PM ACC Clips Report - March 14, 2019

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) Why a US-China Trade Pact Will be a Boon for US Chemicals

   Mar 14, 2019 | Zacks (In Nasdaq)

   By Anindya Barman
   
   
   The United States and China are inching toward a trade deal that could lead to a potential end to the year-long trade spat between the world's two biggest economies. The countries, which are engaged in a fierce trade conflict since last...

TSCA News

2. EPA ‘Mismanaging’ Worker Risk under TSCA

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   By Lisa Martine Jenkins
   
   
   Labour and public health advocates in the US have accused the EPA of glossing over chemical risks to workers. And in a congressional hearing, they have cited a pattern of the agency clearing new chemicals for market under TSCA...

Chemical Management News

3. (ACC Mentioned) Urgent Action Needed to Curb Global Chemical Pollution, UN Says

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News

   By Paula Dupraz-Dobias
   
   
   The United Nations calls for urgent measures to be taken to reduce serious threats from chemical pollution to human health, the environment, and economies in a report released March 11. The second Global Chemicals Outlook...
4. (ACC Mentioned) Maryland May Become The First State To Ban Foam Food Containers, Cups

   Mar 14, 2019 | CNN (In CBS Baltimore)

   Maryland is well on its way to becoming the first state to ban foam. The Legislature has approved bills to ban polystyrene — commonly known as plastic foam — cups and food containers. If a final measure is passed and the...
5. US EPA Round-Up

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   Four ranking Democrat senators have written to the heads of the EPA, the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) demanding to see...
6. Three Agencies Delaying EPA’s Nonstick Chemical Rules: Carper

   Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Sylvia Carignan
   
   
   Multiple agencies’ concerns over what they see as too-strict groundwater cleanup guidelines for two ubiquitous chemicals have slowed an EPA rulemaking, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said in a letter March 14. The Environmental...
7. Lawmakers Aim to Protect Federal Research

   Mar 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

   By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
   
   
   Two Democratic lawmakers are looking to protect scientific research at agencies from special interests under a pair of bicameral bills introduced this week. "These are challenging and unprecedented times for science," said Sen. Brian...
8. US Flooring Firm Fined $33m for Formaldehyde Misinformation

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   By Leigh Stringer
   
   
   Major US flooring firm Lumber Liquidators has agreed to pay $33m for misleading investors that its products were in compliance with formaldehyde emissions regulations. A 2015 investigation by US news programme 60 minutes...
9. New Campaign Looks to Eliminate ‘Toxic’ Paper Receipts

   Mar 14, 2019 | Environment Journal

   By Chris Ogden
   
   
   A new environmental campaign has been launched to reduce the amount of impact made by waste paper receipts. The Beat The Receipt campaign, which is being supported by high street chains such as KFC and Eat., is calling upon...
10. Ministerial Alliance Sets out Ambition for a Global Chemicals Framework

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    By Leigh Stringer
    
    
    Government ministers and representatives from some key international bodies have set out their vision for a global chemicals framework after 2020. The group, called the High Ambition Alliance, held a meeting yesterday at the UN...
11. Prioritise Chemicals to Achieve Circular Economy, Report Says

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    By Leigh Stringer
    
    
    Chemicals management must be a higher priority on the corporate agenda and cannot be the responsibility of a supporting department that has a weak mandate within an organisation, says a report by NGO ChemSec.
12. 3M Still Faces Alabama Residents’ PFOA Drinking Water Claims

    Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Peter Hayes
    
    
    3M Co. failed to dispel a proposed class action alleging PFOA releases from an Alabama facility are contaminating the Tennessee River and the public drinking water supply. The claims over its Decatur plant aren’t barred under the state’s...
13. Echa Round-Up

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    Echa has received the following three proposals to identify new substances of very high concern (SVHCs):2-methoxyethyl acetate. Sweden is proposing as toxic for reproduction. The substance is not registered under REACH...

Energy News

14. (ACC Mentioned) The Toxic Consequences of America’s Plastics Boom

    Mar 14, 2019 | The Nation

    By Zoë Carpenter
    
    
    A beach at sunset. the sky is streaked peach and mauve, the wind cool and briny. A long line of dump trucks idles at the edge of the waves, each full of plastic—bags and milk jugs and floss containers, hair clips, shrink wrap, fake ferns...
15. Oil Erases Gains after U.S., China Said to Delay Trade Agreement

    Mar 14, 2019 | Bloomberg (In the Houston Chronicle)

    By Grant Smith
    
    
    Oil erased gains after a U.S.-China meeting to end the nations’ trade war was said to have been pushed back. Futures fell in New York, erasing an earlier gain of 0.7 percent. A meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese...
16. Colorado Oil, Gas Rules Overhaul on Fast Track to Governor’s Desk

    Mar 14, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence

    By Richard Nemec
    
    
    The Colorado Senate on a 19-15 vote Wednesday passed and sent to the lower House a fast-track omnibus bill to extensively reform the oil and natural gas industry, empowering local governments to the exclusion of regulators.
17. Pennsylvania Opens Investigation into Gas Liquids Pipeline

    Mar 14, 2019 | AP (In Insurance Journal)

    By Marc Levy
    
    
    Pennsylvania’s attorney general said Tuesday that his office has opened an investigation into construction on a 350-mile natural gas liquids pipeline project across southern Pennsylvania that has been blamed for polluting waterways in...
18. Champions of Big Oil Extend Olive Branch to Green New Dealers

    Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Joe Carroll and Javier Blas
    
    
    As President Donald Trump’s energy czar and former governor of the biggest source of American oil, Rick Perry had a startling response to the author of the Green New Deal: Let’s talk. Perry, in an appearance at the biggest North...
19. BP, Environmental Defense Fund Partner on Methane Emissions

    Mar 14, 2019 | Houston Chronicle

    By Jordan Blum
    
    
    British energy major BP and the Environmental Defense Fund said Wednesday they're partnering to develop new technologies and strategies to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and transportation.

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

20. Ex-Transportation Czar to Oversee Utility's Safety Efforts

    Mar 14, 2019 | AP (In the Argus-Press)

    Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will help oversee efforts to improve safety and reduce risk at NiSource, the utility company blamed for natural gas explosions and fires in Massachusetts six months ago.

Environment News

21. Senators Pressure Chamber to Back Climate Resolution

    Mar 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

    Nearly two dozen Senate Democrats are urging the U.S Chamber of Commerce to support their resolution calling for immediate actions to address climate change, aiming to increase pressure on the group to reconsider its historical
22. House GOP Ratchets up Attacks on Green New Deal

    Mar 14, 2019 | Politico Pro- Energy Whiteboard

    By Anthony Adragna
    
    
    House Republican leaders today pushed Democrats to hold committee hearings on the Green New Deal in their most formal criticism of the ambitious proposal to tackle climate change. Eleven committee ranking members argued the...

Industry and Association News

1. (ACC Mentioned) Why a US-China Trade Pact Will be a Boon for US Chemicals

   Mar 14, 2019 | Zacks (In Nasdaq)

   By Anindya Barman

   The United States and China are inching toward a trade deal that could lead to a potential end to the year-long trade spat between the world's two biggest economies. 
   

   The countries, which are engaged in a fierce trade conflict since last year, are in the final stages of negotiation for a deal that could see the roll back of most of the U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods as long as Beijing pledges to lower retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products, protect intellectual property rights and purchase a significant amount of American-made products. 

   Top trade negotiators of both countries are currently discussing "major issues" that must be resolved before the parties could hammer out a formal deal to ease the trade disputes that have cost both economies billions of dollars. One of the top priorities of the U.S. administration is to achieve structural changes to end China's unfair trade practices. If everything goes well, a deal may happen by the end of this month. 
   
   U.S. Chemical Industry Bearing Brunt of Trade Tariffs 
   
   The chemical industry is among the industries that have been badly hit by the trade tariffs. The damaging effects of the trade war were evident from the industry's lackluster performance in 2018. The U.S. chemical industry, in particular, is caught in the crosshairs of Sino-U.S. trade tensions. 
   
   The Trump administration slapped punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese products last year while China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on $110 billion in U.S. goods. China's tariffs on American products include a wide range of petrochemicals, specialty chemicals and plastics. The list includes chemicals such as polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride ("PVC") and polycarbonates. 
   
   According to the American Chemistry Council ("ACC"), a leading industry trade group, the United States has levied tariffs on $15 billion worth of imports of chemicals and plastics from China, with Beijing retaliating with duties on $11 billion in U.S. exports of chemicals and plastics to China. 
   
   Progress on trade negotiations in February led the Trump administration agreeing to hold off raising tariffs (to 25% from existing 10%) on $200 billion in Chinese goods that would have taken effect March 1. However, the tariffs currently in place are already doing damage to the chemical industry. 
   
   China is one of the biggest export markets for U.S. chemicals, leaving the American chemical industry heavily exposed to China's countermeasures. The tariffs have created an uncertain demand environment for U.S. chemical products in this major market. The tariffs are hurting U.S. chemical exports and the competitiveness of the American chemical industry. 
   
   According to the ACC, China's tariffs on U.S. chemicals and plastics exports have put roughly 55,000 American jobs and $18 billion in domestic activity at risk as a result of lower demand for those products, which would lead to considerable losses for U.S. manufacturers. The ACC estimates that the loss to U.S. chemical and plastics exports to China could reach as much as $6.1 billion annually. 
   
   There is also concern that the tariffs may dampen new chemical investment in the United States. According to the ACC, 333 chemical projects (both on new plants and capacity expansions) have been already announced by chemical makers since 2010 worth $202 billion. A significant portion of the investment is directed toward U.S. export markets including China. 
   
   The shale boom has incentivized a number of chemical companies to pump in billions of dollars for setting up facilities (crackers) in the United States to produce ethylene and propylene in a cost-effective way. Chemical makers including DowDuPont Inc. DWDP and LyondellBasell Industries N.V. LYB are investing on shale gas-linked projects to take advantage of abundant natural gas supplies. 
   
   However, the tariffs have raised concerns that chemicals companies would reconsider their investments in new projects, which could lead to a slowdown in growth in the American chemical industry. 
   
   Trade Truce Will Bring Respite 
   
   A U.S.-China trade pact, if eventually takes place, will likely provide a much-needed relief for the U.S. chemical industry. As part of the trade deal, China is reportedly offering to lower tariffs and other sanctions on U.S.-made goods including chemicals, automotive and farm products. Beijing has also reportedly pledged to import a significant number of U.S. products.   
   
   The ACC has urged the United States and China to remove all chemical products from their tariff lists. The trade group has also appealed to the Trump administration to include chemicals and plastics on Beijing's import list as the United States seeks commitment from China to purchase more American products. The ACC sees this as "the most promising and advantageous opportunity for U.S. export growth". 
   
   China is among the most important trading partners of the U.S. chemical industry. Moreover, export markets are expected to contribute to the growth of the American chemical industry in 2019. 
   
   The ACC expects growth in manufacturing and exports markets to drive demand for U.S. chemicals this year. As such, a potential trade deal could provide a significant boost to American chemical exports which would augur well for the U.S. chemical industry's growth this year and beyond. 
   
   Chemical Stocks Worth a Look 
   
   A few stocks currently worth considering in the chemical space are Ingevity Corporation NGVT , Innospec Inc. IOSP and W. R. Grace & Co. GRA . Both Ingevity and Innospec sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), while W. R. Grace carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here . 
   
   Ingevity has an expected earnings growth of 17.9% for the current year. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 2.7% upward over the last 60 days. 
   
   Innospec has an expected earnings growth of 3.5% for the current year. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 5.3% upward over the last 60 days. 
   
   W. R. Grace has an expected earnings growth of 10.4% for the current year. Earnings estimates for the current year have been revised 2.9% upward over the last 60 days. 

   https://www.nasdaq.com/article/why-a-us-china-trade-pact-will-be-a-boon-for-us-chemicals-cm1114598
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

TSCA News

2. EPA ‘Mismanaging’ Worker Risk under TSCA

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   By Lisa Martine Jenkins

   Labour and public health advocates in the US have accused the EPA of glossing over chemical risks to workers. And in a congressional hearing, they have cited a pattern of the agency clearing new chemicals for market under TSCA, despite what they say is a lack of evidence on their safety.

   Under 2016 amendments to TSCA, the agency is required to take into consideration the intended, known and reasonably foreseen conditions of a substance’s use when making a risk determination for it. It is also required to specifically consider ‘potentially exposed and susceptible subpopulations’, including workers.

   But a 13 March House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, 'Mismanaging chemical risks: EPA’s failure to protect workers', heard from NGOs and workplace safety officials that the EPA’s management of chemical risk has been inadequate.

   Adam Finkel, a former Occupational Health and Safety Administration (Osha) official, testified that, in making risk determinations on new chemicals, the EPA has presumed in many cases that workers will use personal protective equipment (PPE) appropriately, rather than issue a binding order to ensure it.

   The agency, he continued, fails to take into account errors in PPE use in its determinations, which results in a lower estimate of worker exposure. A worker misusing PPE via simply wearing a mask that does not quite fit, Mr Finkel said, is "the most foreseeable risk possible".

   The testimony is in line with concerns raised in a recent blog post by the Environmental Defense Fund’s Richard Denison with respect to safety data sheets (SDSs).

   In many cases, these hazard communication documents are used to support the EPA’s expectation of worker protection against exposure and a determination that a substance is not likely to pose an unreasonable risk, he said.

   But Dr Denison said: "The mere presence of language in an SDS is completely insufficient to conclude that PPE is actually utilised or is sufficiently effective and protective."
   

   In his testimony, E&C chairman Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) called the EPA’s track record of protecting workers "appalling".

   "Many of us who worked to update TSCA hoped it would help, but unfortunately, I fear EPA’s implementation of the Act is moving us in the wrong direction," he said.

   ‘Utmost importance’

   A statement submitted for the record by EPA toxics head Alexandra Dunn, however, said that protecting workers is "of the utmost importance to EPA and is a key component of our agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment."

   She wrote that the agency considers the intended uses described in a pre-manufacture notice (PMN) as well as the reasonably foreseen conditions of use "identified by the agency in its expert evaluation" of new chemicals.

   "EPA’s identification of conditions of use includes the expectation of compliance with federal and state laws, such as work protection standards or disposal restrictions, unless case-specific facts indicate otherwise," she said.

   In his testimony, Mark Duvall, a partner with Beveridge and Diamond, explained that the EPA’s obligation to protect workers under TSCA is "risk-based".

   "It does not require EPA to protect workers without regard to the particular conditions of use, ie, on the basis of hazard alone," he said.

   Establishing a substance’s ‘conditions of use’, he said, should take into consideration the PPE and other safety measures articulated on a submitter’s SDS.

   However, Mr Duvall also agreed with Mr Finkel that the EPA and Osha could do a better job of coordinating these worker protections. As things stand, he said, the two agencies have apparently met just "several times over the years" to discuss TSCA.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/74999/epa-mismanaging-worker-risk-under-tsca
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

Chemical Management News

3. (ACC Mentioned) Urgent Action Needed to Curb Global Chemical Pollution, UN Says

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical & Engineering News

   By Paula Dupraz-Dobias

   The United Nations calls for urgent measures to be taken to reduce serious threats from chemical pollution to human health, the environment, and economies in a report released March 11.

   The second Global Chemicals Outlook, released at the start of the five-day UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, calls for greater use of sustainable materials and better education of the adverse impacts of chemical use.

   The $5 trillion chemical industry, projected to double by 2030, continues to release large quantities of hazardous substances into the air, soils, and water, the UN report says. Such substances are found in food and people. The World Health Organization estimates that exposure to selected chemicals led to 1.6 million deaths in 2016.

   The UN chemicals outlook says improving legislation in developing countries may provide opportunities for innovative financing for sustainability projects, while other policies could be enacted to encourage consumer awareness and integration of green and sustainable chemistry in education.

   Countries must also work together to develop a global framework for the management of chemical substances and waste, the report says. It estimates that taking action would yield benefits “in the high tens of billions of United States dollars annually.”
   

   “The findings of the second Global Chemicals Outlook are very important for developing countries,” David Kapindula, a member of the report’s steering committee, said in a statement. “They highlight the uneven implementation of chemicals and waste management and point to opportunities for enhanced knowledge sharing, capacity development and innovative financing.”

   Further specific measures to curb chemical pollution are expected to be debated at another UN conference next month in Uruguay.

   Coinciding with the publication of the UN report, a global chemical industry group, the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), released its own analysis of the industry’s contributions to the global economy, including providing 120 million jobs worldwide.

   “The chemical industry is an irreplaceable contributor to global GDP, a source of skilled employment opportunities and a major enabler of progress in the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development as reflected in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals,” ICCA secretary and American Chemistry Council CEO Cal Dooley said in a statement.

   Meanwhile, delegates at the environment forum are also striving to achieve a global agreement to curb plastic pollution. The UN estimates that the world produces 300 million metric tons of plastic waste annually, 8 million tons of which end up in the Earth’s oceans.

   https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/Urgent-action-needed-curb-global/97/i11
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

4. (ACC Mentioned) Maryland May Become The First State To Ban Foam Food Containers, Cups

   Mar 14, 2019 | CNN (In CBS Baltimore)

    Maryland is well on its way to becoming the first state to ban foam.

   The Legislature has approved bills to ban polystyrene — commonly known as plastic foam — cups and food containers. If a final measure is passed and the governor signs it, Maryland would be the first state to implement such a ban, environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council says.

   Democratic Delegate Brooke Lierman is the primary sponsor of the House bill. She said banning foam products is the first step to curbing people’s reliance on single-use plastics.

   “Single-use plastics are overrunning our oceans and bays and neighborhoods,” Lierman told CNN. “We need to take dramatic steps to start stemming our use and reliance on them … to leave future generations a planet full of wildlife and green space.”

   Lierman proposed the bill twice before but says she believes public opinion has now shifted to recognize the problem with plastic.

   “We see plastics in our neighborhoods, in our riverbeds and streams — it is ubiquitous,” Lierman said. “We’ve seen major companies like Dunkin’ Donuts say they’re going to phase out” the foam.

   A conference committee will work to resolve discrepancies between the House and Senate versions of the bill. Lierman said she expects the negotiations to go smoothly, saying there are “no real substantive differences.”

   However, it’s unclear whether Republican Gov. Larry Hogan will sign the bill.

   A spokeswoman for his office said Hogan is “always willing to consider any piece of legislation that reaches his desk.”

   Cailey Locklair Tolle, president of the Maryland Retailers Association, said such a law could hurt Maryland businesses.

   “Not only will costs go up for restaurants and be passed onto consumers, but because comparable products weigh more and many cannot be recycled, costs will increase due to higher tipping fees (based on weight) at landfills,” Locklair Tolle said.

   The American Chemistry Council, the trade association of chemical manufacturers, voiced opposition to the legislation.

   “Polystyrene foam packaging and containers provide business owners and consumers with a cost-effective and environmentally preferable choice that is ideal for protecting food and preventing food waste, particularly when used for food service. Foam packaging is generally more than 90 percent air and has a lighter environmental impact than alternatives,” the council said in a statement.

   Foam is difficult to clean up

   Several areas in Maryland have already introduced foam bans, including Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

   Lierman said plastic foam “is probably the most insidious form of single-use plastics.”

   The lightweight material easily breaks into smaller pieces, which makes it difficult to clean up, says Ashley Van Stone, executive director of Trash Free Maryland.

   Foam also absorbs toxins faster than other plastics and is mistaken for food by marine life, Van Stone said. And the toxins that wildlife consumes makes its way up the food chain into people.

   Van Stone, who worked with lawmakers to pass the foam ban legislation, said it would be only the first step.

   “We know that banning one material is not going to stop and eradicate all litter. But by banning foam we can work to ensure that the material is reduced from entering our environment,” Van Stone said.

   https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2019/03/14/maryland-may-become-the-first-state-to-ban-foam-food-containers-cups/
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

5. US EPA Round-Up

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   Senior Democrat senators demand PFAS documents

   Four ranking Democrat senators have written to the heads of the EPA, the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) demanding to see all documents and communications between the organisations related to the interagency review of the EPA’s February PFAS action plan and its long-awaited groundwater cleanup guidelines for PFAS.

   In their 6 March letters, Senators Tom Carper (Delaware), Patty Murray (Washington), Jack Reed (Rhode Island) and Gary Peters (Michigan) wrote that the action plan had not included a commitment to promulgate a drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS.

   And they noted that EPA has failed to release groundwater cleanup guidelines for the substances, despite announcing plans to do so by autumn 2018. "It is also our understanding that the groundwater cleanup guidelines for PFOS and PFOA have been held up at OMB since August 2018 due to an interagency dispute related to how stringent the guidelines should be," the letters added.

   "Finally, we have also been informed that in at least one instance, the United States Air Force has diverted funds intended for a site cleanup of non-PFAS contamination to PFAS-related cleanup efforts."

   The senators have asked that the agencies respond by 22 March.Pre-manufacture notices for August 2018

   The US EPA received 27 pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) in August 2018 and 38 amendments to past PMNs, according to a 12 March Federal Register notice. The manufacturer's identity was withheld on 41 of the 69 as confidential business information (CBI).

   The agency also notified that in August it received:one significant new use notice (Snuns) and two amended Snuns;test data in support of 15 previously submitted PMNs and 2 Snuns;ten notices of commencement (NOCs); andan application for a test marketing exemption (TME).

   The notice also includes a number of corrections to previous reports, the bulk of which are revised generic names.

   Section 5 of TSCA requires notification when any person intends to manufacture or import a chemical substance for a non-exempt commercial purpose, either for the first time (PMN) or for a 'significant new use', for substances subject to a significant new use rule (Snur). Submitters must provide the EPA with the appropriate information before initiating the activity; the agency reviews those notices, evaluates risk and takes appropriate action.

   Under 2016 updates to TSCA, the EPA must publish a list of these submissions monthly.

   BOSC April meeting

   The Board of Scientific Counsellors (BOSC) Chemical Sustainability subcommittee is holding a meeting on 10-12 April at the EPA’s Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

   Proposed agenda items include (but are not limited to):

   -overview of materials provided to the subcommittee;

   -an update on the agency’s Office of Research and Development’s (ORD) chemical safety for sustainability and human health risk assessment research programmes;

   -draft strategic research action plans;

   -review of charge questions; and

   -subcommittee discussion.

   Requests to provide oral testimony at the meeting will be accepted up to one business day before.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/75028/us-epa-round-up
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

6. Three Agencies Delaying EPA’s Nonstick Chemical Rules: Carper

   Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

   By Sylvia Carignan

   Multiple agencies’ concerns over what they see as too-strict groundwater cleanup guidelines for two ubiquitous chemicals have slowed an EPA rulemaking, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said in a letter March 14.

   The Environmental Protection Agency is drafting recommended standards to clean up groundwater contaminated by two chemicals known as PFOA and PFOS. The chemicals, found in drinking water supplies across the country, are part of an environmentally persistent family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The standards are part of a notice (RIN:2050-ZA15) under White House Office of Management and Budget review.

   The Department of Defense, Small Business Administration, and NASA have all pushed for less stringent standards, according to Carper, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

   The EPA plans to recommend cleanup when concentrations of PFOA or PFOS exceed 70 parts per trillion, but the other agencies prefer a cleanup level of 400 parts per trillion, Carper wrote.

   “I urge you to resist these or any other efforts to weaken the clean-up standards and quickly finalize guidelines that are sufficiently protective of human health and the environment,” Carper wrote to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.cq

   PFAS compounds may cause adverse health effects, including developmental harm to fetuses, testicular and kidney cancer, liver tissue damage, immune system or thyroid effects, and changes in cholesterol, according to the EPA.

   Spokespeople for the Department of Defense, Small Business Administration, and NASA did not immediately respond to Bloomberg Environment’s emailed requests for comment.
   

   Fewer Sites for Cleanup

   Less strict guidelines, allowing higher levels of contamination, would mean fewer sites would need to be cleaned up. The Defense Department has identified 90 military installations where PFAS substances in groundwater exceed 70 parts per trillion. The Department of Defense and NASA are refusing to clean up contamination unless the EPA agrees to the agencies’ suggested guidelines, Carper wrote.

   EPA’s 70 parts per trillion guideline for groundwater would be based on its health advisory that people be exposed to no more than 70 parts per trillion of PFOA and PFOS in drinking water over their lifetime. The health advisory is not enforceable.

   PFAS chemicals are an ingredient in some foams that civilian and military firefighters and first responders use to put out fuel fires. The compounds have also been used to manufacture nonstick and stain-resistant coatings in clothing, fast-food wrappers, carpets, and other consumer and industrial products.

   Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) is also concerned about the Department of Defense’s response to groundwater contaminated with PFAS, near Cannon and Holloman Air Force Bases in his state.

   “An epidemic of PFAS contamination is infecting communities adjacent to Air Force bases all over the country,” Udall said in a statement. “The Air Force must take precautionary steps to prevent further dangers to public health.”

   https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/three-agencies-delaying-epas-nonstick-chemical-rules-carper

   
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

7. Lawmakers Aim to Protect Federal Research

   Mar 14, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire

   By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder

   Two Democratic lawmakers are looking to protect scientific research at agencies from special interests under a pair of bicameral bills introduced this week.

   "These are challenging and unprecedented times for science," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

   Schatz and Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) are taking aim at the Trump administration with the "Scientific Integrity Act."

   "President Trump's multi-agency assault on environmental standards has hinged on efforts to distort, bury and even rewrite credible public scientific findings, including his absurd denial of the growing climate crisis and efforts to cover up evidence that the American people are being exposed to dangerous toxins," Tonko said.

   "Protecting the integrity of that science is one of the most important ways we can hold this president and his administration accountable."

   The pair added that President Trump has a "track record of distorting or suppressing science," noting efforts to bury reports on public health risks from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and a scrapped ban on chlorpyrifos.

   The legislation would require agencies to implement scientific integrity policies that ensure "scientific conclusions are not made based on political considerations," according to the bill.

   More than 20 agencies have some kind of scientific integrity policy in place, but the standards are inconsistent, according to the lawmakers.

   Under the bill, the policies would require candidates for science and technology positions to be chosen based on experience and scientific credentials. The policies must also make sure no individual can suppress, change or impede releases of scientific findings.

   The bill would require agencies to appoint scientific integrity officers to oversee implementation of these requirements.

   https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/03/14/stories/1060127307
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

8. US Flooring Firm Fined $33m for Formaldehyde Misinformation

   Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

   By Leigh Stringer

   Major US flooring firm Lumber Liquidators has agreed to pay $33m for misleading investors that its products were in compliance with formaldehyde emissions regulations.

   A 2015 investigation by US news programme 60 minutes, found that its laminate flooring sourced from China exceeded the formaldehyde emissions limits set in the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Regulations.

   The company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) relating to charges of securities fraud. The case was "primarily focused on the fact that Lumber Liquidators knowingly filed a false and misleading statement to investors broadly denying the allegations of the 60 minutes investigation".

   Following a Department of Justice (DOJ) ruling this week, Lumber Liquidators has agreed to pay a fine of $19.1m, and restitution of $13.9m, of which up to $6.1m will be paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

   The DOJ noted that "employees involved in wrongdoing either were terminated or resigned from the company, and the company replaced its executive management team with experienced executives who have displayed a commitment to building an ethical corporate culture."

   In a statement posted on the company’s website, Lumber Liquidators' chief executive officer Dennis Knowles said it has made "sweeping changes" during his time as CEO and will continue to take steps with the new executive team to "better Lumber Liquidators".

   The statement says that the company has incorporated "extensive remedial measures" that include the implementation and enforcement of a "comprehensive compliance, ethics, and reporting programme, as well as training and guidance on relevant policies and procedures".

   "This penalty should serve as a warning to other corporations who seek to mislead investors," said David W Archey, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond Field Office.

   https://chemicalwatch.com/75027/us-flooring-firm-fined-33m-for-formaldehyde-misinformation
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

9. New Campaign Looks to Eliminate ‘Toxic’ Paper Receipts

   Mar 14, 2019 | Environment Journal

   By Chris Ogden

   A new environmental campaign has been launched to reduce the amount of impact made by waste paper receipts.

   The Beat The Receipt campaign, which is being supported by high street chains such as KFC and Eat., is calling upon consumers and retailers to change their use of paper receipts.

   The campaign has been launched by the London-based financial tech company Flux, which aims to make paper receipts obsolete by making them digital instead.

   Matty Cusden-Ross, CEO of Flux and Beat The Receipt, said: ‘Receipts are used everywhere in everyday life – they tell the story of our purchase history and we need them for a variety of reasons, not least protecting ourselves as consumers.

   ‘We launched Beat the Receipt to highlight the problems of paper receipts. It’s not just our own health that’s at risk from thermal paper coated in BPA – every year we print billions of paper receipts at the cost of millions of trees, millions of barrels of oil and billions of litres of water. This is completely unnecessary wastage.’

   Over 11 billion paper receipts are created in the UK each year but over 90% of these are lost, thrown away or become too faded to use, amounting to an estimated 7.5 million kilograms of waste.

   Around half of printed receipts also contain bisphenols such as bisphenol A (BPA), a toxic chemical often found in single-use plastic.

   This makes these receipts impossible to recycle effectively as this can end up transferring the BPA into other products.

   ‘Bisphenols are being found in our bodies and are reaching the environment through landfill, waste from paper mills and from the breakdown of products that contain these chemicals, such as receipts,’ said Heather McFarlane of the environmental charity Fidra.

   ‘With mounting evidence that bisphenols disrupt hormones in humans and other animals we need to find alternatives.’

   For this reason, the Beat The Receipt campaign has launched a petition to encourage businesses to offer non-printed receipts.

   Participating brands such as KFC are also making their customers aware of the issues surrounding paper receipts and are working to offer digital alternatives.

   Flux’s campaign comes after a survey of over 1,000 Brits found that they would prefer to receive all their receipts digitally rather than by paper.

   The campaign is working with the American ethical consumerist organisation Green America after their similar ‘Skip the Slip’ campaign led to a law change proposal in California this year.

   https://environmentjournal.online/articles/new-campaign-looks-to-eliminate-toxic-paper-receipts/
   

   Return to headline | Return to top

10. Ministerial Alliance Sets out Ambition for a Global Chemicals Framework

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    By Leigh Stringer

    Government ministers and representatives from some key international bodies have set out their vision for a global chemicals framework after 2020.

    The group, called the High Ambition Alliance, held a meeting yesterday at the UN Environment Assembly (Unea-4) to establish its objectives and ambitions in the run up to next year's International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5).

    A decision will be made there on whether the current framework – the UN's voluntary programme, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm) – continues beyond its 2020 mandate or a new framework takes its place.

    The Alliance, formed last year by Sweden’s former environment minister Karolina Skog, aims to push for a far-reaching global agreement on managing chemicals and waste. It is now led by Ms Skog’s successor, Swedish deputy prime minister Isabella Lovin and Uruguay's minister of budget and planning Álvaro García.

    When launched, Ms Skog, along with other country representatives, wanted to see the adoption of something similar to the Paris Agreement on climate change for chemicals. However, a legally binding treaty is not included in the vision text.

    Attendees of the meeting (see box) which are supporting the vision, include the European Commission, the OECD, Canada, Norway and the retailer H&M.

    Following yesterday’s discussion, the alliance will aim to:

    -protect human health and the environment from the harmful effects of chemicals and waste, towards healthy lives and a sustainable, safe planet for all;

    -create and increase awareness and understanding of the urgency to act on chemicals and waste at all levels;

    -work towards the development of a framework on the sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020 for approval at the fifth ICCA. It will seek further endorsement by high-level political bodies such as the UN General Assembly, Unea and other governing bodies of UN agencies to strengthen the commitment and actions by all countries, stakeholders and sectors;

    -work towards an enabling framework that fosters significant progress at all levels, including a common vision as well as shared, measurable objectives and targets. There will be independent input from science and it should be able to address issues of concern that warrant global action; and

    -increase ratification of the existing chemicals and waste-related conventions and enhance support to the development, implementation and enforcement of legislation on chemicals and waste at the national level.

    The alliance is calling on all governments, stakeholders and sectors to join the group to "strengthen the ambition by 2020 and thereafter".

    "We will contribute to this individually and collectively by stepping up our efforts to respond to the challenges and realise the opportunities provided through the sound management of chemicals and waste," the vision states.

    At this week’s Unea-4 in Nairobi, Kenya, the UN released a summary of its second Global Chemicals Outlook. The report says that the global goal to minimise adverse impacts of chemicals and waste will not be achieved by 2020.

    In an exclusive interview with Chemical Watch, Ms Lovin said this is clearly unachievable because "we have too many dangerous chemicals threatening human health and the environment".

    "We need to do more and use the [post-2020 negotiations] as an opportunity to strengthen the global framework on chemicals," she added.

    Meeting attendees that support the vision statement:

    -Argentina

    -Canada

    -Estonia

    -Finland

    -France

    -Germany

    -Luxembourg

    -Norway

    -Peru

    -Sweden

    -Switzerland

    -Uruguay

    -European Commission

    -FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)

    -GEF  (Global Environment Facility)

    -H&M (retailer)

    -Ipen (International POPs Elimination Network)

    -Minamata secretariat

    -OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development)

    -Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

    -Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions

    -UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)

    -UN Environment

    -Unitar (United Nations Institute for Training and Research)

    https://chemicalwatch.com/75013/ministerial-alliance-sets-out-ambition-for-a-global-chemicals-framework
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

11. Prioritise Chemicals to Achieve Circular Economy, Report Says

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    By Leigh Stringer

    Chemicals management must be a higher priority on the corporate agenda and cannot be the responsibility of a supporting department that has a weak mandate within an organisation, says a report by NGO ChemSec.

    The report, The missing piece: chemicals in the circular economy, says that chemical issues can be prioritised at different levels, depending on company goals. But to achieve a circular economy that creates clean, usable secondary materials, chemicals must be a top consideration.

    "At the lowest, so-called reactive level, you simply follow regulations and adapt on the fly. By contrast, at the highest and most ambitious level, you actively seek out green chemistry and sustainable materials that position the organisation for the circular economy," it says.

    This kind of work, it adds, means that you are working with a positive selection of chemicals. "Simply replacing an undesirable chemical with another that is not yet regulated, is of similar quality or poorly investigated, is not enough."

    It says that with basic recycling the focus of the circular economy, little attention is paid to the contents of old products that are turned into new ones.

    "The truth is that today’s chemicals legislation is not adapted for a sustainable circular economy, as many hazardous chemicals are unregulated and in widespread use." 

    These chemicals, it says, fulfill thousands of different functions in all kinds of everyday household items all around us.

    "As these items are the very same we recycle and turn into new products in a circular world, it also means we are recycling their toxic contents."

    Luckily, a growing number of brands and retailers are realising that legal compliance is neither a good benchmark for corporate chemicals management, nor for a circular economy.

    In order to account for weak legislation and stay away from toxic chemicals in products and supply chains, many companies have internal chemical requirements that go beyond legal compliance, it says.

    Corporate efforts

    The report interviews companies on their efforts to phase out hazardous substances, introduce safer chemistry into their designs and enable recycling of old products.

    Apple, for example, pays customers to bring back their old phones, which are then used to make new ones. It created the original phone and knows it fulfils Apple’s chemical requirements. 

    H&M meanwhile has initiated a process of developing and implementing a positive list that will make it possible for the company to consider chemicals right from the design phase. The aim is to design a garment with only preferred chemicals from this list. "This method is not fully implemented yet, but we are getting there," the company says.

    Ikea is exploring how to track legacy chemicals. One of its commitments is to join forces with others to develop new solutions for dealing with chemicals during reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling. It also calls for legislators to enable transparency and availability of recycled materials by setting up a harmonised, cross-border legislative framework.  

    https://chemicalwatch.com/75024/prioritise-chemicals-to-achieve-circular-economy-report-says
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

12. 3M Still Faces Alabama Residents’ PFOA Drinking Water Claims

    Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Peter Hayes

    3M Co. failed to dispel a proposed class action alleging PFOA releases from an Alabama facility are contaminating the Tennessee River and the public drinking water supply.

    The claims over its Decatur plant aren’t barred under the state’s two-year time limit because the area residents allege the releases are ongoing, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama said March 13.

    The plaintiffs, residents of Lawrence County and Morgan County, assert claims of public negligence, nuisance, fraudulent concealment, and wantonness.

    The residents allege personal injuries, including kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis.

    The proposed class consists of all people who live or lived in properties connected to the West Morgan East Lawrence Water System and who have been diagnosed with high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, kidney cancer, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

    The releases of perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid have contaminated the water system, which serves more than 10,000 customers, according to the complaint.

    The complaint also names as defendants manufacturer Daikin America, Inc. and the West Morgan-East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority.

    Judge Abdul K. Kallon issued the opinion.

    Wiggins Childs Pantazis Fisher & Goldfarb LLC represents the plaintiffs.

    Lightfoot Franklin & White LLC, and Mayer Brown LLP, represent 3M.

    https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/3m-still-faces-alabama-residents-pfoa-drinking-water-claims
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

13. Echa Round-Up

    Mar 14, 2019 | Chemical Watch

    Consultation on three SVHC proposals

    Echa has received the following three proposals to identify new substances of very high concern (SVHCs):2-methoxyethyl acetate. Sweden is proposing as toxic for reproduction. The substance is not registered under REACH; 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propionic acid, its salts and its acyl halides (covering any of their individual isomers and combinations thereof). The Netherlands is proposing equivalent level of concern having probable serious effects on the environment and the same regarding health. The substances are used as a processing aid in the production of fluorinated polymers; andtris(4-nonylphenyl, branched and linear) phosphite (TNPP) with ≥ 0.1% w/w of 4-nonylphenol, branched and linear (4-NP). France is proposing for its endocrine disrupting properties. TNPP is primarily used as an antioxidant to stabilise polymers.

    The deadline for comments on all three is 29 April.Revised policy on conflict of interest 

    Echa has published its revised policy for avoiding conflicts of interest situations. The policy, which the agency's management board has adopted, applies to the whole organisation and all its activities, both administrative and scientific. The scope covers:

    -members and their advisers;

    -invited experts of Echa bodies;

    -observers at their meeting; and

    -statutory staff of the agency Secretariat.

    Echa says it sees managing conflicts of interest as key to its governance and crucial for maintaining the trust of stakeholders and citizens. 

    Microplastics restriction webinar

    The agency is to hold a webinar on its microplastics restriction proposal. The aim is to clarify the content of the proposal and outline ways stakeholders can contribute to a six-month public consultation that will begin on 20 March, if the proposal passes a conformity check.

    A panel of experts will answer questions, and the answers to the most frequently asked questions will be published after the event. The maximum capacity is 1,000 participants. 

    The session will take place on 3 April and will be cancelled if the proposal does not pass the conformity check.

    Rac and Seac Opinion on chromium trioxide

    The consolidated Opinion of Echa's Risk Assessment and Socio-economic Analysis committees (Rac and Seac) for one use of chromium trioxide by MAHLE Ventiltrieb GmbH and MAHLE Polska Sp z o.o. is available on the agency's website.

    Chromium trioxide is applied in functional chrome plating for the surface treatment of engine valves used in varying sizes in light vehicle gasoline and diesel and heavy duty diesel combustion engines. 

    Video: Non-animal strategies for assessing skin sensitisation

    Echa has released a video, following a workshop on 7 and 8 February on the progress made in non-animal testing strategies for assessing skin sensitisation.

    The workshop was co-organised by the European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA), Cefic's Long-range Research Initiative (Cefic-LRI) and the International Fragrance Association (Ifra).

    https://chemicalwatch.com/75007/echa-round-up
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

Energy News

14. (ACC Mentioned) The Toxic Consequences of America’s Plastics Boom

    Mar 14, 2019 | The Nation

    By Zoë Carpenter

    A beach at sunset. the sky is streaked peach and mauve, the wind cool and briny. A long line of dump trucks idles at the edge of the waves, each full of plastic—bags and milk jugs and floss containers, hair clips, shrink wrap, fake ferns, toys, and spatulas. Every minute, one of the trucks lifts its bed and deposits a load of trash into the sea. 

    The dump trucks aren’t real, but the trash is. No one knows exactly how much plastic leaks into the oceans every year, but one dump truck per minute—8 million tons per year—is a midrange estimate. Plastic waste usually begins its journey on land, where only 9 percent of it is recycled. The rest is thrown away, burned, or buried, left to wash into streams and rivers or to blow out to sea. Once in the ocean, the plastic drifts or sinks. The sun and the waves break it down into tiny particles that resemble plankton. Birds and fish and other sea creatures eat it and begin to starve. One analysis predicts that by 2050, the plastic in the oceans will outweigh the fish. 

    Some of the trash winds up in one of five current systems in the oceans known as gyres, where it forms a slowly circulating plastic soup. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of these zones, spanning an area twice the size of Texas between Hawaii and California, a merry-go-round of the remains of global consumption. Researchers have found small plastic shards and large objects in the gyre: hard hats and Game Boys and milk crates and enormous tangles of fishing nets, all swirling in a smog of microplastics.

    Often inaccurately described as a solid island, the garbage patch has become a potent symbol of the world’s plastic problem, alongside viral photos of a sea horse clutching a Q-tip, a sea turtle with a straw wedged deep in its nostril, and a dead adolescent albatross with a stomach full of jewel-like plastic shards. These images have helped raise the alarm about plastic waste around the world, inspiring responses ranging from weekend beach sweeps to the Ocean Cleanup, a controversial and expensive effort to collect the trash in the Great Pacific gyre. Even the corporations that produce plastics have grown alarmed. In January, dozens of companies including Dow, ExxonMobil, Chevron Phillips, and Formosa Plastics Corporation announced the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, with an initial commitment of $1 billion to fund recycling and cleanup.

    But those same petrochemical giants are about to make the plastic problem worse. Companies are investing $65 billion to dramatically expand plastics production in the United States, and more than 333 petrochemical projects are underway or newly completed, including brand-new facilities, expansions of existing plants, vast networks of pipelines, and shipping infrastructure. This is a sharp reversal of fortune for American plastics manufacturers. Just over a decade ago, major plastics makers shed tens of thousands of jobs as cheaper operating costs in Asia and the Middle East lured production overseas. Now, thanks to the fracking revolution, producing plastic has become radically cheaper in the United States, leading to a glut of raw materials for its creation. The economic winds have shifted so profoundly that petrochemical companies have declared a “renaissance” in American plastics manufacturing. In turn, plastic is becoming an increasingly important source of profit for Big Oil, providing yet another reason to drill in the face of climate change. 

    The expected result of all this investment is a spike in the amount of plastic produced globally, as manufacturers in Asia and the Middle East ramp up their own production—with capacity increasing by more than a third in the next six years alone, according to an estimate from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Most of this new plastic will be sent to developing countries with waste infrastructure ill-equipped to handle it. “If you’re going to increase production of plastics—double it in the next 15 years—you’re going to see an increase of unrecyclable plastic products and packaging going to the more remote parts of the world, where there is still no plan for efficient recovery,” said Marcus Eriksen, a scientist and former Marine who co-founded the 5 Gyres Institute. Against this backdrop, investing $1 billion in trash collection is like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while the tap is on full blast.

    But plastic—and its fossil-fuel precursors—leaves a mark long before bags and bottles and Q-tips scatter across fields or wash into the oceans. Communities all along the supply chain will feel the impacts of the American plastics renaissance. What the industry describes as a bright new economic opportunity, others see as a looming disaster. “For too long, one of the most invisible aspects of the plastics crisis has been the impacts of plastics on communities who live in the shadows and along the fence line of plastics refining and manufacturing,” said Carroll Muffett, CIEL’s president and CEO. “These people are experiencing the impacts of our plastic planet in a way that is more immediate and more severe than just about anybody else in the world.”

    In the United States, the front of the plastics boom runs along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Louisiana, and through the upper Ohio River Valley, which spans Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. It’s made up of small communities that often had little say in their role in the new infrastructure build-out, with decisions made largely behind the scenes by politicians and corporate behemoths. Until recently, many people had no idea that their towns would soon become the knots connecting an immense plastic net thrown across the country.

    In May 2017, Donald Trump made his first overseas trip as president, to Saudi Arabia. He waved a sword during a ceremonial dance, accepted lavish gifts—including a portrait of himself and a robe lined with white tiger fur—and signed a $110 billion arms agreement. Meanwhile, in a mint-and-gold-colored room within the Saudi royal court, executives struck their own deals. Among them were Darren Woods, the CEO and chairman of ExxonMobil, and Yousef Al-Benyan, CEO of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), one of the world’s largest producers of petrochemicals. With Trump, Saudi King Salman, and then–US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (a former Exxon CEO) looking on, Woods and Al-Benyan shook hands on a joint venture to build what will be the largest plastics facility of its kind, on Texas’s Gulf Coast.

    Long before the deal was immortalized with glitzy photo ops, it was known as Project Yosemite—a code name designed to keep the initiative secret while its backers scouted sites. What the two companies wanted to build is known as a “cracker,” a facility that uses heat and pressure to crack apart molecules of ethane gas so they can be reconfigured as ethylene and later polyethylene, the building block for a wide range of plastic products, from packaging to bottles. Once an unwanted by-product of oil and gas fracking, ethane flowing from Texas’s Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale is now prompting a massive build-out of petrochemical infrastructure—pipelines, crackers, polyethylene plants, tanker terminals—along the Gulf Coast from St. James, Louisiana, to Corpus Christi, Texas.

    In 2016, with help from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Exxon found a site for Project Yosemite on 1,400 acres of farmland north of Corpus Christi. By the time residents of two neighboring towns learned of the massive project, county commissioners had already rezoned the farmland and were eagerly courting the oil giant. Soon Exxon was seeking $1 billion in tax breaks from the county and local school district. “That’s when people woke up,” said Errol Summerlin, a retired Legal Aid attorney who lives a few miles from the Exxon site, in the town of Portland. “Bingo. We started the battle then.” 

    A trim man with slightly stooped shoulders and a gravelly voice, Summerlin has lived in the same single-story white-brick house in Portland for 34 years. When I met him there in early January, he laid out a large map across his glass-topped dining table. With his finger, he traced the outline of Copano and Aransas bays to the north, where briny waters provide habitat to shrimp and oysters, redfish and black drum, roseate spoonbills and whooping cranes, and where billions of gallons of wastewater from the cracker will discharge. He pointed to an industrial corridor established in recent years on the north side of Corpus Christi Bay, where the flare from a natural-gas plant flickers incessantly. “That’s Cheniere. You’ve got Sherwin Alumina, you’ve got Oxychem, Flint Hills…,” he said, ticking off various industrial sites. Across the water, a narrow shipping channel runs like a vein along Refinery Row, a corridor of round white storage tanks and towers that puff out columns of white and gray fumes.

    When Summerlin learned that hundreds of acres of farmland would be turned into an entirely new industrial zone for the cracker plant, he was disturbed. “Industry has been inching itself closer and closer to Portland,” he explained. Plotted on a map, the rectangle of land where Exxon plans to build is nearly as large as Portland and about twice the size of neighboring Gregory, a low-income, largely Hispanic community. While county officials and members of local business groups boasted of some 600 permanent jobs promised by Exxon, Summerlin worried about air and water pollution from the plant. According to Exxon’s requested air permit, the facility will emit sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides, which can combine to form ozone smog; carcinogens, including benzene, formaldehyde, and butadiene; and other particulate matter. The health risks of these emissions include eye and throat irritation, respiratory problems, and headaches, as well as nose bleeds at low levels and, at high levels, more serious damage to vital organs and the central nervous system.

    In late 2016, Summerlin and other concerned residents joined a newly formed group called Portland Citizens United, which sought initially to collect information about the proposed plant and later to try to stop the project, or at least convince Exxon to relocate to an area already given over to heavy industry. First they challenged the rezoning, which had been done in violation of open-meeting laws. That set the project back a few months. The Portland City Council unanimously adopted a resolution opposing the site, on the grounds that it was too close to public schools—but because the site lies just outside city limits in unincorporated San Patricio County, the resolution amounted to a toothless plea. Now, the Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Sierra Club, working on behalf of Portland and Gregory residents, are contesting the air-quality permits that Exxon requested from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Summerlin is not naive about the prospects of this effort: The commission is notoriously friendly to industry and, as far as Summerlin knows, has never denied a permit—certainly not to Exxon, one of the largest employers in the state. Nevertheless, Summerlin said, “I’m doing my best to slow the suckers down.” 

    We got into Summerlin’s car and drove through Portland’s sleepy neighborhoods, past the high school and middle school, then hooked a left on the straight, flat road that runs next to the site. Once planted with cotton and sorghum, the plot is a weedy brown rectangle two miles long and a mile wide, ringed by a tall wire fence and newly installed power lines. Summerlin drove slowly along the fence line, pointing to the outflow ditches where stormwater will be flushed out to the bays. In the fields stretching out to the north and east, a fleet of windmills stood at attention, arms spinning lazily. We passed a small pasture of Texas longhorns, which raised their heads to look at the car. Sandwiched between houses, with industrial smokestacks looming on the horizon, the cattle appeared lost. Further down the road, limp plastic bags dotted a fallow field of brown stalks like giant tufts of wet cotton.

    As Summerlin learned more about the facility, he grew increasingly alarmed by its scale and started to feel like the community had been misled. In addition to the steam cracker, which will produce 1.8 million tons of ethylene every year, Exxon and SABIC are building three units to make polyethylene and monoethylene glycol—which can be turned into antifreeze, latex paints, and polyester for clothing—as well as a rail yard where plastic pellets will be loaded onto trains bound for ocean ports and then shipped to Asia and Latin America. The facility needs a new road to transport components to build the plant, as well as a cargo dock and marine terminal. “They’re all lauding this as a game changer—and it is, in a bad way,” Summerlin said. “It transforms the whole area.”

    Such infrastructure is just a small part of what oil and gas companies have planned for the Gulf Coast. Across Texas in recent years, more than 8,000 miles of pipeline have been laid down to carry oil, gas, and natural-gas liquids (which include ethane) from the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale to the coast, where dozens of new petrochemical projects are in the works. Exxon alone is planning to spend some $20 billion over a decade on its “Growing the Gulf” venture, a suite of petrochemical projects that includes the cracker outside Portland; another cracker at the company’s chemicals complex in Baytown, near Houston; and an expansion of its plastics plant in nearby Beaumont. Other development is being driven by Congress’s lifting, in 2015, of 40-year-old restrictions on crude-oil exports. With oil and natural-gas production surging, companies are eager to get their products overseas. Recently, the Port of Corpus Christi put forward plans to build new terminals for massive oil tankers, which raised hackles in Port Aransas, a beach town close to the proposed site that depends on tourism and fishing, both of which could be disrupted by ships nearly the length of four football fields coming and going. 

    All of these new facilities will require water; Exxon’s cracker alone will consume 20 to 25 million gallons per day, more than all the water currently used each day in San Patricio County’s water district. But the area is prone to drought. The Port of Corpus Christi has plans to build a seawater-desalination plant on Harbor Island near Port Aransas, which could lead to discharges of extremely salty water back into the bays that serve as nurseries for shrimp and fish. The development is also vulnerable to hurricanes. When Hurricane Harvey swept across Houston in 2017, many chemical plants shut down, releasing an estimated 1 million pounds of excess toxic emissions that drifted into neighboring communities.

    But with little resistance from regulators, companies are plowing ahead with new development. Recently, the Port of Corpus Christi purchased 3,000 acres to the west of Portland, which Summerlin expects will be leased for other petrochemical projects. “We know what’s going on,” he said, “but nobody’s telling us.” A recent planning document showing the port’s new tract of land listed code names for two new undisclosed proposals: Projects Falcon and Dynamo.

    About 80 miles up the coast from Portland in Point Comfort, tiny translucent pellets the size of lentils burrow into the muck and weeds at the edge of a sluggish creek. Further out, the pellets mingle with aquatic plants, floating together in whorls like confetti. Oystermen and anglers working in bays nearby find them inside oyster shells and in the guts of fish. 

    Diane Wilson has been collecting these pellets for years. The “nurdles,” as they’re often called, have taken over her barn, which is stacked with bags of them, and 30 years of her life. A former commercial shrimper, Wilson is locked in a protracted battle against the source of the pellets: Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese company that manufactures polypropylene, PVC, and other petrochemicals at a 2,500-acre complex along Cox Creek. In 1994, Wilson tried to sink her shrimp boat in a nearby bay to protest the chemical-laden wastewater discharges from the plant. Almost daily over the past four years, she and a handful of volunteers, some of them former Formosa employees, have gone out in kayaks and waders to collect evidence of the ongoing pollution. Although the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality have fined Formosa repeatedly for various air- and water-quality violations, the nurdles continue to wash into the creek. Wilson is currently suing Formosa, asking a federal judge to fine the company $173 million and order an end to the dumping.

    In Louisiana’s St. James Parish, a majority-black community that spans the Mississippi River west of New Orleans, Formosa’s plans to build a $9.4 billion plastics complex have drawn outrage from residents already hemmed in by dozens of chemical facilities and refineries. Cotton, sugar, and indigo plantations once lined the river; more recently, lifetime resident Sharon Lavigne remembers, her grandfather caught shrimp in the Mississippi River and picked figs and pecans from the trees in their yard. Now, St. James hosts more than a dozen industrial sites—part of a corridor stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that is often referred to as “Cancer Alley.”

    Formerly designated for agricultural uses, the land for Formosa’s new plant—which sits in a district that is more than 85 percent black—was redesignated as a “future industrial” zone in a planning document published in 2014, a decision that residents and environmental groups say was made with inadequate community input. A section of the planning document focused on the parish’s history quotes a 1950s-era historical account that describes the early 1800s in St. James as an “era of fabulous plantation life” and “luxurious living,” during which “acreage was counted by thousands and slaves by hundreds.” Aside from demographic figures, that is the report’s sole mention of the area’s black communities. Anne Rolfes, founding director of the environmental-justice group Louisiana Bucket Brigade, called the planned development in the area one of “the most disgusting racial situations I’ve ever seen.”

    Like many St. James residents, Lavigne can list a number of friends and relatives who have died from cancer or been sickened by respiratory conditions. After she learned about Formosa’s plans to build yet another facility, Lavigne, a teacher who lives about a mile and a half from the proposed site, started a group called RISE St. James. At first, it consisted of 10 people meeting at her house. The group has since grown to a few dozen; they’ve held marches and shown up at public meetings to oppose Formosa and other plants. “We go to the meetings, we express our concerns, and people just look at us as though we’re nothing,” Lavigne told me. In December, activist Cherri Foytlin brought a permit hearing for the facility to a standstill when she told government officials, “You don’t give a shit about brown and black people.” A single mother of three who lives in St. James Parish because she can’t afford a home closer to New Orleans told regulators, “I feel like I’m trapped. I feel like I don’t have anywhere to go. I can’t get away from the pollution. I’m surrounded by it.” Two months later, the state approved one of Formosa’s critical permits.

     For a long time, communities like St. James and people like Diane Wilson fought lonely battles against the petrochemical industry. The Break Free From Plastic movement, a coalition of more than 1,400 organizations, is working to connect these various localized struggles, from communities in West Texas impacted by fracking to neighborhoods in the Philippines that are awash in plastic trash. Carroll Muffett of CIEL, which is a member of the coalition, said, “They realize they’re all fighting different aspects of the same industry and the same problem.”

    The story that the petrochemical industry tells about its products is not about pollution. It’s a story of an innovation-driven manufacturing comeback, one that will create jobs at home and provide essential products to meet a growing demand overseas. “We are using new, abundant domestic-energy supplies to provide advantaged products to the world,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said at a 2017 energy conference regarding the company’s planned $20 billion investment in petrochemical infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. “The advent of plastics has benefited the world,” Graham van’t Hoff, executive vice president of Shell’s chemicals division, wrote in January. Solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles all use plastic components, he continued. The plastic products that account for the bulk of rising demand in developing countries, however, are not life-saving medical devices or specialized vehicle components. They aren’t even really products in their own right.

    According to the International Energy Agency, “the single largest source of plastic demand” is packaging—the shrink-wrapping around a box of mushrooms, the tiny sachets containing a single wash of shampoo—much of it thrown away as soon as it is removed. This has historically been the plastic industry’s profit model: “The future of plastics is in the trash can,” Lloyd Stouffer, the editor of the trade journal Modern Packaging, declared in 1956. Now, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, about a third of packaging ends up as trash. The environmental damage it causes and the greenhouse gases emitted during its production together cost some $40 billion annually—“exceeding the profit pool of the plastic packaging industry.” The petrochemical industry sees this largely as the fault of waste-collection systems in poor countries. “I find the issue of unmanaged plastic waste deeply concerning,” van’t Hoff wrote in January. But, he added, “The challenge is not with plastics themselves. It is what happens after people use them. In some places, waste and recycling infrastructure is inadequate…. As a producer of petrochemicals and plastic resin, we cannot directly control the amount of plastic waste that gets into [the] environment.”

    Plastics producers have responded to growing public pressure by offering some support for cleanup efforts. “We believe we have a role in fixing it,” said Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council, which represents petrochemical companies, speaking of the plastic-waste crisis; he added that current funds for the industry’s Alliance for Plastic Waste are “a start point.” But many environmental advocates see these efforts as greenwashing. Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Institute said that many of the solutions put forward by the industry require costly technology that will take years—if not decades—to scale. “They’ve been very effective in making the public think that recycling is key, and that it’s the burden of the citizen, of the community, of the government to manage waste,” Eriksen continued. “Globalization is still going to send unrecyclable materials to more remote parts of the world that can’t employ the solutions that industry proposes, because they’re expensive.”

    Environmental groups like those in the Break Free From Plastic movement are increasingly calling for a prevention-focused strategy, in which companies stop making materials designed to be used only once and pay the full cost of collecting and recycling plastic products. NGOs, academics, even the corporate consulting group McKinsey have embraced the concept of a “circular” plastics economy, in which products flow through a closed loop rather than “leaking” out. The circular model depends on improving the economics and technology of recycling and on fundamentally redesigning materials to replace single-use plastics with biodegradable or recyclable alternatives. A true circular model also requires reducing and eventually eliminating the amount of plastics created from fossil fuels—by developing alternative feedstocks from renewable sources, and by supplanting virgin feedstocks with recycled content.

    Running in the opposite direction are the major oil companies, who have placed big bets on their role as plastics producers. For oil giants like Exxon and Shell, plastics and other chemicals represent an increasingly significant source of profit—one that a circular-economy approach would threaten. “While increased recycling of plastics represents a gain in circular-economy terms, it is less good news for oil-resource-holding countries and oil companies, which will lose part of a source of future demand growth,” McKinsey analysts wrote recently. According to the International Energy Agency, “petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption,” picking up the slack as efforts to curb emissions and increase efficiency limit other sources of demand. In 2015, while only 10 percent of Exxon’s revenue came from its chemicals division, chemicals accounted for more than a quarter of its profits.

    As climate change forces a reckoning with fossil-fuel consumption, plastics offer another incentive to keep drilling. “Investing in chemicals is part of our strategy to thrive through the energy transition,” wrote Shell’s van’t Hoff. The billions invested in new petrochemical infrastructure and local markets for ethane could help keep shale drillers—many of whom have been bleeding money—afloat. (According to the US Energy Information Administration, the high content of ethane and other natural-gas liquids in “many shale plays has made it economical for operators to continue to aggressively develop…shale gas resources during periods of low natural gas prices.”) The boom in plastics “will perpetuate a fossil fuel economy that underpins both the climate crisis and the plastics crisis,” concludes a 2017 CIEL report, “while impacting frontline communities and the wider public at every stage of its toxic lifecycle.”

    Early one morning last September, a gas pipeline near Terrie Baumgardner’s home in western Pennsylvania exploded, turning the sky the color of dirty orange sherbet. Flames shot 150 feet into the air, destroying a house and sending several families scrambling to evacuate. Driving down the interstate days later, Baumgardner could make out a patch of scorched earth where the gas had burned itself out.

    Two days later, officials in the nearby township of Independence voted to repeal a rule mandating that pipelines be built at least 100 feet away from homes and 500 feet from parks, schools, and hospitals. Eliminating the ordinance eased the way for the Falcon Pipeline, a 97-mile project that will carry ethane from the Marcellus Shale to a new cracker being built by Shell on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County. To Baumgardner, a retired college instructor and member of a local nonprofit called the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community, the elimination of the pipeline-setback rule was yet another example of state and local officials’ rush to accommodate Shell.

    The cracker, slated to start operating in late 2021 or early 2022, will be the first to open outside the Gulf Coast in decades. But it’s just one of several projects underway in the Ohio River Valley as corporations, state officials, and members of the Trump administration look to transform the region into a brand-new petrochemical corridor. A Thai company has proposed a cracker farther down the Ohio River in Belmont County, Ohio, and the industry and its political allies want to build a massive storage hub to hold as much as 100 million barrels of ethane and other natural-gas liquids beneath West Virginia, and possibly Pennsylvania and Ohio as well. The US Department of Energy is considering a $1.9 billion loan for that project, which Energy Secretary Rick Perry has described as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for this country.”

    To many people in northern Appalachia, petrochemicals look like the answer to the economic problems created by the collapse of steel and coal. Shell has helped drive that narrative, commissioning a study that predicted the cracker would produce $15 to $19 billion in regional economic activity in southwestern Pennsylvania over four decades. Although some economists have disputed the methodology that produced this rosy projection—for instance, it assumes that every job created at the plant will lead to 13 elsewhere, and omits the cost of a historic $1.65 billion tax break the state gave Shell—it was welcome news in Potter Township, where Shell is building its facility: 500 jobs there vanished when a zinc-smelting facility closed in 2014, leaving hundreds of acres contaminated with lead and arsenic. Shell promised to clean up the site and pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for local historic-preservation projects. 

    But to others, including Baumgardner, whatever economic benefits the cracker provides are far outweighed by the risks of large-scale petrochemical development. Pennsylvania has a long history of damage related to extractive industries, from the Donora smog of 1948, when a poisonous air inversion killed 20 people and sent some 6,000 others to the hospital, to the fragmented disasters of fracking: toxic-waste ponds, ruined property values, lingering illnesses. “This area of the Ohio River Valley, and other areas that have had a lot of experience with resource extraction, they follow this boom-bust cycle. When you’re in a bust phase and you lose jobs, there’s a lot of momentum: ‘Well, we need to attract industry to bring these jobs back,’” said Jennifer Baka, an energy geographer at Penn State. “We can’t think outside of the box and think about what an alternative-energy future might be, because we’re so familiar and accustomed to the existing fossil-fuel economy.”

    Southwestern Pennsylvania suffers from some of the poorest air quality in the nation, according to Matthew Mehalik, the executive director of the Breathe Project, which works on air-pollution issues. “If you consider that backdrop—[that we] already have a serious air-quality problem—the potential to add more burden to our airshed will only make things worse,” he added. One estimate puts the health-care impacts over a 30-year period from the Shell plant and two other crackers proposed in the region at $616 million to $1.4 billion in Beaver County alone, and up to $8.1 billion nationally.

    Critics of the projects also argue that regulators and communities are unprepared for the scale of development that is now underway. Lisa Graves-Marcucci, the Pennsylvania coordinator for the Environmental Integrity Project, is particularly worried about what she describes as “piecemeal, egg-slicer” permitting, in which projects like Shell’s cracker are considered in isolation, obscuring the web of industrial infrastructure—drilling sites, compressor stations, storage hubs, pipelines—that goes along with them. Even some people in the industry have suggested that communities might not be fully aware of what’s coming. “I think the magnitude of some of these projects that we’re talking about here is hard for a lot of us and a lot of our communities to wrap their heads around,” said Chad Riley, the CEO of the Thrasher Group, an engineering firm with projects in oil and gas fields, speaking at an industry conference in 2018 that was attended by reporter Sharon Kelly.

    Ultimately, the fate of a facility that will affect the whole region was largely decided by three supervisors in tiny Potter Township, population 496. “Decisions have been made at higher levels of government, or sometimes in these small communities…that will forever change our region,” Graves-Marcucci said. “Does that mean we’ve signed over our entire future to this constant need to drill more and frack more? Are we stuck on this treadmill of plastics?”

    Pennsylvania’s northeastern neighbor has taken a different approach. New York banned fracking in 2014 and, a year later, unveiled a clean-energy initiative that established some of the most aggressive energy-transition goals in the country. In 2018, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a $1.5 billion investment in renewables projects across the state, with a goal of creating 40,000 clean-energy jobs by 2020.

    For a long time, Terrie Baumgardner didn’t think much about what would come out of Shell’s ethane cracker. Early on, she heard that the plant would produce plastic pellets, perhaps to fill stuffed animals. “But I don’t think we realized at that point what a hazard plastic was for us and for the planet,” she said. “It’s only lately become a ‘for what?’ question—why are we doing this?” She continued: “Our leaders said, ‘Here comes an industry and it can get people jobs.’ And it was a backward-looking industry, but they didn’t see it that way.” 

    https://www.thenation.com/article/plastics-pollution-crisis-fracking-petrochemicals/
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

15. Oil Erases Gains after U.S., China Said to Delay Trade Agreement

    Mar 14, 2019 | Bloomberg (In the Houston Chronicle)

    By Grant Smith

    Oil erased gains after a U.S.-China meeting to end the nations’ trade war was said to have been pushed back.

    Futures fell in New York, erasing an earlier gain of 0.7 percent. A meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to sign an agreement to end their trade war is more likely to happen in April at the earliest, three people familiar with the matter said. Crude had closed at a four-month high on Wednesday after an unexpected drop in U.S. inventories.

    Crude has surged nearly 30 percent this year as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies cut production. Yet the rally has been limited by continued trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies -- which could hurt oil-demand growth -- and record U.S. production.

    West Texas Intermediate for April delivery was 14 cents lower at $58.12 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:49 a.m. in London. The contract rose $1.39 to $58.26 on Wednesday, the highest close since Nov. 12.
    

    Brent for May settlement lost 2 cents to $67.53 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract climbed 88 cents to $67.55 on Wednesday. The global benchmark crude traded at a $9.09 premium to WTI for the same month.

    U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer this week pointed to “major issues” still unresolved in the talks with China, with few signs of a breakthrough on the most difficult subjects including treatment of intellectual property. Chinese officials have also bristled at the appearance of the deal being one-sided, and are wary of the risk of Trump walking away even if Xi were to travel to the U.S.

    https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Oil-Pierces-4-Month-High-as-U-S-Stockpile-Draw-13687770.php
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

16. Colorado Oil, Gas Rules Overhaul on Fast Track to Governor’s Desk

    Mar 14, 2019 | Natural Gas Intelligence

    By Richard Nemec

    The Colorado Senate on a 19-15 vote Wednesday passed and sent to the lower House a fast-track omnibus bill to extensively reform the oil and natural gas industry, empowering local governments to the exclusion of regulators.

    Subscription needed for full article...

    https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/117711-colorado-oil-gas-rules-overhaul-on-fast-track-to-governors-desk
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

17. Pennsylvania Opens Investigation into Gas Liquids Pipeline

    Mar 14, 2019 | AP (In Insurance Journal)

    By Marc Levy

    Pennsylvania’s attorney general said Tuesday that his office has opened an investigation into construction on a 350-mile natural gas liquids pipeline project across southern Pennsylvania that has been blamed for polluting waterways in dozens of places and causing sinkholes near homes.

    Attorney General Josh Shapiro took the investigation on a referral from Delaware County’s district attorney, which said it will work with the state to investigate the Mariner East 1, 2 and 2x pipeline projects.

    Shapiro’s office received the referral around March 1. A spokesman declined to say more about the investigation, including what prompted it.

    “We will leave no stone unturned in this case,” Shapiro said in a brief statement.

    The Mariner East pipelines run alongside each other and are owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer LP, a multibillion-dollar firm that owns sprawling interests in oil and gas pipelines and storage and processing facilities.

    The company’s projects have drawn more than $13 million in fines in Pennsylvania – primarily for polluting waterways from spills of drilling fluid and construction methods not approved by state regulators – and several temporary shutdown orders by state agencies.

    Sinkholes on the lawns of homes in Chester County have highlighted the lack of state authority to regulate the routes and safety features of intrastate pipelines, and prompted the county’s district attorney to start a criminal investigation.

    The pipelines are the subject of various lawsuits and challenges in front of state regulators. At one point, the state Department of Environmental Protection accused an Energy Transfer subsidiary of “egregious and willful violations” of state law.

    Last month, Gov. Tom Wolf criticized the company, saying “there has been a failure by Energy Transfer and its subsidiaries to respect our laws and our communities.”

    Energy Transfer said Tuesday there is no legitimate basis for a criminal investigation.

    It said it is confident that it hasn’t violated any criminal laws and intends to defend itself. It also said it has worked closely with state officials and inspectors, and hopes to speak to prosecutors’ offices to bring the matter “to an appropriate resolution.”

    “The safety of all those who live and work along our pipeline is our first priority, and this project was planned and implemented based on that fact,” the company said.

    Energy Transfer reported $54.1 billion in revenue in 2018, with net income of $3.4 billion.

    Its $2.5 billion, 20-inch Mariner East 2 pipeline began operating in late December, ferrying propane, butane and ethane from Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling fields in southwestern Pennsylvania to its export terminal near Philadelphia, the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex.

    The 16-inch Mariner East 2X is almost complete.

    A January shutdown of Mariner East 1 – a nearly 90-year-old oil pipeline recently overhauled to carry natural gas liquids – is still in effect after another sinkhole opened alongside it in Chester County.

    A February order halting construction permits for Energy Transfer pipelines also is still in effect after state officials accused the company of failing for months to fix erosion and soil problems blamed for an explosion on a methane pipeline that destroyed a home in western Pennsylvania.

    While Energy Transfer has denied criminal wrongdoing, the chief executive and chairman of its general partner, Kelcy Warren, told analysts in a conference call last month that the company had made mistakes in Pennsylvania.

    “We’re going to take our medicine and fix those mistakes and complete good projects from this point forward, not to insinuate that everything we’ve done has been bad,” Warren said. “It’s just we’ve made some mistakes that we’re not proud of. So you’ll see that improve, and when we don’t make those mistakes again that our costs are going to improve and the predictability of those costs are likewise going to improve.”

    An Energy Transfer spokeswoman on Tuesday declined to say what mistakes, exactly, Warren was referring to.

    https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2019/03/14/520618.htm
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

18. Champions of Big Oil Extend Olive Branch to Green New Dealers

    Mar 14, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

    By Joe Carroll and Javier Blas

    As President Donald Trump’s energy czar and former governor of the biggest source of American oil, Rick Perry had a startling response to the author of the Green New Deal: Let’s talk.

    Perry, in an appearance at the biggest North American energy conference on Wednesday, said he’s interested in “getting together and having a conversation” with U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the low-carbon blueprint intended to free the country from fossil-fuel dependence in a decade.

    His remarks came just minutes after a small coterie of sign- and microphone-wielding climate activists mounted an unsuccessful bid to disrupt the gathering, itself an almost-unheard of occurrence in a city that embraces the oil industry like no other. The night before, BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley struck a similar tone, telling about 5,000 executives, consultants and journalists gathered for CERAWeek by IHS Markit that the oil industry needs to engage with policymakers, “including those behind the Green New Deal.”

    “I don’t think that the representative should be castigated and pushed aside just on the face of her comments relative to that she wants to live in a place where there’s clean air and clean water. So do I,” Perry said. “How can we get there?”

    Such comments wouldn’t be unusual at a European oil conference but CERAWeek is an event that has been dominated by executives promoting crude and natural gas development. The shift in tone and the advent of homegrown protesters may be indicative of rising social pressure for climate-friendly practices.

    “Shareholders are increasingly asking how our strategies relate to the Paris goals,” Dudley said in reference to a global climate deal signed in the French capital. “There is a rising tide of concern on many fronts about the lack of progress on climate issues -- not just concern: anger.”

    “There will be places we disagree,” the Republican Perry said in reference to the freshman congresswoman who calls herself a Democratic socialist. “But the idea that we have to be disagreeable. I’m just sorry. I’ve been in this business now for a pretty good spell, and I’d rather be agreeable.”

    Equinor ASA, the Norwegian energy company which recently dropped the word oil from its name, was equally critical of the industry, warning about the consequences of climate change at CERAWeek. Equinor CEO Eldar Saetre said that oil majors will need to invest more in renewable energy under pressure from shareholders.
    

    Shell Methane

    On Tuesday, the top U.S. executive at Royal Dutch Shell Plc had strong words on climate change, directly challenging the Trump administration. “At Shell, we generally don’t make a habit of trying to tell governments how to do their jobs,” said Gretchen Watkins, head of U.S. operations. “I am breaking that rule today to request that the Environmental Protection Agency continue the direct regulation of methane emissions.“

    CERAWeek comes weeks after climate change and the energy transition were key themes at the annual International Petroleum Week in London, another top oil industry conference. It’s also occurring amid a push in the U.S. House of Representatives for a stronger response to climate change.

    For Big Oil, the trouble is more acute as it needs to carefully make bets outside petroleum in a rapidly evolving landscape. “The market and policy signals in areas like solar and electrification are already becoming much stronger and we are starting to lay down some bigger bets,” Dudley said in his speech, which was received with muted applause before proceedings moved on to a question-and-answer session. He also expressed support for natural gas, a cleaner form of energy.

    But he’s confident that the industry could adapt. “We can readily reshape BP however fast the energy transition unfolds -- and I’m sure it’s a similar story at the other majors,” he said.

    https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/champions-of-big-oil-extend-olive-branch-to-green-new-dealers
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

19. BP, Environmental Defense Fund Partner on Methane Emissions

    Mar 14, 2019 | Houston Chronicle

    By Jordan Blum

    British energy major BP and the Environmental Defense Fund said Wednesday they're partnering to develop new technologies and strategies to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and transportation.

    The news comes one day after BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley warned Tuesday at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference that the world is not on a sustainable path to combat and survive climate change.

    "Greenhouse gases are expected to rise by about 10 percent over the next two decades, when they need to be falling dramatically," Dudley said late Tuesday.

    The reality is the world isn't even close to on track to meet the recent Paris climate accord goal of keeping a global temperature rise below 2-degrees Celsius by 2100. On the current track, global energy demand will spike by about one-third by 2040, including growing demand for crude oil and other liquid fuels before eventually plateauing, according to BP's analysis.
    

    The new agreement with the Environmental Defense Fund is a three-year strategy to partner with universities, including Colorado State University, and other third parties to test new technologies and emerging strategies to reduce methane emissions and leaks to cut back on the release of the potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

    "BP is taking a leading role in addressing methane emissions, and this collaboration with EDF is another important step forward for us and for our industry," said Bernard Looney, BP's upstream chief executive.

    EDF President Fred Krupp said the hope is the progress made in this partnership will translate across the entire oil and gas sector.

    "EDF and BP don't agree on everything, but we're finding common ground on methane," Krupp said. "BP has shown early ambition to lead on methane technology. We hope to see more as BP delivers on its own stringent methane goal and we work together to spread solutions industry-wide."

    Last year, BP said it would hold greenhouse gas emissions from its operations at or below its 2015 levels in the years ahead.

    While natural gas burns cleaner than oil, the challenge is ensuring that methane doesn't leak during the drilling and production of gas. Those emissions are viewed as the Achilles' heel of natural gas. So BP set a target of keeping its methane emissions down to 0.2 percent of the gas produced.

    The news potentially is important for the industry as BP expands rapidly in Texas shale. Last fall, BP paid $10.5 billion to buy the Texas shale assets, including in the Permian Basin and South Texas' Eagle Ford shale, of Australia's BHP Billiton.

    Earlier Tuesday, Gretchen Watkins, president of Royal Dutch Shell's U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil of Houston, called on the White House to tighten the rules on methane leaks from oil and gas production, rather than roll them back as proposed by the Trump administration.

    "We need to do more," Watkins said.

    https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/BP-Environmental-Defense-Fund-partner-on-methane-13685136.php
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

Chemical Security News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

20. Ex-Transportation Czar to Oversee Utility's Safety Efforts

    Mar 14, 2019 | AP (In the Argus-Press)

    Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will help oversee efforts to improve safety and reduce risk at NiSource, the utility company blamed for natural gas explosions and fires in Massachusetts six months ago.

    The Indiana-based company announced Thursday that the former Republican congressman from Illinois will chair a new, five-member board charged with reviewing the company's rollout of a new safety management system across the seven states it serves.

    As transportation secretary under Democratic President Barack Obama, LaHood oversaw the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration that regulates natural gas and other pipeline systems.

    NiSource, which is the parent company of Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, said the new safety system will provide a more structured and consistent way for it to anticipate and reduce risk. Similar systems are standard in the nuclear power and aviation industries, but aren't common in the natural gas industry, according to Joe Hamrock, the company's CEO.

    "The safety practices we have tend to focus on learning from incidents that have happened, versus anticipating incidents that might happen," he said by phone Thursday. "So it's about enhancing that and adding a lot more rigor."

    Federal investigators have said NiSource and its Massachusetts subsidiary lacked the internal procedures that could have prevented the Sept. 13 disaster, which killed one person, injured dozens of others and left thousands without gas service for months across Lawrence, Andover and North Andover.

    Among the glaring errors cited in the National Transportation Safety Board's ongoing investigation is that an engineer had failed to account for a critical sensor line when drafting work plans for a routine pipeline replacement project in Lawrence.

    The engineer also failed to have other company departments and engineers review the plans. The company did not have a field technician onsite during the construction work because it had largely discontinued the practice, the NTSB report found.

    In the wake of the disaster, NiSource began taking a range of safety measures, including installing automatic shut off devices across all its low pressure gas systems to protect against over pressurization like that which triggered the explosions and fires in September.

    https://www.argus-press.com/news/national/article_b3ed450d-1648-53cb-9b4a-8363134bc98d.html
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

Environment News

21. Senators Pressure Chamber to Back Climate Resolution

    Mar 14, 2019 | Inside EPA

    Nearly two dozen Senate Democrats are urging the U.S Chamber of Commerce to support their resolution calling for immediate actions to address climate change, aiming to increase pressure on the group to reconsider its historical opposition to ambitious greenhouse gas emissions cuts and boost scrutiny of its lobbying activities.

    “While the Chamber in recent years has publicly admitted climate change is a 'serious challenge,' you have continued politically to attack policies to address it,” write Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and 22 other Democrats in a March 13 letter to the group.

    “It is time we put aside our differences and start working to take real actions on climate change because the American people and American businesses can no longer afford inaction,” the lawmakers add.

    Specifically, the letter urges the Chamber to back S.J. Res. 9, co-sponsored by the full 47-member Democratic caucus, stating that climate change is real, human activity is the “dominant cause” and that the United States and Congress should take “immediate action to address the challenge of climate change.”

    That resolution is a more generic and milder version of the Green New Deal (GND) resolution, floated by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), outlining broad principles for ambitious GHG cuts and participation in such efforts by disadvantaged communities.

    And it responds to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) pledge to hold a vote in the coming weeks on the GND resolution in an attempt to mobilize political opposition to the idea and split the Democratic caucus.

    The Democrats' letter couples its request for the Chamber to back S.J. Res. 9 with rebukes of several of the group's actions that the lawmakers argue run contrary to the interest of many company members that stand to benefit from transitioning to a cleaner economy.

    The actions include the group's funding of a 2017 study critical of the Paris climate deal; backing for a Hill resolution that would have scuttled methane controls on oil and gas facilities; and support of oil companies in litigation seeking to hold them liable for climate damages.

    The lawmakers also flag a prior report by Senate Democrats arguing that the Chamber's resistance to GHG controls do not reflect the views of companies serving on the group's board.

    The letter urges the Chamber to support the resolution, include it in the group's legislative scorecard, and issue a “Key Vote Alert” that is similar to those the group has previously used to resist GHG controls.

    https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/senators-pressure-chamber-back-climate-resolution
    

    Return to headline | Return to top

22. House GOP Ratchets up Attacks on Green New Deal

    Mar 14, 2019 | Politico Pro- Energy Whiteboard

    By Anthony Adragna

    House Republican leaders today pushed Democrats to hold committee hearings on the Green New Deal in their most formal criticism of the ambitious proposal to tackle climate change.

    Eleven committee ranking members argued the proposal’s goals would drive up energy prices, health care costs, home prices and hurt the job market. They noted a “full analysis” of the resolution H. Res. 109 (116)had not been completed but said the ideas within it deserved public scrutiny.

    “We have a responsibility to fully understand how the Green New Deal will affect the cost of living and economic mobility of hardworking Americans,” the Republicans wrote in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “We need to get to the facts, the American people deserve answers.”

    The lawmakers offered no counter proposal for how they would address climate change.

    Multiple Republican senators told POLITICO Wednesday they expect a vote on the resolution in that chamber shortly after they return from next week’s constituent work period.

    https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard/2019/03/house-gop-ratchets-up-attacks-on-green-new-deal-2875260
    

    Return to headline | Return to top