffs in the event of a “no deal” Brexit, according to analysis provided by Europe’s trade group Cefic.
If the country left the EU without any deal in place it would automatically fall back on tariffs agreed under the WTO’s Chemical Tariff Harmonisation Agreement, which has been agreed by most important chemical markets globally, according to Rene van Sloten, Cefic’s executive director for industrial policy.
As well as no longer enjoying tariff-free trade with the EU27, the UK would not benefit from lower or zero tariffs with countries where the EU has negotiated separate bi-partisan free trade deals including Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Korea and, in 2019, Japan.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May faces a battle to get her Brexit deal approved by the country’s parliament over the next few weeks.
If she fails, then one option favoured by some ardent Brexiteers is for the country to leave the EU with no deal in place on 29 March 2019.
If that happens, the UK will be free to negotiate new bilateral or regional free trade agreements but they could take years to negotiate, leaving the UK relying on WTO tariffs.
Under the 'Most Favoured Nation' principle applied to all WTO members, countries must apply the same tariff to all trading partners.
They are still free to negotiate separate bilateral free trade deals, however.
“The bottom line message is that with key trading partners such as US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Korea and EU27 the maximum rate would generally become 6.5% in case of a no deal Brexit," said Van Sloten.
"With the US, that tariff would be the same as for the EU27, but for Canada, Mexico, Korea and soon with Japan the EU27 has zero duties, while the UK would face higher Most Favoured Nation duties.”
Not all countries follow the Chemical Tariff Harmonisation Agreement. For example, the applied tariffs of countries such as Brazil or India are much higher for many petrochemicals.
The WTO’s Chemical Tariff Harmonisation Agreement was signed during the 1986-94 Uruguay Round which negotiated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Before it was implemented, tariffs on polymers often reached 16-17%, for example.
During the current US-China trade war the US is claiming exceptions to the WTO rules based on “national security” concerns.
The UK would no longer benefit from these EU free trade deals in the event of a "no deal" Brexit. Click on the map to enlarge.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2018/11/23/10285948/uk-chemicals-face-up-to-65-eu-tariff-under-no-deal-brexit/
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(ACC Mentioned) Inside a Corporate Giant’s Fight to Thwart a Massive Pollution Tab
Nov 23, 2018 | Politico
By Annie Snider
Chemical industry giant 3M is waging an aggressive campaign to stave off new regulations and potentially billions of dollars in damages stemming from a contamination crisis that has fouled tens of millions of Americans’ drinking water.
The Minnesota-based company is putting its lobbying muscle to work in Washington and courting the support of state attorneys general as it faces potentially massive financial liability for toxic pollution linked to two of its nonstick and water repellent chemicals, which have turned up in the water supplies of more than 1,500 U.S. communities.
A key component of 3M’s campaign to fend off government action is a new industry advocacy group that began weighing into the debate this summer, arguing that the chemicals don’t pose a health threat — a conclusion that numerous government agencies and independent studies have disputed. The industry group’s efforts to raise doubts about the science have caused alarm among public health watchdogs who call them reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s old playbook.
3M’s combative posture contrasts with a more conciliatory approach taken by other giant companies that have been implicated in the pollution crisis, as well as the industry’s primary lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council. Those organizations have supported federal efforts to evaluate and regulate the chemicals, banking on the Trump administration to deliver industry-friendly rules.
But as the chemicals’ original and biggest manufacturer, 3M faces a different scale of risk.Morning Energy newsletter
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A glimpse at the scope of its potential liability emerged in February, when 3M reached an $850 million settlement with Minnesota for damage the company’s chemicals caused to the state’s drinking water. New York state soon filed its own lawsuit, and outgoing Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked his state’s attorney general to pursue litigation as well. Meanwhile, dozens of other personal injury, class-action and property damage lawsuits are piling up against the company across the country. Altogether, industry experts say the company’s liability could reach the tens of billions of dollars.
Joshua Aguilar, an equity analyst with Morningstar, said analysts view the Minnesota settlement as a one-off event, at least for now, but that the litigation from other states and class-action suits could threaten the company’s value.
“If you have different jurisdictions where this becomes serious, you have to settle one, you have to settle another, it becomes a contagion effect,” he said.
The chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS, have been used for five decades in products ranging from firefighting foam to Teflon to 3M’s signature Scotchgard. They take years to break down in the environment, giving them the nickname “forever chemicals.” They also accumulate in human bodies, where they have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, immune disorders and other ailments — and have been found in more than 99 percent of Americans’ blood.
Communities from New York to Michigan to Colorado have been in an uproar as more contaminations have come to light. Earlier this year, POLITICO reportedthat the Trump administration sought to block a federal study finding they pose a danger at lower levels than the EPA previously deemed safe — a conclusion one White House said warned could be “a public relations nightmare.” That study, published by an agency of the CDC, finally came out this summer.
3M did not respond to multiple questions from POLITICO about its political activity and lobbying around the chemicals, which are part of a broader category of substances known as PFAS. But it acknowledged its membership in the new advocacy group, the Responsible Science Policy Coalition, as well as being a member of other business-oriented organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and the American Chemistry Council.
“3M is a technology and manufacturing company committed to scientific research and environmental stewardship,” company spokesperson Fanna Haile-Selassie said in a statement. She noted that the company, which lobbies on a wide variety of topics from taxes to health care, “voluntarily discloses its political activities and the public policy reasons behind them.”
An industry source with knowledge of the Responsible Science Policy Coalition said 3M is its main backer.
3M’s political action committee poured money into state-level campaigns this year including to attorney general candidates in Michigan, Ohio, California and Alabama — all states with major PFAS contaminations. The company also made its first contributions since at least 2013, totaling more than $36,000, to the Republican Attorneys General Association and its Democratic counterpart. Those groups, in turn, donate millions to their parties’ candidates for state attorney general without disclosing which contributions were directed by which corporate donors.
Some attorneys general have proven receptive to the company's message.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTOcasio-Cortez gets in closed-door fight with veteran lawmaker over climate change
By ANTHONY ADRAGNA, JOHN BRESNAHAN and ZACK COLMAN
In Alabama, where the chemicals made by 3M’s manufacturing plant in Decatur have contaminated the Tennessee River, a drinking water source for 4.7 million people, the freshly reelected attorney general has refused to join a drinking water utility's lawsuit against the company. GOP Attorney General Steve Marshall received $2,000 from 3M's political action campaign, and RAGA gave $735,000 during his bruising primary — a contribution that both Republicans and Democrats in the state argue violates Alabama’s ban on contributions between political action committees. Records do not indicate whether 3M directed any of its RAGA donations to him.
The northern Alabama water utility that supplies some of the state's poorest communities with water drawn from just downstream of the 3M plant has sued the company over the contamination. The water utility's manager formally requested Marshall’s help in the litigation an Oct. 12 letter, and said that Marshall’s predecessor, former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, had been collaborating with the water utility on the issue before Strange was appointed to the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in February 2017. But Marshall told a Huntsville television station last month that he is trying to determine whether his office has a role in the contamination case, WHNT-TV reported.
"I'm not the environmental watchdog," he told the station. “My job is to make sure that we enforce the laws and do things that are appropriate for the people of this state.”
Marshall’s office declined to respond to POLITICO’s queries about the campaign contributions or his stance on the lawsuit.
State attorneys general were also the audience for the first public appearance of the Responsible Science Policy Coalition.
The coalition’s lobbyist warned against acting too fast to regulate the chemicals when he spoke on a panel at the Conference of Western Attorneys General in New Mexico in July.
“So much of what you see in emerging chemicals is people jump forward because of public pressure and things like that, make decisions, but then as more science emerges, we realize, ‘Oh, maybe that wasn’t the right decision,’ and it’s very hard to pull things back once you’ve done them,” lobbyist Jonathan Gledhill told the attorneys general, according to a video posted online by the conference.
Representatives of the coalition have also met with several congressional offices and EPA political appointees in recent months, arguing that “the weight of current scientific evidence does not show that PFOS or PFOA cause adverse health effects in humans at current levels of exposure.” That conclusion flies in the face of findings by leading independent scientific researchers, EPA and the CDC.
The lobby group contends it is simply interested in assuring a sound process.
“The Coalition supports EPA’s ongoing efforts to evaluate and develop appropriate regulations and guidance for PFAS and to collaborate on testing, remediation and research that will help assist federal agencies, states and communities to more comprehensively evaluate PFAS occurrences,” coalition attorney James Votaw said in a statement to POLITICO.
But Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the strategy a classic industry approach to delaying and undermining regulations.
“The goal is to stave off regulation by questioning the science,” Halpern said. He likened the new industry group to a similarly named organization, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, that the tobacco industry used in the early 1990s to attack EPA’s findings on secondhand smoke.
Briefing materials from the Responsible Science Policy Coalition obtained by POLITICO feature charts comparing the average concentration of the chemicals in Americans’ blood with the levels at which the chemicals have been found to harm animals in industry-backed studies. The implication is that humans’ exposure is far below the level that causes harm.
But David Savitz, an epidemiologist at Brown University’s School of Public Health, called the approach “disingenuous.” He said scientists recognize that humans’ bodies aren’t the same as those of lab animals, and they adjust the comparisons to account for those differences.
Moreover, he said, looking at the average person’s exposure is misleading because people living near contaminated hotspots, like manufacturing sites or military bases, have far higher risks.
CONGRESSHouse GOP leaders dodge final-hour earmarks fight
By SARAH FERRIS
Indeed, 3M’s own internal documents, which were handed to the Minnesota attorney general’s office as part of the lawsuit that settled in February, show that the company has known since the 1970s that the chemicals were toxic, according to reporting by The Intercept.
The coalition’s efforts to question the chemicals’ harm have set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pressed Trump administration officials during a recent hearing to dispute the group’s arguments that the chemicals aren’t linked to illnesses.
“What this country needs is responsible regulation to protect the public’s health and the environment, not more efforts to delay solutions and downplay risks,” Carper said in a statement to POLITICO.
3M’s campaign against government regulation has even caused concern from others within industry. DuPont, which faces major liabilities for PFOA, and the industry’s biggest lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, have backed EPA’s efforts to evaluate and regulate the chemicals, banking on the Trump administration to write the most industry-friendly regulations that they can hope for.
“You are never going to have a more favorable administration than this administration to set standards,” a person in the industry said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal industry discussions. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt committed to taking the first step toward potentially regulating PFOA and PFOS in drinking water and setting cleanup standards. His successor, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, has reiterated that pledge.
Asked about agency officials’ meetings with 3M and the new coalition, EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said they have met with a “variety” of individuals and officials about the chemicals. She said the agency will issue a plan that outlines short- and long-term steps for dealing with the chemicals.
Still, a version of the strategy 3M is deploying at the national level has already borne fruit in the company’s home state of Minnesota. There, years before this February’s hefty legal settlement, 3M persuaded lawmakers and regulators to pull back from formally declaring the chemicals hazardous — a designation that could have brought even wider-reaching legal consequences.
But now the company is facing a new challenge, from a novel legal technique aimed at short-circuiting 3M’s efforts to question the science.
As part of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of residents near DuPont’s Teflon manufacturing plant in Parkersburg, W.Va., a decade and a half ago, DuPont agreed to do medical monitoring and to convene an independent science panel to evaluate PFOA’s health effects. Those studies produced the lion’s share of evidence about the chemical’s effects on human health. And crucially, the settlement required that the company not only fund the independent research but be bound by its findings.
This February, that science led to a settlement between DuPont and residents affected by its plant’s water contamination, with the company agreeing to pay $670 million to 3,550 residents.
The Cincinnati attorney behind that suit has since filed a new lawsuit, on behalf of an Ohio firefighter, that seeks to create another independent science panel that would look at PFOA, PFOS and other chemicals in the class, whose findings would bind 3M, DuPont, Chemours and other major manufacturers of the chemicals.
“There is tremendous fear, anxiety, and uncertainty across the country as to the serious public health threat posed by PFAS contamination,” the attorney, Robert Bilott, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit in October. “This lawsuit could provide a mechanism for addressing and resolving those concerns through a truly comprehensive and independent, science-based process paid for by those that actually created the problem — and not by the American taxpayers.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/23/political-chemicals-cleanup-3m-1012445
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Oil Prices Hit New Low For The Year
Nov 23, 2018 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Morgan Gstalter
Oil prices on Friday fell to their lowest point in a year and are on track for the largest one-month drop since 2014.
The value of a barrel has been dropping for seven weeks, falling around 20 percent in the month of November alone, Reuters reported Friday.
The price decline comes as supply in the U.S. is growing more quickly than demand and major producers consider cutting production.
Brent crude oil, an international benchmark, fell $2.31 a barrel, or 3.7 percent, to a low of $60.29 — its lowest price since November 2017. Brent was trading around $60.75, down $1.85, on Friday morning, Reuters reported.
The OPEC is reportedly planning to start withholding oil output next month in an effort to prevent a buildup of unused fuel.
Saudi Arabia, the No. 3 oil producer in the world behind the U.S. and Russia, said Thursday that it may also reduce supply.
The country has been pushing OPEC to sign on to a joint output cut of 1.4 million barrels per day.
“The question is now how much longer bears are able to keep firing. Are they going to run out of ammunition shortly or they have ample supply of bullets?” PVM Oil Associates strategist Tamas Varga told Reuters.
“It is reasonable to compare the current economic and supply/demand picture with the one four years ago. After all, it was in November and December 2014 when oil prices fell more or less to the same level where they are now,” he said.
OPEC's and Saudi Arabia’s plan to reduce oil production directly contradicts a request from President Trump to maintain current levels of supply.
Trump had celebrated the falling price of oil on Wednesday, calling it a “big Tax Cut for America and the World!”
Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018
Trump thanked Saudi Arabia after releasing a statement reaffirming close ties with the country despite the CIA's reported conclusion that found Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered the assassination of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.
"Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!" Trump said in the statement, adding that "we may never know" who was responsible.
Khashoggi, a Saudi national living in the U.S., was murdered after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
The Saudi government originally denied all knowledge of Khashoggi’s whereabouts but later acknowledged that he died inside the consulate after a so-called physical altercation.
The journalist was critical of the Saudi royal family and was reportedly killed by a team of agents who dismembered his body, which still has not been found.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that oil prices were one of his primary motivations for not taking action following the CIA report.
“If you want to see oil prices go to $150 a barrel ... all you have to do is break up our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” he said before leaving Washington for his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/418009-oil-prices-hit-new-low-for-the-year
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