Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - April 4, 2019
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(ACC Mentioned) US-Mexico Border Closure Will Halt Flow of $78m Worth of Chems – ACC
Apr 3, 2019 | ICIS
If the US carries out its threats to close its border with Mexico, it would halt the flow of $78m worth of chemicals that crosses between the two countries every day, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said on Wednesday. -
(ACC Mentioned) Sullivan & Whitehouse Come Together in Effort to Clean the Oceans of Plastic and Other Debris
Apr 4, 2019 | The Ripon Society
There’s an old saying in Washington that politics stops at the water’s edge when it comes to foreign affairs. That same saying could be used in an equally fitting but much more literal way to describe the work being done by U.S. Senators... -
U.S.-China Trade Talks in ‘End Game’ but No Final Deal Yet, Chamber Leader Says
Apr 4, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis
The U.S. and China are moving toward “the end game” in trade talks but are unlikely to complete a deal this week, said Myron Brilliant, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president. President Trump expects to name the date... -
Senate Panel Advances Interior Secretary Nominee David Bernhardt
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted April 4 to approve President Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, over objections of Democrats who sought a delay amid a federal investigation into the former oil lobbyist’s... -
The Energy 202: Interior Nominee's Old Firm Saw Payday After He Joins Trump Administration
Apr 4, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
For years, David Bernhardt worked for a law and lobbying firm to try to influence the federal government on behalf of his clients. Now the firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, is seeing a big payday — only after Bernhardt left. Over the... -
US EPA Round-Up
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
TSCA ‘not likely’ findings: The US EPA has issued two TSCA 5(a)(3)(c) findings for substances subject to pre-manufacture notices (PMNs). These "not likely to present an unreasonable risk" determinations will allow the... -
(ACC Mentioned) Preliminary Results Suggest BPA Can Affect Circadian Rhythms in Mice
Apr 4, 2019 |
By Andrew Turley
BPA can adversely affect circadian rhythms in the pups of pregnant mice that have been exposed to the substance before birth, according to preliminary study results presented at a meeting in the US on 25 March. Various biological... -
(ACC Mentioned) ICCA Calls for Global Substance Information Database
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The International Council of Chemical Associations is calling for the development of a global database containing publicly available information on chemicals The database, which it calls an "international navigator", could be based... -
New Jersey Directs Companies to Fund PFAs Removal
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A New Jersey agency has directed five chemical companies to fund the removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) contamination in the state, as well as account for their use and discharge. Via a directive, the New Jersey... -
EPA May 'Restart' IRIS Assessment of Formaldehyde
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has discontinued Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessments for a flame retardant and several phthalates, but has left open the possibility that it may revisit certain abandoned evaluations – including for... -
Members of Congress Scrutinise Efforts to 'Debilitate' IRIS Programme
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Senator Tom Udall (D–New Mexico) and congresswoman Betty McCollum (D–Minnesota) have accused the US EPA of deliberately undermining the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) programme. Their concerns, raised in a 28... -
US Congress Round-Up
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
CPSC faces consumer protection hearing: The House of Representatives Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and its ability to... -
Echa Round-Up
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Appendix to guidance on OELs: Echa has published a draft appendix to guidance on exposure limits at the workplace. The draft version of Appendix to Chapter R.8: Guidance for preparing a scientific report for health-based exposure... -
Lawmakers File Bill to Treat Vets Exposed to PFAs
Apr 4, 2019 | Sea Coast Online
By Jeff McMenemy
U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas joined a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers, who on Thursday morning introduced the Veterans Exposed to Toxic PFAS Act. The legislation would require the Veterans Administration to cover treatment of... -
Colorado Drillers Face Tougher Rules Under Energy-Law Revamp
Apr 4, 2019 | Bloomberg (In the Houston Chronicle)
By Catherine Traywick
Colorado’s legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s oil and natural gas laws, giving local governments more power to regulate drilling in one of the nation’s top crude-producing regions. The bill, which passed the state... -
An Overeager Legal Strategy May Endanger Trump’s Energy Goals
Apr 4, 2019 | Roll Call
By Benjamin J. Hulac
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was unhappy with an April 5 ruling by Sharon Gleason, a federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, who found that President Donald Trump had unlawfully lifted a ban prohibiting drilling in the Arctic Ocean, dealing the... -
BLM Eyes Sage Grouse Habitat in Colo. Sale
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Scott Streater
The Bureau of Land Management is evaluating whether to include nearly 70,000 acres of greater sage grouse habitat in northwest Colorado in a planned September oil and gas lease sale, just weeks after it finalized revisions to Obama-era... -
Solar Is Going to Keep Oil Flowing in the Texas Shale Patch
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Eckhouse and Christopher Martin
Texas, home to the world’s largest oil reserve and America’s biggest source of coal-fired power, is on the verge of a clean-energy boom. Wind already supplies about 15 percent of Texas’s electricity, and now developers are about to... -
Investors Urge Companies to Support Methane Regulations. Are They Listening?
Apr 4, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Kate Gaumond
Over the past few weeks, companies like BP, Equinor, Exxon and Shell have publicly stated their support for direct federal regulation of methane. It is not every day that a company asks for more rules rather than less. What’s one of the... -
Texas Chemical Incidents Intensify Calls for EPA Protections
Apr 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
Three chemical release incidents at Houston-area facilities in the last three weeks are intensifying calls for EPA and other federal agencies to bolster protections for fence-line communities, increase agencies' budgets and preserve and... -
Editorial: State Lawmakers Seek Greater Oil-Train Safety
Apr 4, 2019 | Herald Net
There’s lobbying, and then there’s coercion through the threat of lawsuit. A North Dakota oil regulation agency attempted the latter recently when it threatened to sue the state of Washington should the Legislature move forward... -
Kerry, Hagel to Headline First Oversight Climate Hearing
Apr 4, 2019 | Politico Pro - Energy Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will testify at the first of two April 9 hearings on climate change in the House Oversight Committee, the panel announced today. The panel also... -
These Pollution-Spotting Satellites Are Just a Taste of What's to Come
Apr 4, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Mark Brownstein
The most advanced satellite to ever launch from Africa will soon be patrolling South Africa's coastal waters to crack down on oil spills and illegal dumping. Data from another satellite, this one collecting images from the Texas portion...
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(ACC Mentioned) US-Mexico Border Closure Will Halt Flow of $78m Worth of Chems – ACC
Apr 3, 2019 | ICIS
If the US carries out its threats to close its border with Mexico, it would halt the flow of $78m worth of chemicals that crosses between the two countries every day, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) said on Wednesday.
"These products are critical inputs to US manufacturing," said Cal Dooley, president of the ACC. "Closing the southern border, even for one day, would have potentially catastrophic impacts for US chemical manufacturing and US economic security."
The North American supply chain is heavily integrated, and it would grind to a halt without these products, Dooley said. "All of North America – manufacturers, farmers and families everywhere – would feel the impacts."
He added, "We stand with our business and coalition partners in urging the president to work with Congress to find a better way to secure our borders.”
US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the border over concerns about immigration.
https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/04/03/10343685/us-mexico-border-closure-will-halt-flow-of-78m-worth-of-chems-0xe2-0x80-acc/
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Apr 4, 2019 | The Ripon Society
There’s an old saying in Washington that politics stops at the water’s edge when it comes to foreign affairs.
That same saying could be used in an equally fitting but much more literal way to describe the work being done by U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan and Sheldon Whitehouse to clean up the tons of plastic and other debris that have been dumped in oceans around the world.
Sullivan is a Republican from Alaska. Whitehouse is a Democrat from Rhode Island. Both appeared yesterday morning before a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society and Franklin Center for Global Policy Exchange to discuss the bill they authored to achieve that goal, and the support that exists for the effort from members of both political parties.
“I’ve been in the Senate a little over four years,” Sullivan stated in remarks to open the discussion. “And you know, you read in the press there’s no bipartisanship, nothing gets done, and that the D’s and R’s hate each other. At least in my experience, that is just not true at all. And this is a great example.”
The legislation is called the Save Our Seas Act. It would boost the federal government’s domestic and international response to the millions of tons of plastic waste and other garbage that litter our shores and pollute our oceans, endanger wildlife, and disrupt commerce. The measure was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate on September 26th of last year, and was unanimously approved by the House the next day.
President Trump signed the measure into law on October 11th in a small Oval Office ceremony that, Sullivan said, was originally intended to be private, but became public once the President learned more about the bill. “The President got so excited about what we were up to and passionate about it,” the Alaska lawmaker recounted. “He just said, ‘Bring in all the press!’ So all of a sudden, this bill signing was live on CNN, live on Fox. And it was a really good event.”
According to Sullivan, the President’s enthusiasm reflects the general support his Administration is showing toward the issue and the bill.
“They’re doing a lot right on this,” he stated. He added that both he and Whitehouse “had pressed Ambassador Lighthizer to include the ocean debris issues into the new trade agreements. There’s actually a section in the new NAFTA on this issue, and that was something we had been encouraging.”
Sullivan also had praise for the private sector, which has established a coalition to address the crisis, and pledged over a billion dollars in funding, as well.
“I think it’s now 40 major companies,” Sullivan said of the coalition. “They’ve pledged $1.5 billion to work on this … We’re making good progress. We’ve got the alignment of all the key stakeholders, including the President of United States.”
Whitehouse agreed.
“The Administration seems to be paying quite a lot of attention to this,” he stated. “This is a solvable problem. There are 10 rivers around the globe that put about 90% of this stuff into the sea, and there are five Asian nations that are responsible for more than half of it. And what they’re doing wrong is not having grown-up, acceptable upland waste management infrastructure.
“If we could make them — as a condition of trading with the United States — have to upgrade their waste management infrastructure to real-world standards, guess who would benefit from that? American waste management companies, who would have huge new markets to go to. So there is a real win-win that is happening here.”
Whitehouse also commended the work of the private sector in addressing the problem, and signaled out the efforts of former Democratic Congressman Cal Dooley, who postponed his retirement as President & CEO of the American Chemistry Council in order to lend a hand.
“They’ve been terrific partners,” Whitehouse said of Dooley’s group. “One of my favorite documents ever was the American Chemistry Council announcement that he was staying on so that he can work on marine plastic debris because that’s such a vital issue. And then Cal’s statement was, ‘I’m so glad to be staying on because I’m determined to work on plastic debris because it’s such a big issue.’ It was like, ‘Yes, thank you — you are on message. I love it!’
The good messaging and cross-the-aisle collaboration aside, Whitehouse closed his remarks on a cautionary note:
“This can’t be one of those issues where we celebrate our bipartisanship without testing it against real results,” he stated bluntly. “When you go to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and find creatures that never see daylight with their little bellies stuffed with micro plastic so that it inhibits their ability to feed. When you see whales stranded ashore with 88 pounds of plastic in their stomach. When you see that it’s so embedded that you find micro plastic residue in beer after all the treatment that it has been through.
“It’s just everywhere. It’s in our fish. It’s in our oysters. It’s in everything. We really have to get after this in a very, very serious way. Otherwise, future generations are going to look back at this residue — still kicking around, because it’ll last forever — and they’re going to say, ‘What the hell went wrong with those people in that generation that they let this happen and then didn’t do anything about it to stop it?’”
Following their remarks, the Senators were asked a number of questions, including one about how the debris crisis is affecting their respective coastal states.
Whitehouse answered first.
“One of the things we do in Rhode Island is have annual beach cleanups,” he said. “You go and pick up all the plastic refuse that washed to shore off the beaches. That’s Beach Cleanup Day in Rhode Island. What I learned from that first hearing is that in Dan’s state, they don’t do this with trash bags. They are in the tons-per-mile-of-plastic-waste-on-the-beaches category, which we don’t have to live with because we’re not in a Pacific state. It takes barges and helicopters and front end loaders and specialized and trained people and equipment to clear Dan’s beaches.”
Sullivan concurred.
“Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the lower 48 states combined,” he said. “So when we talk about the plastic debris coming from Asia, the way the currents are, tons of it washes up on the shores in my state. So it’s a humongous problem. But again, it’s a solvable problem. I think that’s the takeaway that we want to leave with all of you. There’s a lot of important work being done, and I think getting the stakeholders, industry and all the big environmental groups aligned — which they are — on this is really important. It is one of the reasons we’re optimistic about it.”
The Senators were also asked about follow-up legislation they are in the process of writing – tentatively titled Save Our Seas 2.0 – and when they expected to introduce the bill.
“We intend to get this legislation out by the end of this month and really make a big push on the legislative side,” Sullivan stated, adding that one of the goals of the bill is to provide the coalitions and other stakeholders with a vehicle to support.
“What we’re trying to do in this legislation is have a place for all of them to coordinate their efforts,” he said. “There are a lot of groups out there right now. National Geographic has done a great job of highlighting this issue. The American Chemistry Council has done a great job. The alignment is really starting to happen.”
“The other element we have it in our legislation is the idea of creating an innovation prize … If you are able to create a plastic bottle, for example, that gets discarded in the ocean. If you can create the chemical processes where that fully biodegrades, that would be a huge boon to this problem. Whoever figures that out is going to make billions.”
Whitehouse and Sullivan were also asked whether any outside groups have come out in opposition to their Save Our Seas legislation.
“For a long time,” Whitehouse observed, “I think the Republican Party had a very strong principle that one shouldn’t regulate in the economic space. Price controls, licensing standards, all of that could diminish innovation and so forth. At some point that kind of crept over into, ‘You shouldn’t regulate pollution either.’
“That wasn’t the traditional value, but it kind of has become that. And there’s a whole array of outfits that are designed to do exactly that — to go to bat against whatever progress we’re trying to make and obscure the hands of the people who are behind them. It’s a big infrastructure. And as best as I can tell, none of it is being deployed against this — none of it — which is a really good sign.”
Sullivan said it was good to have the support of the White House, as well.
“He was very passionate, very focused,” Sullivan said, pointing again to the President’s enthusiasm when he signed the Save Our Seas Act into law. And you know, when you run into bureaucratic inertia, it’s always good to be able to trot out a President’s statement. We were standing right next to him when he made it.”
“It is wrong that those countries are turning our beautiful oceans into their landfills,” Whitehouse said, recalling the words of the President himself.
“Yeah, that’s what he said,” Sullivan beamed. “We’ve used that a lot.”
To view the remarks of Sullivan and Whitehouse before the breakfast discussion yesterday morning, please click on the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.
Founded in 1978, The Franklin Center for Global Policy Exchange is a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization committed to enhancing global understanding of important international issues. The Franklin Center brings together Members of the U.S. Congress and their international parliamentary counterparts as well as experts from the Diplomatic corps, foreign officials, senior private sector representatives, scholars, and other public policy experts. Through regular conferences and events where leading international opinion leaders share ideas, the Franklin Center promotes enlightened, balanced, and unbiased international policy discussion on major international issues.
https://www.riponsociety.org/2019/04/this-cant-be-one-of-those-issues-where-we-celebrate-our-bipartisanship-without-testing-it-against-real-results/
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U.S.-China Trade Talks in ‘End Game’ but No Final Deal Yet, Chamber Leader Says
Apr 4, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Bob Davis
The U.S. and China are moving toward “the end game” in trade talks but are unlikely to complete a deal this week, said Myron Brilliant, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president.
President Trump expects to name the date of a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping this afternoon, according to an administration official. The prospect of such a summit indicates that the two sides are close to a deal, Mr. Brilliant said. That’s because the two leaders wouldn’t agree to a meeting unless all—or nearly all—outstanding issues had been resolved.
Even so, Mr. Brilliant said he had been told by administration officials that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier and trade envoy Liu He continue to talk through a variety of issues and aren’t likely to finish negotiations this week. Their talks are planned to continue through Friday.
The administration official cautioned that Mr. Trump could change his mind on the summit announcement. Once the summit date is declared, U.S. negotiators would lose some leverage in the talks, say trade experts, because Beijing would know that Mr. Trump is committed to finish an agreement soon.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-trade-talks-in-end-game-but-no-final-deal-yet-chamber-leader-says-11554382517?mod=hp_lead_pos2
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Senate Panel Advances Interior Secretary Nominee David Bernhardt
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted April 4 to approve President Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, over objections of Democrats who sought a delay amid a federal investigation into the former oil lobbyist’s recusals from matters involving previous clients.
The panel voted 14-6 to advance the nomination of David Bernhardt to the full Senate.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) had called for the Senate to delay action on Bernhardt amid a report that the Interior’s inspector general is reviewing allegations Bernhardt violated his ethics pledge by weighing in on issues affecting a former client.
Bernhardt has led the agency in an acting capacity since early January, following the departure of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
The Senate confirmed Bernhardt in July 2017 as deputy secretary by a 53-43 vote, largely along party lines.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/senate-panel-advances-interior-secretary-nominee-david-bernhardt
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The Energy 202: Interior Nominee's Old Firm Saw Payday After He Joins Trump Administration
Apr 4, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
For years, David Bernhardt worked for a law and lobbying firm to try to influence the federal government on behalf of his clients.
Now the firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, is seeing a big payday — only after Bernhardt left.
Over the past three years, according to federal records, BHFS has quadrupled its business related to Interior, Juliet Eilperin and I reported Wednesday.
In 2018, nearly two dozen clients paid BHFS a total of $4.8 million to lobby Interior, according to data compiled from a lobbying database maintained by the Senate. During the previous year, when Bernhardt left the firm to join the Trump administration as deputy secretary, it collected a total of $3.5 million in Interior-related revenue.
By comparison, the firm’s total income to lobby Interior in 2016 was $1.2 million. During all but one year going back to 2009, BHFS‘s Interior-related revenue never broke seven figures.ADVERTISING
Now Bernhardt is President Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department. The striking uptick in the amount of lobbying revenue could provide fuel to Bernhardt’s critics as he heads toward a confirmation vote before a Senate committee on Thursday. The former lobbyist on energy and water issues is already under scrutiny by Democratic lawmakers, advocates and the agency’s inspector general over his long list of former industry clients.
It’s also a sign of how the revolving door between industry and government is still spinning two years after Trump won the presidency with a mantra to “drain the swamp” of special interests.
“Any senator thinking of casting their vote for this nomination should take a long pause and closer look at his conflicts of interests before doing so,” Jayson O’Neill, deputy director of the liberal advocacy group Western Values Project, said in an email.
These yearly sums do not differentiate between money paid to BHFS to lobby Interior on a particular topic and money paid to lobby another part of the federal government, such as Congress, on the same issues.
For its part, BHFS said the firm’s Interior-related revenue went up just as Trump entered office and kick-started new work on public lands. The firm said it saw a similar boost in clients focused on the Energy Department at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term, after his administration offered new energy funding opportunities as part of its effort to stimulate the economy.
“Given this President said he would do more on projects dealing with federal lands, it is not surprising that our firm has seen an increase in available work there,” the firm said in a statement. “Brownstein has established an industry-leading team with extensive experience managing policy issues related to natural resource development at all levels of government. This combination of experience and policy change are the conditions that have historically grown our business.”
Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said in an email that while the department cannot comment on the revenue of Bernhardt’s former firm, the acting secretary clears all matters involving former clients with Interior ethics experts.
“The acting secretary actively seeks and consults with the Department’s designated ethics officials for advice on particular matters involving former clients,” she said, “and the acting secretary has implemented a robust screening process to ensure that he does not meet with his former firm or former clients to participate in particular matters involving specific parties that the acting secretary has committed to recuse himself from.”
On Tuesday, Interior’s Office of Inspector General confirmed that it was reviewing allegations that Bernhardt violated the Trump administration’s ethics pledge by working on California water policies that could affect the Westlands Water District — which is still a BHFS client — while in office.
Bernhardt denies that he improperly helped the large agricultural water district, and Interior ethics officials have said his work did not constitute a conflict. Bernhardt’s ethics pledge to recuse himself from weighing in on “particular matters” affecting Westlands and three other clients ended on Aug. 1, 2018. He is still recused from taking action on specific matters affecting 22 other clients until August of this year.
In a floor speech Wednesday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, argued the panel should postpone a vote on Bernhardt’s nomination given the current questions surrounding his past lobbying work.
“I do not believe the Senate should allow the Interior Department to turn into a revolving door of corruption and scandal,” Wyden said.
But Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), like other Republicans on the panel, defended Bernhardt during last’s week’s confirmation hearing as a victim of a “double standard,” noting that one of Obama’s interior secretaries once worked as a petroleum engineer and outdoor retail executive.
The increase in BHFS’s Interior-related revenue also highlights how the firm has emerged in Trump’s Washington as a well-connected lobbying outfit on the management of federal lands.
Much of that Denver-based firm’s work concerns land and tribal issues at the heart of the portfolio of the Interior Department, which altogether oversees 1 in every 5 acres of land in the United States. The department’s decisions can have far-reaching ramifications for many industries, including energy, mining and farming.
Even though Bernhardt has recused himself from weighing in on policies targeted at specific clients, such as the Garrison Diversion Conservancy District, BHFS has continued to tout its ties to top Trump officials.
“Many of the decision-makers in the agencies are former co-workers and colleagues,” BHFS wrote in a Dec. 20, 2017, letter to that district explaining why it would double its monthly fees to work on a controversial plan to tap water from the Missouri River.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/04/04/the-energy-202-interior-nominee-s-old-firm-saw-payday-after-he-joins-trump-administration/5ca4ea091b326b0f7f38f303/?utm_term=.3b65d74c65aa
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Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
TSCA ‘not likely’ findings
The US EPA has issued two TSCA 5(a)(3)(c) findings for substances subject to pre-manufacture notices (PMNs). These "not likely to present an unreasonable risk" determinations will allow the substances to come to market without restriction.
They cover:P-19-0026: a confidential substance imported in solution for use as a component in certain coating resin products; and P-18-0307: a confidential substance imported for use as a binder resin in coatings.
PMN receipts for October 2018
The agency received 27 pre-manufacture notices (PMNs) in October 2018 and 3 amendments to past PMNs, according to a 4 April Federal Register notice. The manufacturer's identity was withheld as confidential business information (CBI) on 14 of the submissions.
The agency also notified that in October it received: one significant new use notification (Snun); twelve notices of commencement (NOCs) and two amended NOCs; and test data in support of nine PMNs and of one Snun;
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.
IRIS assessment plan for methylmercury
The EPA is consulting on a draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment plan for methylmercury.
The document lays out the assessment objectives and identifies the types of evidence considered most relevant to addressing the scoping needs.
Comments will be accepted through 6 May. A public science webinar is planned for 15 May.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75978/us-epa-round-up
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(ACC Mentioned) Preliminary Results Suggest BPA Can Affect Circadian Rhythms in Mice
Apr 4, 2019 |
By Andrew Turley
BPA can adversely affect circadian rhythms in the pups of pregnant mice that have been exposed to the substance before birth, according to preliminary study results presented at a meeting in the US on 25 March.
Various biological processes exhibit oscillations with 24 hour periodicity, resulting in so-called circadian rhythms, which are linked to patterns of sleep and activity.
In the study, which has yet to be published, scientists at the University of Calgary in Canada fed BPA-laden food to pregnant mice.
Then, when the pups were 12 weeks old, the scientists tested how the sleep and activity patterns of the pups responded to changes in the patterns of light and darkness of their environment.
The pattern was 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness for four weeks. Then, it was changed to a 24-hour dark cycle with irregular pulses of light, for the following four weeks.
The light pulses tested the responsiveness of the circadian rhythms to unexpected stimuli.
The pups exposed to BPA during gestation exhibited alterations in their daily patterns, and the timings of activity, indicating disrupted circadian signalling, said Deborah Kurrasch, who is leading the research. The adverse effects were more pronounced when the animals were placed in 24-hour darkness.
Professor Kurrasch presented the preliminary results at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society held in New Orleans. She said that the effects on circadian rhythms could be a contributing factor to previously observed hyperactivity in BPA exposed mice.
Four generations
At the same meeting, David Lopez Rodriguez, a graduate student at the University of Liège, Belgium, presented preliminary results from a different study suggesting EDCs can adversely affects rats across four generations.
In the study, which, like the BPA study, has yet to be published, the scientists gave pregnant rats (F0 rats) food containing a mixture of 13 known EDCs, including plasticisers, biocides and UV filters. They identified adverse effects in the pups (F1 rats) and in the pups of two subsequent generations (F2 and F3 rats).
There were affects on sexual development in the F2 and F3 rats, including delayed puberty, but not in the F1 rats. There were, however, effects on the maternal care activity of the F1 rats, which for example spent less time licking their pups, a behaviour known to be transmitted through generations. Additionally, in the hypothalamus area of the brain, the expression and organisation of genes involved in puberty and reproduction were affected.
Mr Lopez Rodriguez said the results were consistent with the recent discovery that the environment can affect gene expression through changes in the organisation of DNA – epigenetic changes.
ACC
"Without a detailed description of the methodologies used and no access to the data, one cannot determine if a study has produced any meaningful results," said a spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council. "The vast majority of the endocrine active substances that scientists have studied to date have not been demonstrated to cause adverse health effects at typical exposures as a consequence of endocrine activity."
https://chemicalwatch.com/75960/preliminary-results-suggest-bpa-can-affect-circadian-rhythms-in-mice?q=%E2%80%9CAmerican+Chemistry+Council%E2%80%9D
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(ACC Mentioned) ICCA Calls for Global Substance Information Database
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer
The International Council of Chemical Associations is calling for the development of a global database containing publicly available information on chemicals.
The database, which it calls an "international navigator", could be based on information in existing databases such as the EU Iuclid and EUCLEF (the EU Chemicals Legislation Finder), those from the US, Canada and Japan, or the OECD eChemPortal.
"We consider data sharing on chemicals, as well as the implementation of the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) and safety data sheets (SDSs), key elements needed to improve chemicals management practices at the global level," said Cal Dooley, ICCA council secretary and president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
In a statement, the ICCA said creating a global data repository will "significantly contribute to the capacity building efforts in those countries which have just started developing legislation on chemical safety and have limited knowledge on chemicals and their effects".
The ICCA issued the proposal during this week’s third meeting of the Open Ended Working Group (OEWG3) in Montevideo, Uruguay. The OEWG had gathered to discuss whether the UN’s global voluntary programme, the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm), should continue beyond its 2020 mandate or be replaced with an alternative framework.
National bodies and institutions in the countries with the most advanced chemicals legislation, it added, could take the lead in developing the database. However, support from relevant Saicm stakeholders is "critical to ensure broad consensus and implementation".
Post-2020
The ICCA, said Mr Dooley, wants a post-2020 Saicm framework to "maintain its voluntary, multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral nature". It also wants it to "continue to focus on its core work: building basic chemicals management capacity in countries that need it most.''
A group of government ministers and representatives from some key international bodies have set out a vision for a global chemicals framework after 2020, which it plans to push for at this week’s OEWG meeting.
Ahead of the meeting, the ICCA submitted a paper that says knowledge and information sharing are critical components of the Saicm goal, which is to achieve the sound management of chemicals and waste by 2020.
The paper (see box), developed with UN Environment, says since the inception of Saicm, there have been advances in the availability and quality of chemical safety information. However, information gaps remain.
"There is a large discrepancy in the understanding of the number of chemicals in commerce amongst the various stakeholders. There is a need to draw upon experiences from various regulatory approaches that exist across the globe to have a better understanding and collective overview," it says.
Uncertainty of numbers
The ICCA and UN Environment have identified more than 100 publicly available environment, health and safety (EHS) information sources, spanning almost 50 countries across four continents.
The findings show that there are an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 industrial chemicals in commerce globally, with around 6,000 accounting for more than 99% of the total volume.
The paper says that a number of factors contribute to the uncertainty in the estimates, including: a lack of chemical inventories for many countries in the world; uncertain and variable definitions of industrial chemicals in commerce (such as different scopes); varying volume thresholds for reporting; uncertainty over whether or not listed chemicals are actually on the market; and lack of reporting or misreporting to government authorities.
"There are EHS data existing to support varying degrees of screening levels of hazard and risk assessment for the majority of the highest production volume chemicals and, while knowledge gaps still exist for many lower volume chemicals, they are rapidly being addressed."
The main measures dealing with these gaps are: recently adopted legislation and regulations, such as EU REACH, K-REACH and China’s MEP Order 7; market forces – demand for green chemistry, for example; and newly developed predictive hazard identification tools, such as computational toxicology, that are quicker and more resource efficient.
"There is a need for more and better chemical hazard, use and exposure information, particularly from developing countries, to improve hazard and risk assessment and risk management," it says.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75955/icca-calls-for-global-substance-information-database?q=%E2%80%9CAmerican+Chemistry+Council%E2%80%9D
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New Jersey Directs Companies to Fund PFAs Removal
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Lisa Martine Jenkins
A New Jersey agency has directed five chemical companies to fund the removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) contamination in the state, as well as account for their use and discharge.
Via a directive, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has asked that the companies – Solvay, Chemours, DuPont, DowDuPont and 3M – provide detailed information on their PFAS use. This includes data on sales of products containing the substances, as well as on the development of newer chemicals in the state.
The NJDEP plans to hold the companies financially responsible for the remediation and treatment of PFAS-related contamination, which it says has become ubiquitous in New Jersey waters.
PFASs – a widely used and highly persistent and bioaccumulative class of fluorinated chemicals – have been the subject of increasing concern recently. Studies have linked long-chain PFASs – which have largely been phased out – to human health effects like carcinogenicity, but there are also concerns around newer short-chain alternatives.
The state said that the action was taken partly in light of the US EPA’s PFAS management plan, which NJDEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe (pictured) described as "a drawn-out process that will delay establishing a federal maximum contaminant level."
The environmental department says New Jersey is the first state in the nation to use a directive in this manner. It has been issued under the authorities of three New Jersey regulations: the Spill Compensation and Control Act, Water Pollution Control Act and Air Pollution Control Act.
These allow the NJDEP to "act to prevent environmental pollution, enforce environmental laws and obtain documentation about the discharge of pollutants." The Spill Act states that any person responsible for the discharge of a hazardous substance is liable for any cleanup and removal costs, "no matter by whom incurred" and "without regard to fault".
"We are putting these five companies on notice that many years of contaminating New Jersey’s precious drinking water and other natural resources will not go unchecked," said Commissioner McCabe.
However, the directive is not a "formal enforcement order, a final agency action or a final legal determination that a violation has occurred."
Company responses
In statements to Chemical Watch, 3M and DuPont said that they are in the process of "reviewing" the directive.
"We take seriously our responsibility to our customers, our employees, and the communities where we live and operate," said 3M. "We continuously engage in substantive conversations with public stakeholders to share information we find, as we seek to learn more about PFAS chemistries."
Chemours said that the company is in "regular interaction" with the NJDEP, and "continually share[s] information with the agency related to the use and emission of fluorinated compounds."
In February, Chemours was issued a Notice of Violation by the US EPA for violations under TSCA related to its emissions of PFASs in North Carolina.
All three of these companies plan to "work with" New Jersey.
Neither Solvay nor DowDuPont responded to requests for comment.
Directive details
The five companies have been directed to supply the NJDEP with information on both historic use of PFASs, such as PFNA, PFOA and PFOS, and current use of their short-chain replacements in New Jersey within 21 days of the directive’s receipt.
They are also required to outline the company’s ability to pay for or perform clean-up and removal of the chemicals from the environment.
The directive has different financial implications for each company. Monitoring and data provisions are included for all, though these differ slightly depending on historic versus present uses of PFASs.
Solvay specifically has been directed to reimburse the NJDEP over $3m for past clean-up and treatment efforts, within 30 days of the directive’s receipt. It is the only company singled-out in this way.
All respondents will have 30 days to meet collectively with the NJDEP to discuss a cost estimate for removing legacy long-chain PFASs from the environment.
Failure to comply with the directive will triple the companies’ potential liability for cleanup and removal, and could possibly subject them to penalties of up to $50,000 per day. Each day of violation constitutes an "additional, separate and distinct violation".
https://chemicalwatch.com/75923/new-jersey-directs-companies-to-fund-pfas-removal
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EPA May 'Restart' IRIS Assessment of Formaldehyde
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
The US EPA has discontinued Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessments for a flame retardant and several phthalates, but has left open the possibility that it may revisit certain abandoned evaluations – including for formaldehyde.
The development has come in an updated ‘programme outlook’ for the agency’s IRIS programme, which conducts independent evaluations of substances of concern that can be used to inform regulatory actions.
The April update says that, last year, the agency "prioritised its IRIS assessments to meet the highest needs of EPA programmes and regions and to bring greater focus to assessments actively under development." This is in keeping with an earlier programme outlook, published in December 2018.
The newer version, however, includes further details on the fate of assessments excluded from the previously published list of priorities.
More specifically, it says that several IRIS assessments were discontinued. These include evaluations of: the brominated flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD); several phthalates: butyl benzyl phthalate (BBP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), di-ethyl phthalate (DEP), di-isobutyl phthalate (DIBP) and diisononyl phthalate (DINP); acrylonitrile; and n-butyl alcohol.
Meanwhile, the agency clarified that other assessments that were not named priorities for 2019 "have been suspended but may be restarted".
These include: formaldehyde; PAH mixtures; ammonia; chloroform; ethylbenzene; manganese; naphthalene; nitrite/nitrate; and uranium.
For these substances, draft assessment materials will remain accessible on the IRIS website, it says.
Formaldehyde issues unresolved
The inclusion of formaldehyde on the list of assessments that may be revisited adds a new dimension to ongoing controversy.
A 2010 draft IRIS assessment linked the substance to leukaemia – a finding strongly disputed by industry. And suspicions arose last year that efforts were underway to hinder publication of a final review.
The December IRIS update excluded formaldehyde from the list of priority substances for review. Even so, the EPA last month announced it among the 20 candidates to be designated high priorities for risk evaluation under TSCA.
Several NGOs have voiced concern that this means the IRIS examination of the substance will never be published.
When asked last month by Chemical Watch if the EPA had plans to finalise the draft, it said: "Now that formaldehyde has been identified as a high priority under TSCA, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) will be coordinating with the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) on next steps."
Meanwhile, three of the phthalates for which EPA says it has discontinued IRIS assessments – BBP, DBP and DIBP – are also among the TSCA list of 20 high priority candidates.
Updated review timelines
Beyond the updates on the substances that have not been designated priorities, the April programme outlook includes updated timelines for the substances undergoing evaluation this year.
These are: ethyl tertiary butyl ether (ETBE); tert-butyl alcohol; arsenic, inorganic; chromium VI; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), noncancer; several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) – PFNA, PFBA, PFHxA, PFHxS, PFDA – which the EPA says are being reviewed in support of its broader approach to address the class of substances; mercury salts; methylmercury; and vanadium and compounds.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75962/epa-may-restart-iris-assessment-of-formaldehyde
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Members of Congress Scrutinise Efforts to 'Debilitate' IRIS Programme
Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin
Senator Tom Udall (D–New Mexico) and congresswoman Betty McCollum (D–Minnesota) have accused the US EPA of deliberately undermining the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) programme.
Their concerns, raised in a 28 March letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, largely stem from a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. This flagged up that the number of substance reviews under IRIS has been reduced from 22 to 11, and that programme staff have increasingly been called upon to work on TSCA evaluations instead.
"EPA leadership took steps to effectively cut the IRIS programme’s funding by reducing its workload by 50% and reassigning significant portions of staff time to other activities," wrote Mr Udall and Ms McCollum. "We view these steps as clear efforts to debilitate the IRIS programme."
The disruption to IRIS operations, they continued, was contrary to Congressional direction, after the legislature "specifically and overwhelmingly rejected" proposed cuts to IRIS in both the fiscal year 2018 and 2019 budgets.
The programme is intended to support chemical assessments in other parts of the agency. And it is intentionally placed in the Office of Research and Development (ORD), they wrote, to free its assessments from regulatory and non-scientific policy factors.
"By re-assigning a substantial portion of IRIS staff time outside of ORD, EPA leadership worked at cross-purposes to the programme’s intent and the agency’s own stated goals to support the chemical assessment needs of many other parts of the agency," they said.
The two lawmakers have called on agency leadership to reassign IRIS staff back to the programme and return it to its originally planned workload.
Budget cuts disputed
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, subcommittees of both the Senate and the House appropriations committees held hearings reviewing the administration’s 2020 budget proposal this week.
In testimony, Mr Wheeler faced questions on several hot-button topics, including the EPA’s regulation of paint removers containing methylene chloride, what steps are being taken around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), and whether the agency will move to ban asbestos.
More broadly, however, members of Congress pressed Mr Wheeler on the Trump budget request to cut EPA spending from $8.8bn to $6.1bn.
Ms McCollum (D-MN), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on the environment, said this request "completely fails to support the EPA’s mission."
But she said that despite similar proposals in the past two years, Congress has "rejected these disastrous proposed cuts to EPA’s budget on a bipartisan and bicameral basis." And, she said, it is likely to do so again.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska), chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on the environment, agreed: "The final budget for EPA as crafted by Congress will look substantially different than this request."
https://chemicalwatch.com/75970/members-of-congress-scrutinise-efforts-to-debilitate-iris-programme
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Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
CPSC faces consumer protection hearing
The House of Representatives Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and its ability to protect Americans from "dangerous products."
The meeting is scheduled for 9 April at 10:15am EDT, in Washington, DC.
House committee hearing for EPA's 2020 budget
The House of Representatives Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee will hold a hearing with EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on President Trump’s 2020 budget request for the agency.
It will take place at 10am EDT on 9 April, in Washington, DC.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75975/us-congress-round-up
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Apr 4, 2019 | Chemical Watch
Appendix to guidance on OELs
Echa has published a draft appendix to guidance on exposure limits at the workplace.
The draft version of Appendix to Chapter R.8: Guidance for preparing a scientific report for health-based exposure limits at the workplace was released on 22 March.
In 2015 the Commission requested Echa's Committee for Risk Assessment (Rac) and the Scientific Committee on Occupational Exposure Limits (Scoel) to make a comparative assessment of the scientific methodologies that were used by the respective committees for deriving derived no-effect levels (Dnels) for workers or occupational exposure limits (OELs).
The draft guidance appendix captures the findings of the work of the Echa/Rac-Scoel Joint Task Force (JTF) conducted from 2015-17.
The work is part of REACH Review action 12 on the interface REACH and OSH legislation.
CLH consultations
The agency has started two sets of classification, labelling and harmonisation (CLH) consultations on: 1,4-dimethylnaphthalene, an explosive, flammable substance; and 2,4,6-tri-tert-butylphenol, a corrosive substance.
Both will run until 31 May.
Submission dates for restriction proposals
On 19 July Echa will submit restriction dossiers for a number of lead chromates, calcium cyanamide and organophosphate flame retardants.
The substances are: calcium cyanamide; lead chromate;lead sulfochromate yellow (C.I. Pigment Yellow 34); lead chromate molybdate sulphate red (C.I. Pigment Red 104); and tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP); tris(2-chloro-1-methylethyl) phosphate (TCPP); reaction mass of tris(2-chloropropyl) phosphate and tris(2-chloro-1-methylethyl) phosphate and phosphoric acid, bis(2-chloro-1-methylethyl) 2-chloropropyl ester and Phosphoric acid, 2-chloro-1-methylethyl bis(2-chloropropyl) ester (TCPP); reaction products of phosphoryl trichloride and methyloxirane (TCPP); tris[2-chloro-1-(chloromethyl)ethyl] phosphate.
Improving registration dossiers
Echa is planning to publish weekly tips in its newsletter on how to improve a REACH registration dossier, based on its evaluation work. It has already published a list of general recommendations.
Brief on poison centre notifications
The agency has released a brief on information requirements for poison centre notifications. This provides an overview of the information required for notifying hazardous mixtures according to Annex VIII to the CLP Regulation.
It is currently available in English on the agency's poison centres website.
General Report 2018
Echa has published its General Report for 2018. The report covers the agency’s achievements over the year, as well as outlining plans for the future.
The report is available as a downloadable PDF.
https://chemicalwatch.com/75822/echa-round-up
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Lawmakers File Bill to Treat Vets Exposed to PFAs
Apr 4, 2019 | Sea Coast Online
By Jeff McMenemy
U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas joined a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers, who on Thursday morning introduced the Veterans Exposed to Toxic PFAS Act.
The legislation would require the Veterans Administration to cover treatment of any health conditions caused by PFAS exposure, and will make veterans and their families eligible for VA disability benefits.
The widows of several guardsmen who served at the 157th Air Refueling Wing of the National Guard at the former Pease Air Force Base have told Seacoast Sunday their husbands were told they weren’t eligible for VA benefits despite their service.
Doris Brock, whose husband Kendall Brock served 35 years at the guard base before dying from bladder and prostate cancer, has repeatedly called for servicemen like her husband to be covered by the VA.
During a press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, Pappas pointed to the concerns that have been raised about what Brock and others say are an unusually high number of cancers at the base. Pappas called the announcement of the legislation “an important day for veterans across the country to say that we have their backs.”
The legislation also shows lawmakers “are willing to do what it takes to honor their service and to make sure they get access to the health care that they need and deserve,” Pappas said.
He noted PFAS exposure at the former Pease Air Force Base “reached back decades to both military families and civilian populations.”
The Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Research released a report this week that stated civilians and military personnel working at Pease from 1993 to 2014 were exposed to PFAS chemicals through the city of Portsmouth’s public water system.
Children and infants at two day cares were also exposed to the dangerous chemicals, and the exposure can cause harmful health effects, including possibly cancer, according to ATSDR’s report.
People at Pease, like Testing for Pease co-founder and Portsmouth mother Andrea Amico, have fought for answers for years about how PFAS might harm their families.
“They know what the scientific data says; that PFAS is a serious public health threat,” Pappas said, adding exposure to the chemicals have been linked to chronic health conditions including cancer.
They also know, Pappas said, that “these contaminants are dangerous even at far lower levels than the EPA’s current health advisory recommends.”
The city closed the polluted well Haven well in May 2014 after the Air Force found high levels of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, in the well.
The EPA in May 2016 set permanent health advisories for PFOS and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA at 70 parts per trillion.
The legislation will provide a “a presumption of service connection for veterans,” Pappas said, which will give veterans access to health care and also VA disability benefits.
The legislation “renews the solemn obligation we have to those who have selflessly served the rest of us,” Pappas said.
U.S. Rep Dan Kildee, D-Mich., said during Thursday’s press conference that it’s now known that PFAS chemicals are “more and not less dangerous than initially believed.”
He pointed out that when veterans “sign up to serve in the United States military we make a promise to them that in exchange for their service we’ll take care of them and their families.”
Veterans and their families have been exposed to these “dangerous chemicals,” often unknowingly, on military bases across the country, Kildee said.
He said “exposure to PFAS has been linked to a number of health issues, including cancer, high cholesterol, weakened immune system and hypertension during pregnancy.”
“The military has refused to cover many of these issues,” Kildee said Thursday. “This bill will ensure they do that.”
https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20190404/lawmakers-file-bill-to-treat-vets-exposed-to-pfas
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Colorado Drillers Face Tougher Rules Under Energy-Law Revamp
Apr 4, 2019 | Bloomberg (In the Houston Chronicle)
By Catherine Traywick
Colorado’s legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state’s oil and natural gas laws, giving local governments more power to regulate drilling in one of the nation’s top crude-producing regions.
The bill, which passed the state Senate by just three votes amid intense industry opposition, now heads to the desk of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, a longstanding proponent of tightening public health and safety standards around oil and gas development who helped develop the reforms. The law passed Wednesday comes as Colorado pumps record volumes of crude, primarily from the Denver-Julesburg basin situated on the outskirts of Denver.
Under the measure, explorers such as Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Noble Energy Inc. could face new levels of oversight from local governments, which would be able to regulate the siting of surface infrastructure and impose other rules around drilling. The legislation also shifts the focus of the state’s energy regulator from fostering oil and gas development to protecting public health, safety and the environment.
The shale boom has vaulted Colorado to the nation’s no. 5 oil producer, ahead of both Alaska and California in crude output. Drillers pumped 513,000 barrels a day in December, a record high. But proximity of oil and gas development to Denver’s suburbs has raised concerns about health and safety, especially after an Anadarko gas line explosion in 2017 killed two people and leveled a home.
Pure-play drillers focused on the Denver-Julesburg basin have the most to lose under the reforms. Independent explorers such as Extraction Oil and Gas Inc., PDC Energy Inc. and SRC Energy Inc. control significant acreage in the suburbs around Denver and Boulder, where development has been repeatedly challenged by local communities. Those areas would have more power to curb drilling once the new measure becomes law.
New state-wide environmental and health standards would affect all producers including Anadarko and Noble, which together control about 750,000 acres, and BP Plc, which controls 275,000 acres in Colorado’s San Juan basin and last year moved its U.S. onshore headquarters to Denver.
What Bloomberg Intelligence says
Greater local control over regulating oil and gas operations, including the citing of drilling locations, would likely put some acreage out of reach for companies such as PDC and SRC Energy, particularly closer to more urban areas.
The legislation follows a failed 2018 ballot initiative to curb development via a half-mile setback, or buffer zone, between homes and oil infrastructure. That measure, which 57 percent of voters rejected, would have limited drilling in more than half the state. Oil and gas companies raised more than $41 million to defeat the proposal.
While the latest reform effort isn’t as sweeping in scope as the ballot measure, it would allow for local governments to impose their own setbacks, which could all but eliminate development in some areas.
Still, the law could alleviate some public concern around development, according to Washington-based Height Securities.
It "would restore investor certainty by stabilizing the volatile politics in ‘Not In My Backyard’ communities along the Front Range," analysts at Height said in a note last week. "By addressing local issues related to health, safety, and nuisance, Colorado officials can ease the tension between industry and residents."
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Colorado-Passes-Sweeping-Overhaul-of-Oil-and-Gas-13740872.php?cmpid=ffcp
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An Overeager Legal Strategy May Endanger Trump’s Energy Goals
Apr 4, 2019 | Roll Call
By Benjamin J. Hulac
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was unhappy with an April 5 ruling by Sharon Gleason, a federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, who found that President Donald Trump had unlawfully lifted a ban prohibiting drilling in the Arctic Ocean, dealing the president’s fossil-fuel energy agenda a major blow.
“I strongly disagree with this ruling,” said Murkowski, who wants to open her state’s land and water to increased oil and gas leasing. “I expect this decision to be appealed and ultimately overturned.”
If the past is any indication, the Alaska Republican may be disappointed.
In the 28 months since Trump became president, his administration has worked with zeal and speed to slash, dilute and tweak the environmental protections of previous administrations, frequently with the support of Republicans in Congress and industry groups that stood to gain.
To achieve his administration’s “energy dominance” agenda, the president has nominated industry-friendly officials to run Cabinet agencies, signed a raft of executive orders in support of oil, gas and coal companies rather than work with Congress to change the law, and overseen a governmentwide rollback of environmental regulations.
And in their haste, the White House and federal agencies have suffered dozens of losses in court, often by failing to follow standard federal procedures, submitting shoddy paperwork and, according to federal judges, arbitrarily interpreting the law.
“I think that they’re just ham-handed,” Holly Doremus, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview.
Much of the administration came into government without much expertise and with plenty of contempt for the career legal staff in Washington, Doremus said. “They came in with this idea that the Deep State was out to get them,” she said. “They came in not knowing anything but not understanding that that mattered.”
An Interior Department official said the administration is fine-tuning its efforts to strip away unnecessary regulations, and cited the Obama administration for faulty rulemaking of its own.
“We’re happy to clean up the legal errors of the previous administration identified by the courts and their inability to appropriately account for climate change in their decisions,” said Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Joe Balash. “Court rulings have allowed us to fine-tune our NEPA analysis in advancing the president’s energy agenda,” he said, referring to the National Environmental Policy Act.
In her ruling, Gleason said Trump’s executive order that lifted drilling bans in the Arctic was “unlawful” — the latest in a string of court losses for the government. The move placed about 120 million acres worth of Arctic waters and several million in the Atlantic Ocean back under federal protection, as they had been until Trump issued a 2017 executive order to roll back the ban.
On March 28, a federal judge in Colorado ruled the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires government agencies to complete environmental assessments, in approving potential oil and gas projects in western Colorado.
The government failed to look at the climate effects of those proposals and “acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner,” Lewis T. Babcock ruled.
NEPA snags
A week before, Rudolph Contreras, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., struck down environmental reviews the Interior Department completed in connection with oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming. His ruling was also over NEPA violations.
“Simply put, NEPA required more robust analyses of GHG emissions from oil and gas drilling and downstream use,” Contreras wrote.
And in a separate case last week, Gleason, the Alaska judge, blocked a road project in the state’s southwest. The Obama administration has opposed putting a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, citing irretrievable damage to the ecosystem, conclusions that Gleason ruled the Trump administration “ignored.”
The Institute for Policy Integrity, a program within New York University’s School of Law, tracks the administration’s deregulatory efforts, including lawsuits and rule proposals.
The administration has succeeded in about 6% of those efforts, according to the group’s latest figures, from early March. Past administrations won similar legal fights about 70% of the time, Ricky Revesz, the group’s director, said in an interview.
“It’s a really atrocious record,” Revesz said.
He said many of the court losses can be tied to a conundrum for the administration: If they complete scientific and thorough analysis to justify what they want to do, that work will show why their goal is harmful to the public. But if they complete haphazard analysis, judges will see through it.
“So they’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” Revesz told CQ. “I think in some cases there is not good analysis that they could do, so they resort to bad analysis.”
Despite the legal stumbles the president continues to encounter, Republicans in Congress see no need for the administration to slow or change its techniques.
Instead, they place blame on “activist judges” and unclear bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act that require the government to assess the environmental impact of energy projects.
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., commended Trump for “bold leadership” on energy issues, saying instead he is concerned about the judges standing in the president’s way.
Keystone
“We had a judge stop the Keystone [XL] Pipeline in Montana, and that’s why it’s important for him to move forward with putting judges in place who understand their role is not to make the law but to interpret the law to make sure it supports the constitution,” Daines told CQ. “And so these activist judges need to be challenged.”
“There are opportunities for us to make these laws better,” Daines said. “But I’m very proud of what the president has done with his leadership to move America to a place of global energy dominance that is good for our national security, good for our economy.”
After years of setbacks, Trump’s State Department awarded TransCanada Corp. the cross-border permit the company had been denied by the Obama administration to move forward with its Keystone XL Pipeline.
But even with the green light from the Trump administration, the pipeline project still hit legal snags. A judge at the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana in November issued a temporary injunction blocking construction, accusing the State Department of failing to consider the project’s impact on climate change or vulnerable animal species, as NEPA and the Endangered Species Act require.
On Friday, Trump issued a new permit for the Keystone project and revoked a previous permit of his for the project as well as an executive order he signed days into office in support of the project.
It is unclear if the attempt to circumvent Brian Morris, the federal judge in Montana who blocked the pipeline in November, ruling that the State Department’s environmental assessment “fell short” of a “hard look,” will succeed. Construction of the pipeline was announced in 2008.
In the first two years of the Trump administration, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress, they moved multiple bills to weaken NEPA and the Endangered Species Act. They wanted to make it easier to explore on federal lands and quicken federal approvals of pipelines. Judges apply those laws arbitrarily and hamper energy development, Trump supporters contend.
During his time as chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, pushed through several bills that would ease the stringent environmental review requirements. He is now ranking member of the committee.
“If we can clarify the rules and laws in the first place, it would be good,” Bishop told CQ. “We need to take, NEPA for example, which is probably the hit most people are taking, and clarify it. It’s an open invitation to a lawsuit because the law is simply a vague law.”
Bishop said the Trump administration is pursuing its goals of boosting energy exploration “the right way,” but that the judges throwing out those projects are in the wrong.
“I’m frustrated that many of the court decisions, I think, are small-minded and inaccurate and of course over time they’re going to be overturned,” he told CQ. “If you court-shop, you can find a judge that will disagree, which is unfortunate; it’s unfortunate the judicial branch of government is trying to take control of what should be a legislative-slash-executive process.”
Three years into the Trump era, the administration does not seem to be charting a different legal course.
In August, Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted that the administration had lost four high profile environmental cases in the previous eight days. That spate, which included defeats over the Keystone XL pipeline, a toxic pesticide, water regulations and safety rules for chemical plants, followed a slew of losses “over the past 18 months,” she wrote.
Details and substance
“To some degree, the mounting losses for the Trump Administration involve its failure to follow proper administrative process,” Carlson wrote on a legal blog hosted by the University of California, Berkley, and UCLA. “But many of the cases cast doubt not just on the procedure but also the substance of the underlying actions: for example, the government lost the pesticides case this week because it had no justification for allowing pesticide residue to remain on food.”
In an email Tuesday, Carlson said she hadn’t noticed a significant shift.
“So far, I don’t see that the Administration has changed its tactics much at all since I wrote my column,” she said.
The EPA under Andrew Wheeler seems to be following legally dubious strategies, just as it did under Scott Pruitt, Trump’s first EPA administrator, she said.
In its attempts to undermine Obama-era rules on mercury and carbon pollution, the agency seems to be pursuing shaky legal paths, she said. The same goes for its work to revoke California’s waiver to issue its own automobile emissions standards, according to Carlson. “If it does so, the administrative record is full of errors and weaknesses that are likely to doom those legal efforts as well,” she said.
The Administrative Procedure Act, a 1940s law that guards against arbitrary government shifts, is proving to be quite the tripwire, too.
John Echeverria, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School, said meeting APA standards is not difficult.
“It’s not that demanding a test,” he said by phone. “Fundamentally, the administrative law demands that agencies produce a reason for a new policy direction.”
It will take time to tell if the administration has changed its tactics, he added. “If they’re doing a better job, the payoff will be a long time coming.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a recent CQ interview that he’s selective when suing Trump.
“If I sued the president every time I disagree with him, I’d sue him a thousand times in his first year in office, when in fact I sued him just under a dozen times. So I focus on the rule of law, and the proof of that is we haven’t lost,” Shapiro said.
Under Wheeler, the EPA has been better at telling the public what it plans to do, as the APA requires, he said.
“What they still struggle with is how their rules are arbitrary and capricious under the APA,” Shapiro said. “And in fact we’ve sued under that provision and made comments under that provision even under Wheeler.”
David Bookbinder, chief counsel of the Niskanen Center, a centrist policy think tank, told CQ the full coal-generated steam-ahead method seems to be a play for the Trump base.
“I think it’s simply to stand up and throw meat to the crowds,” he said.
Reached at his home in Anchorage, Erik Grafe, who argued in court against the government in the Arctic offshore case, said breaking standard procedural laws deprives citizens of what they deserve to know.
“A lot of these statues are about disclosing to the public the risk,” Grafe said. “This administration isn’t doing that.”
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/overeager-legal-strategy-may-endanger-trumps-energy-goals
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BLM Eyes Sage Grouse Habitat in Colo. Sale
Apr 4, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Scott Streater
The Bureau of Land Management is evaluating whether to include nearly 70,000 acres of greater sage grouse habitat in northwest Colorado in a planned September oil and gas lease sale, just weeks after it finalized revisions to Obama-era grouse conservation plans that critics say will open more habitat to drilling.
The 75 parcels covering 69,057 acres were among nearly 150,000 acres BLM removed from a December 2018 lease sale after former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and other state leaders complained to BLM that allowing drilling in this area could harm the imperiled bird (Greenwire, Oct. 22, 2018).
BLM also pulled the parcels last year in response to a federal court injunction that blocked it from implementing policy changes that shortened public review and protest periods for lease sale parcels. The bureau last year also deferred hundreds of thousands of acres of grouse habitat from planned lease sales in Montana, Wyoming and Utah due to the injunction.
A BLM spokesman in Colorado said no decision has been made on whether to include the 75 parcels at issue in the planned lease sale this fall. The parcels are being evaluated and are open for comment through April 16 as part of a public scoping process. An additional 30 days for public comment will occur when BLM issues an environmental assessment of the parcels in the coming months.
But some environmental groups are upset that BLM would even consider offering the grouse habitat for lease, noting that the same concerns expressed by Hickenlooper and other state officials last year still exist today.
And they note that the evaluation of the sage grouse parcels comes shortly after BLM implemented revisions to the 2015 Obama grouse protection plans that include exemptions and waivers that could allow more drilling in and around sensitive habitat (Greenwire, March 15).
"The Trump administration's reckless proposal to trash northwest Colorado's remaining greater sage grouse habitat makes it abundantly clear that they have no interest in conserving this species," said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
The Center for Biological Diversity is one of four groups involved in a federal lawsuit that seeks to "halt and reverse" implementation of the revisions to the original federal grouse protection plans (E&E News PM, March 27).
Saul called on new Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) "to stand up to this administration and oppose these efforts to sell out Colorado's last, best sagebrush habitats for drilling and fracking."
Polis has publicly supported the revised BLM grouse plans.
It's not clear if Polis will ask BLM to defer the nearly 70,000 acres of grouse habitat if offered for lease this fall; the governor's media office could not provide a comment for this story in time for publication.
A total of 83 parcels covering 78,691 acres are up for consideration in the September lease sale, according to BLM records.
The proposed lease parcels are located in Routt, Moffat, Garfield, Rio Blanco, Jackson, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Weld counties.
BLM held a Wyoming lease sale that ran from Feb. 25 through March 1 and offered hundreds of thousands of acres of previously deferred grouse habitat. The lease sale generated $87.9 million, with bids on 437 parcels totaling 527,000 acres.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/04/stories/1060143427
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Solar Is Going to Keep Oil Flowing in the Texas Shale Patch
Apr 4, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Brian Eckhouse and Christopher Martin
Texas, home to the world’s largest oil reserve and America’s biggest source of coal-fired power, is on the verge of a clean-energy boom.
Wind already supplies about 15 percent of Texas’s electricity, and now developers are about to quadruple the state’s solar capacity, adding enough panels by 2022 to light up all of Dallas. But they won’t just power homes. Solar developers are responding to demand from oil and gas drillers, whose booming operations are gobbling up electricity and pushing prices spiking above $1,000 a megawatt-hour.
The fact that Texas is turning to solar for help when it’s home to some of the cheapest energy resources in the world is the best evidence yet that the technology can compete head on with fossil fuels. Solar is getting built based purely on economics in the state, which isn’t offering the types of incentives that have spurred clean-energy booms elsewhere.
“People are trying to get in as much solar in Texas as they can,” Mike Garland, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based clean energy developer Pattern Energy Group Inc., said in an interview.
Unlike in California and other leading solar states, development in Texas isn’t being spurred by renewable-energy mandates. (Texas satisfied its clean-energy quota years ago with wind power.) But at the moment, the price is right for solar.
Building a solar farm in Texas currently costs about $32 per megawatt-hour, spread over the lifetime of the plant, according to BloombergNEF. Compare that to $38 for a high-efficiency gas plant. Plus, solar farms can be built in six months, while gas plants can take years. That’s crucial for Texas, which needs more power plants as soon as developers can put them up.
Solar’s other key edge in Texas: it complements the state’s sprawling wind farms. Turbines there generate most of their power at night. Solar, meanwhile, peaks with the sun, providing electricity when air conditioners are cranking and oil fields are bustling.
Those dynamics—combined with easy permitting and a growing pool of investors offering a variety of financing options—have developers rushing into the state.
“There’s tremendous incentive for solar to be built,” Colin Smith, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, said in an interview.
Permian Basin
Solar owes much of the opportunity to the oil and gas industry. Output in the Permian Basin of West Texas, which produces more than 4 million barrels of oil a day, has doubled in three years. Gas has become so plentiful that prices have turned negative as explorers pump more fuel than pipelines can handle. Forecasters say there’s even more growth to come. Those drilling operations, along with the economic growth they’ve sparked, are pushing up demand for electricity. Existing power plants are struggling to keep up.
Electrical demand in Texas is forecast to reach a record 74.9 gigawatts this summer, topping the previous high set last July. The grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. or Ercot, has warned of shortfalls. Prices, which during the day average about $32 per megawatt-hour, are apt to spike. They may even hit an unprecedented $9,000, Ercot said.
“We’re expecting a super-charged market this summer with volatile pricing,” said Jeff Thibodeau, an analyst at Genscape Inc.
The Texas solar rush is essentially a big bet on those price jumps, said Jigar Shah, co-founder of clean-energy financier Generate Capital Inc. Traditional long-term contracts to sell power are rare in Texas. So most solar developers will sell power directly into the wholesale market.
“Solar companies think they can get paid enough on the spikes,” Shah said in an interview.
One hurdle solar may face is a property-tax abatement popular with developers that’s scheduled to end this year. Katherine Gensler, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, said that would have a “material effect” on solar. Tom Buttgenbach, CEO of solar developer 8minutenergy Renewables LLC, said many deals “may not pencil” without tax abatements.
Nonetheless, Ercot forecasts Texas’s solar capacity will quadruple over the next three years, with 2 gigawatts added this year, 3.2 in 2020 and 1 in 2021.
The boom comes more than a decade after high power prices and strong breezes on the Texas Panhandle triggered a flood of wind-farm development. So many turbines were installed that by 2005 they were producing more power than the local grid could handle. Texas spent about $6.9 billion on new transmission lines to deliver 18.5 gigawatts of renewable energy to Dallas, San Antonio and other big cities.
Texas’s solar boom may be fleeting, too. As more power plants come online, the price spikes that are making the market so enticing for developers will ease, bringing down overall prices, BNEF analyst Joshua Danial said. He estimates adding 5 gigawatts of solar would reduce Texas power plant revenue by 11 percent, or $1.43 billion a year.
In the meantime, solar is finally having its moment in Texas.
“There’s a lot of room for solar to grow,” said Smith, of Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/solar-is-going-to-keep-oil-flowing-in-the-texas-shale-patch
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Investors Urge Companies to Support Methane Regulations. Are They Listening?
Apr 4, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Kate Gaumond
Over the past few weeks, companies like BP, Equinor, Exxon and Shell have publicly stated their support for direct federal regulation of methane. It is not every day that a company asks for more rules rather than less. What’s one of the driving forces behind these public position reversals? Investors.
Investors have been an important pressure point in moving these companies to their new policy positions, and they continue to wield their influence to encourage more companies to join.
Investors want methane regulations
This fall, 61 investors representing $1.9 trillion assets under management sent a letter to 30 leading oil and gas companies urging them to publicly declare their support for strong federal methane regulations and to oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) deregulatory proposals.
Why do investors see these rules as in their business interest? Climate-risk and the low-carbon transition are top of mind for investors in the oil and gas industry today. Analysis by Ceres found in the 2018 proxy season, 46 % of asset managers voted for more than half of the climate-related shareholder proposals, up from approximately 33 % in 2017.
So for oil and gas companies and their investors, common-sense policy that can manage potent greenhouse gas emissions today is a key risk-reducing measure for the industry.
As the investors explained in the letter, “rolling back federal regulation will lead to excessive methane emissions that needlessly tarnish the reputation of natural gas as a clean fuel and call into question the role natural gas can play in a low-carbon future. Comprehensive and common-sense national standards are needed to mitigate this industry-wide risk.”
Praise for BP, Equinor, Exxon and Shell, but who is next?
When BP, Equinor, Exxon and Shell announced their public support for continued and expanded direct federal methane regulation, investors were quick to offer praise for this important step.
After these public announcements, As You Sow wrote, “we are pleased that companies like Exxon and Shell acknowledge the need for federal methane regulation. Smart methane controls represent the low-hanging fruit that companies should implement while transitioning their business models toward complete Paris-compliance.”
However, methane is an industry-wide problem. A total of 610 different companies account for 50 % of oil and gas production in the United States. While investors applaud these first steps taken by a few industry leaders, they are looking to other companies with a stake in the U.S. oil and gas industry to follow next. And for the original set of leaders to follow through on their statements in the months to come.
As California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the second largest U.S. pension fund, stated, “CalSTRS now looks to engage other oil and gas companies to follow the positive examples of BP, Exxon and Shell, by supporting the continued direct regulation of methane by the EPA for new and existing sources.”
With investor statements like these, we can expect more companies – many of whom are already taking steps to monitor and mitigate emissions in their own operations – to begin similar advocacy.Trade association transparency
Investors are also keen to see companies distance themselves from trade association positions on methane policy, such as the American Petroleum Institute’s (API), that set industry back.
As Adam Matthews, Director of Ethics & Engagement at the Church of England Pensions Board stated, “We applaud the companies who have broken from the API on methane emissions regulation. We would encourage other companies that have so far remained silent to similarly demonstrate their commitment to addressing this important issue.”
In fact, investors see this recent move by oil and gas companies on methane as part of a larger trend. Matthews wrote further, “This is a trend that is rapidly gaining pace as companies across a growing number of sectors are responding to investor requests to review the consistency of their trade association memberships… Investors are working across Europe, Australia and in the U.S. to ensure…that what is said in public is also lobbied for in private.”
To put it shortly, Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres tweeted, “It’s time for trade associations to represent their members.”
Looking forward
Based on the recent methane momentum among investors, oil and gas companies should be prepared for three engagement asks from their investors to continue as the EPA moves forward with its deregulatory proposals. Investors will be asking for:
-Companies that have remained silent so far to break from trade association positions, and publicly support direct federal methane regulation.
-Public supporters of methane rules to translate their words into action, and actively work with the administration to maintain methane regulations.
-Members of methane-lobbying trade associations to influence those organization’s public opinions on methane regulation.
In order to be viewed as a methane leader by investors, companies cannot simply just manage emissions from their own operations. Methane emissions are an industry-wide problem that pose a portfolio-wide risk to investors. Smart regulation can set a floor so investors and companies can be assured that every actor is taking at least some minimum action. Therefore, investors now expect companies that are truly looking to solve the methane problem to advocate for sound policy solutions.
http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2019/04/04/investors-urge-companies-to-support-methane-regulations-are-they-listening/
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Texas Chemical Incidents Intensify Calls for EPA Protections
Apr 4, 2019 | Inside EPA
Three chemical release incidents at Houston-area facilities in the last three weeks are intensifying calls for EPA and other federal agencies to bolster protections for fence-line communities, increase agencies' budgets and preserve and strengthen agency rules.
“These sequential disasters highlight the dire need for more and better protections for these fence line communities. Polluters should not get a free pass to pollute our communities and harm our neighbors,” Public Citizen said in an April 2 statement.
Their comments come after a fatal incident at KMCO, LLC -- a specialty chemical manufacturing facility in Harris County, TX.
The incident was the third in recent weeks. Last month, a fire (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-refinery-operations-exxon-baytown/exxon-reduces-gasoline-output-at-baytown-texas-refinery-after-fire-sources-idUSKCN1QX0QW) at Exxon's Baytown petroleum refinery forced the facility to scale back production.
Also, a March 17 fire at Mitsui & Co’s Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) in Deer Park, TX, burnt for days, resulting in significant releases of naphta, xylene, benzene -- a known carcinogen -- and other substances from above ground storage tanks.
EPA and the the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) are investigating the ITC incident, CSB said in a March 21 statement. Investigators were slated to visit the site last week to “start interviews . . . and document the scene and collect evidence.”
“The massive fire, which began on March 17th, engulfed 11 above ground storage tanks containing a variety of hydrocarbons, resulting in multiple orders for community members to Shelter in Place,” CSB says.
“The escalation of the event, looking at how the fire spread from a single tank to others in the tank battery, is certainly something we’re interested in,” CSB lead investigator Mark Wingard told Reuters.
Investigators will focus on interviewing ITC employees and collecting the facility’s documents and information on the facility’s tanks.
In the wake of the ITC and Exxon incidents, Public Citizen and other groups had already urged the Trump administration to preserve EPA's Obama-era Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility safety rule.
In a March 18 statement, Public Citizen’s Texas office says the fires show the “dire need” for stricter regulation and oversight. The group specifically faults EPA’s plans to roll back the RMP rule.
"The ITC chemical fire demonstrates how chemical disasters happen far too often in our region, often due to lax regulatory oversight and enforcement," Stephanie Thomas, researcher for Public Citizen's Texas office, said.
But industry officials have been lobbying the agency to quickly complete its rule rolling back the Obama-era requirements.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/texas-chemical-incidents-intensify-calls-epa-protections
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Editorial: State Lawmakers Seek Greater Oil-Train Safety
Apr 4, 2019 | Herald Net
There’s lobbying, and then there’s coercion through the threat of lawsuit.
A North Dakota oil regulation agency attempted the latter recently when it threatened to sue the state of Washington should the Legislature move forward with a bill that seeks to limit the risk of oil railcar disasters in the state by setting an internal vapor pressure standard for Bakken crude oilcarried by railcars. Bakken crude is a highly volatile oil from parts of North Dakota, Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada, and was involved in rail disasters in Canada and in the U.S., most recently along the Columbia River.
Bakken and other crude oil trains pass through Snohomish County on their way to refineries in Skagit and Whatcom counties.
Following passage of the legislation in the Senate, Lynn Helms, director of North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources, reiterated the threat during a House Environment and Energy Committee hearing, referring to a suit for $1.6 million that North Dakota won against Minnesota regarding a renewable energy standard its legislature adopted.
Despite the threat, the legislation was approved Monday by the committee. While the threatened lawsuit did not appear to have resonated with lawmakers, House Democrats on the environment committee did take seriously the testimony from representatives of Washington refineries, their employees and others, and amended the legislation with a pressure valve of its own that will delay implementation of the new standard and provide more information regarding oil trains and their cargo to the state Department of Ecology.
The substitute to the Senate legislation keeps the original bill’s standard that crude oil unloaded at refineries and other facilities in the state have a vapor pressure of 9 pounds per square inch or less, lower than the current standard — set by North Dakota in 2015 — of 13.7 pounds.
The amended legislation will delay that standard’s implementation until two years after the state Department of Ecology notifies the Legislature that the volume of crude oil arriving by rail has increased more than 5 percent over the volume transported in 2018. Another amendment requires refineries and others to report the types of crude and vapor pressure levels to the Ecology Department.
Both amendments are responsive to concerns raised that the original bill could have threatened employment at state refineries if the new standard discouraged shipment of Bakken crude because of the increased expense of removing the most volatile petroleum compounds from the crude before its transport by rail. To replace the Bakken crude, some warned, refineries would likely increase shipments of crude from West Africa, the Middle East and Russia, requiring more shipment by tankers through Washington’s Salish Sea, heightening the risk of a spill into marine waters.
More time before such a standard is adopted also could allow for completion of a study and rulemaking by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration that could set a nationwide transportation standard for Bakken and other types of crude.
Helms and other North Dakota officials criticized the legislation’s 9-pound pressure standard as arbitrary but offered no explanation why 13.7 pounds was safe enough. Nor did those officials explain why North Dakota regulators are now seeking to weaken even that standard, which the state set just four years ago, as reported last fall by the Bismarck Tribune.
Industry representatives testified that Bakken crude poses no more threat than other types of crude, but recent rail disasters counter that conclusion.
At least 47 people died in 2013 in Lac Megantic, Quebec, when an unattended train of 74 cars carrying Bakken crude rolled down a grade and into town, derailed and exploded with a blast radius of more than a half-mile.
More recently, a Union Pacific train of 96 cars, also carrying Bakken crude, derailed in the Columbia River Gorge near Mosier, Oregon, in June 2016. Sixteen of its cars derailed when a failure of its emergency braking system caused the brakes to engage. Several cars caught fire. Had the derailment occurred elsewhere along that stretch, the leaking cars could have landed in the Columbia River or near populated areas.
In light of North Dakota’s attempt to weaken its own standard and the Trump administration’s moves to scale back more stringent rules regarding the transportation of all crude oil and petroleum products — such as the Obama administration’s rule regarding oil-train brakes — state lawmakers are acting responsibly by seeking tighter controls for crude oil transportation in general and for Bakken crude in particular.
The compromises offered by the House committee recognize the need for more information and avoidance of unintended consequences as regulations are written that protect jobs and deliver a greater level of safety.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-state-lawmakers-seek-greater-oil-train-safety/
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Kerry, Hagel to Headline First Oversight Climate Hearing
Apr 4, 2019 | Politico Pro - Energy Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
Former Secretary of State John Kerry and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will testify at the first of two April 9 hearings on climate change in the House Oversight Committee, the panel announced today.
The panel also announced its Environment Subcommittee would hold an afternoon hearing to explore "the scientific consensus on climate change established in the 1980s, the role of the fossil fuel industry in spreading misinformation, and the consequences of policy inaction."
Witnesses for that session are former Sen. Tim Wirth, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs and Princeton University geoscience professor Michael Oppenheimer.
WHAT'S NEXT: The full committee hearing will be April 9 at 10 a.m. in Rayburn 2154, while the Environment Subcommittee hearing will be at 2 p.m. in Rayburn 2247.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/04/kerry-hagel-to-headline-first-oversight-climate-hearing-3011772
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These Pollution-Spotting Satellites Are Just a Taste of What's to Come
Apr 4, 2019 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Mark Brownstein
The most advanced satellite to ever launch from Africa will soon be patrolling South Africa's coastal waters to crack down on oil spills and illegal dumping.
Data from another satellite, this one collecting images from the Texas portion of a sprawling oil and gas region known as the Permian Basin, recently delivered shocking news: Operators there are burning off nearly twice as much natural gas as they've been reporting to state officials.
With some 5,000 satellites now orbiting our planet on any given day, a growing number of images captured from space are shedding new light on the world's mounting environmental challenges. It helps explain why organizations and corporations are beginning to use satellites to track deforestation, pinpoint methane leaks and show impacts of climate change.
What we're looking at here is, of course, just the beginning.
As countries such as Brazil and Indonesia seek to reduce deforestation, and nations like Mexico try to rein in emissions from oil and gas production, satellites will become indispensable. They will help create a constantly innovating industry that will revolutionize environmental monitoring of our planet and hold polluters accountable.
Data shed new light on Texas gas problem
Satellites provide the geographical scope and precision needed to identify and assess problem areas that were previously unknown or poorly measured. Importantly, they will be able to measure changes on land, in oceans and in the air over time.
Thanks to satellites, we now have that actionable data on pollution from oil and natural gas wells that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions at a time when we must act quickly to curb climate change.
A recent study by Environmental Defense Fund focused on natural gas flares from the wells in the Permian Basin, located in Western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Our analysis proved that the region's pollution problem was much larger than companies had revealed.
A second study about offshore gas flaring in the Gulf of Mexico, published by a group of scientists in the Geophysical Research Letters, showed that operators there burn off a whopping 40% of the natural gas they produce.
And that's not all.
Methane-probing satellite takes off soon
Soon a new satellite will be launching that is specifically designed not just to locate, but accurately measure methane emissions from human-made sources, starting with the global oil and gas industry.
MethaneSAT, a new EDF affiliate unveiled last year, will launch a future where sensors in space will find and measure pollution that today goes undetected. This compact orbital platform will map and quantify methane emissions from oil and gas operations almost anywhere on the planet at least weekly.
The data MethaneSAT collects will help companies and countries identify emission sources, see opportunities to reduce them, and track those reductions over time. The data will be available to the public at no cost, so that we all can make sure both industry and governments are getting the job done.
That is the promise of satellite technology and what we call the Fourth Wave of environmentalism: It reveals, measures, monitors and motivates.
https://www.edf.org/blog/2019/04/04/these-pollution-spotting-satellites-are-just-taste-whats-come
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