Preview Newsletter
PM ACC Clips Report - April 8, 2019
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Newly Disclosed Meetings with Industry Create Ethics Questions for Interior Secretary
Apr 8, 2019 | Roll Call
By Jacob Holzman and Benjamin J. Hulac
Recently posted versions of acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s daily schedules contain at least 260 differences from his original schedules, with the newest records showing meetings previously described as “external” or “internal”... -
EPA Releases Budget Justification that Increases Budget for Chemical Risk, Review, and Reduction Program
Apr 8, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On March 11, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Justification of Appropriation Estimates for the Committee on Appropriations. EPA’s budget request reduces the overall budget by... -
Watchdog Finds Inaccuracies in EPA Toxics Data
Apr 8, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Courtney Columbus
As part of an ongoing audit, EPA's inspector general has found discrepancies in some of the agency's data on industrial chemical releases. Because of issues with the Toxics Release Inventory data, "the public is not receiving... -
Roundup, the Weedkiller That Changed Farming, Faces a Reckoning
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Jacob Bunge and Ruth Bender
For years, scientists at Monsanto Co. worked closely with outside researchers on studies that concluded its Roundup weedkiller was safe. That collaboration is now one of the biggest liabilities for the world’s most widely used herbicide... -
Ewire: Trump Slated to Announce Pipeline Order
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump on April 10 will sign new directives attempting to speed up oil and gas pipeline deployment, with many expecting the measures to curtail states' Clean Water Act (CWA) authority to block projects due to their... -
EPA Says It Won’t Second Guess State Audits of Oil Firms
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Abby Smith
The EPA isn’t going to second guess state-led audits of new owners of oil and gas drilling sites if the audits are on par with federal requirements, the agency told state regulators April 8. The EPA recognizes that some states like Wyoming... -
Trump Heads to Houston Wednesday to Boost Oil and Gas Sector
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
President Donald Trump will travel to Houston Wednesday to announce executive orders aimed at speeding up pipeline and other energy projects and expanding oil and natural gas production, a senior White House official said. -
Keystone Pipeline Permit Challenged as Unconstitutional
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
The Trump administration violated the U.S. Constitution in issuing a new permit for TransCanada Corp.’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline, American Indian and environmental groups say. The Indigenous Environmental Network and the... -
Frackers, Chasing Fast Oil Output, Are on a Treadmill
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Rebecca Elliott
Shale companies from Texas to North Dakota have been managing their wells to maximize short-term oil production. That has long-term consequences for the future of the American energy boom. By front-loading the wells to boost... -
Shell to Plant Trees as It Offers Fuel Customers Carbon Credits
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom
Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to meet its climate change targets in part by planting trees to offset emissions from the fuels it sells. The Anglo-Dutch oil major will invest $300 million over three years “in nature” to lower its net carbon... -
Drilling Down: Millennial-Run Oil Company Focuses on Permian Basin
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
They’re under 40 and they’re drilling for oil in the Permian Basin of West Texas. Millennial-run oil company Double Eagle Energy Holdings III has received three drilling permits from the Railroad Commission of Texas for projects in... -
Bill Overhauling How Oil, Gas Is Regulated in Colorado Clears Legislature: Now the Action Really Begins
Apr 8, 2019 | Denver Post
By Judith Kohler
A jam-packed month of debate and hours of public testimony ended with the passage last week of legislation that will dramatically change how oil and gas is regulated in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign Senate Bill 19-181... -
Pennsylvania's Energy Future Pivots on What Harrisburg Does with All This Gas, Deliberators Decide
Apr 8, 2019 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Anya Litvak
In summer 2017, Pennsylvania convened a group of 35 people to envision the state’s energy future. Leading the exercise was a team from Royal Dutch Shell, the company behind the sprawling petrochemical campus rising in Beaver... -
Houston Ship Channel Shut As Storm Hits Chemical Disaster Site
Apr 8, 2019 | Bloomberg (In Transport Topics)
By Joe Carroll
The Houston Ship Channel was shut April 7 as violent storms wracked the site of one of the worst Gulf Coast industrial disasters in 14 years. All outbound vessels emerging from the northwest end of the waterway were halted... -
Chemical Plant Fires Renew Safety Debate in Oil-Friendly Texas
Apr 7, 2019 | Insurance Journal
By Paul J. Weber
Two major chemical plant fires near Houston just 17 days apart closed schools, leaked toxic chemicals into coastal waters and killed a worker, but there’s a good chance they won’t lead to big industry crackdowns in oil-friendly Texas. -
(ACC Mentioned) STB to Review Petition to Amend Rail Performance Reporting Rules
Apr 8, 2019 | Progressive Railroading
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has opened a rule-making proceeding in response to a petition from the American Chemistry Council to amend the board's railroad performance data reporting rules. In a filing last week, the... -
The Energy 202: Trump Keeps Inventing New Details About the Green New Deal
Apr 8, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
President Trump can’t stop trashing the Green New Deal. Even though the Democratic resolution to rapidly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was defeated last month in the Senate, the president is still hoisting it as a punching bag... -
Energy, Environmental Agencies to Merge
Apr 8, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Two Nebraska state agencies that oversee environmental and energy issues are set to merge under a new law approved by Gov. Pete Ricketts (R). Ricketts signed the measure last month to combine the Nebraska Department of...
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Newly Disclosed Meetings with Industry Create Ethics Questions for Interior Secretary
Apr 8, 2019 | Roll Call
By Jacob Holzman and Benjamin J. Hulac
Recently posted versions of acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s daily schedules contain at least 260 differences from his original schedules, with the newest records showing meetings previously described as “external” or “internal” were actually with representatives of fossil fuel, timber, mining and other industries, according to a review by CQ Roll Call.
Events left out of the original calendars but now disclosed or detailed further include a keynote address at the Trump International Hotel in Washington for the industry group Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, encounters with executives at Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell, and a meeting with the chairman of a conservative group Bernhardt previously represented in litigation that environmentalists believe was geared toward weakening the Endangered Species Act.
Lawmakers are interested in his calendars because of his previous career as an energy lobbyist, which required him to sign an ethics agreement when he joined the Interior Department in August 2017 that prohibits him from “personally and substantially” participating in “any particular matter” involving groups he used to represent.
Bernhardt’s original schedules only vaguely described with whom he met. Interior quietly posted the new documents on April 2, two days before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved his nomination to become the secretary in a non-acting capacity. The full Senate could vote on his nomination as soon as this week.
The previously unreported details of the meetings raise fresh questions about how he’s spent his time as a government official and how he’s adhered to federal record-keeping laws.
The new records, which Interior calls “daily cards,” are summaries of Bernhardt’s calendar the department say served as reminders for his “upcoming events."
In a statement, Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said Bernhardt is “committed to securing written advice before taking any action involving former lobbying clients.”
“[He] actively seeks and consults with the department’s designated ethics officials for advice on particular matters involving former clients, 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,” Vander Voort said April 5.
More than 100 of the previously undetailed interactions involved meetings on policy items, including the federally protected American burying beetle and sage grouse, implementation of public records law, litigation around national monuments and numerous specific environmental impact statements.
Industry meetings
The daily card for Feb. 27, 2018, shows Bernhardt had a 10:30 a.m. meeting with Jean Sagouspe, chairman of the Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy and Reliability, or CESAR, which is supported by conservative and libertarian groups who oppose many federal environmental regulations.
Bernhardt was a director at CESAR, and represented the group in litigation against the Fish and Wildlife Service to enforce protections of the American eel. Environmentalists have said the case was a legal tactic to make the Endangered Species Act unworkable and force lawmakers to rewrite it.
Visitor logs show that Sagouspe arrived at Interior at roughly 8:30 a.m. that day. The meeting is not on Bernhardt’s public calendar.
Another card for May 23, 2018, shows Bernhardt scheduled to meet with Cimarex Energy, a Denver-based natural gas company and member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, another former client.
And on May 30 he was scheduled to meet with Rick Tallant, vice president of product for Shell Oil, a member of the National Ocean Industries Association, also a former client.
The ethics agreement lists CESAR, IPAA and NOIA as the organizations with whom he is not supposed to consult for at least a year after joining the department.
Bernhardt did not meet with Sagouspe during that time and day, but was instead in the building to meet with Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman, according to Vander Voort.
She also said the recusals from IPAA and NOIA did not apply to meetings with Cimarex or Shell Oil because “while he is recused from participating in particular matters involving specific parties” in each association, “the recusal does not automatically extend to all members.”
Lawmaker contacts
The new records also show previously undisclosed contacts between Bernhardt and Republican lawmakers, including Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Senate Environment and Public Works Chair John Barrasso of Wyoming, and the House Natural Resources Committee’s then-Chair Rob Bishop of Utah, who is now the ranking member.
Before they were publicly released, the cards were given to the House Natural Resources Committee as part of its investigation into how Bernhardt has documented his government time since joining Interior.
On Feb. 28 Bernhardt told House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona that he kept no other calendar than what was provided online previously.
But on March 25 the department provided Grijalva with roughly 7,000 documents described as his calendars and schedules, including hundreds of pages of what they described as his daily card.
“We’re not satisfied with the quality of what we received and the content of what we received,” Grijalva said April 3.
The committees are investigating how the department maintained these records, following a tip from the Center for Western Priorities, a left-leaning public lands advocacy group. The groups said an Interior employee told them Bernhardt’s schedule may have been kept on a Google document that was overwritten at the end of each day.
The center then passed the information to the House Oversight and Reform and Natural Resources committees.
The deletion of daily calendars could violate federal record-keeping laws, though Interior has denied the practice took place.
“No, he did not keep his personal schedule within a Google document,” Vander Voort said.
Correction 10:59 a.m. | This story was corrected to reflect that an Interior Department spokeswoman said that Bernhardt did not meet with the chairman of the Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy and Reliability on Feb. 27, 2018.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/bernhardt-schedules-undisclosed-contacts-industry
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Apr 8, 2019 | National Law Review
By Lynn L. Bergeson and Margaret R. Graham
On March 11, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Justification of Appropriation Estimates for the Committee on Appropriations. EPA’s budget request reduces the overall budget by $2.76 billion (31 percent), to $6.068 billion, but requests $66.418 million to support its Chemical Risk Review and Reduction (CRRR) program, an increase of $5.313 million.
EPA zeros out the other programs under Toxics Risk Review and Prevention, however, including the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP), the Pollution Prevention (P2) program, and the Lead Risk Reduction Program. EPA states that it will “absorb the remaining functions [of the EDSP] within the Pesticides Program using the currently available tiered testing battery,” “continue to meet core statutory requirements under the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 in other programs,” and that “lead paint certifications will continue under the [CRRR] Program.”
In its budget, EPA states that “the resources requested by EPA will support continued implementation of the amendments to [the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)], with emphasis on the critical mandates and timelines applicable to pre-market review of new chemicals, chemical risk evaluation and management, review and determinations on incoming [confidential business information (CBI)] claims, and other statutory priorities.” EPA anticipates an increased workload to support these efforts in FY 2020as the Agency reaches statutory deadlines to conclude the first ten risk evaluations for existing chemicals, and initiate risk management regulatory actions as necessary. As part of this work load, EPA lists its primary TSCA implementation activities under Sections 4, 5, 6, 14; its other TSCA mandates and activities under Section 8; and the information technology systems being developed in support of TSCA implementation, all of which are extensive.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/epa-releases-budget-justification-increases-budget-chemical-risk-review-and
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Watchdog Finds Inaccuracies in EPA Toxics Data
Apr 8, 2019 | E&E - Greenwire
By Courtney Columbus
As part of an ongoing audit, EPA's inspector general has found discrepancies in some of the agency's data on industrial chemical releases.
Because of issues with the Toxics Release Inventory data, "the public is not receiving complete and timely information about environmental conditions affecting human health," said an alert from the IG's office.
The missive is dated today and addressed to Alexandra Dunn, assistant administrator for chemical safety at the agency.
The report found "discrepancies between 1) the total pounds of chemicals released to the environment as reported in the publicly available TRI data for reporting years 2013-2017 and (2) the information that the EPA provided to us separately on the total pounds of chemicals released."
The document says findings "led to the EPA's discovery that total release calculations provided by the publicly available database do not properly include the [publicly owned treatment works] release amounts."
EPA released its 2017 Toxics Release Inventory report last month. Total releases went up by 13% compared with 2016. Off-site disposal of toxics into air and water increased, while on-site releases decreased (Greenwire, March 5).
The IG's office asked EPA to respond to its report within 15 days, including information on the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention's plans to correct the inaccuracies found and to "disclose the degree to which the discrepancies identified impact the public reporting of TRI releases."
An EPA spokesman downplayed the problems raised by the Office of Inspector General and defended the 2017 figures it released last month.
A statement said, "The Agency developed and deployed corrections within three business days of the concerns being relayed to us by OIG staff. Additionally, EPA has determined that the glitches did not impact the recently released 2017 National Analysis."
The IG's office said it is continuing to review the Toxics Release Inventory data.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/08/stories/1060149541
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Roundup, the Weedkiller That Changed Farming, Faces a Reckoning
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Jacob Bunge and Ruth Bender
For years, scientists at Monsanto Co. worked closely with outside researchers on studies that concluded its Roundup weedkiller was safe.
That collaboration is now one of the biggest liabilities for the world’s most widely used herbicide and its new owner, Bayer AG BAYRY -0.58% , which faces mounting lawsuits alleging a cancer link to Roundup.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys are putting Monsanto’s ties to the scientific community at the center of a series of high-stakes suits against Bayer. Since the German company acquired Monsanto last June, two juries in California have sided with plaintiffs who have lymphoma and blamed the herbicide for their disease. Bayer’s shares have fallen roughly 35% since the first verdict.
In both cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that Monsanto’s influence on outside studies of Roundup’s active ingredient tainted the safety research. The attorneys obtained certain Monsanto emails showing outside scientists asking the company’s scientists to review their manuscript drafts, and Monsanto scientists suggesting edits.
Gary Kitahata, a member of a jury that ordered Bayer to pay $289.2 million to a former California groundskeeper with non-Hodgkin lymphoma last August, said Monsanto’s interaction with outside researchers played an important role in jurors’ deliberations. He recalled being struck by emails allegedly dealing with “things like ghostwriting, influencing scientific studies that were done.” A judge later reduced the award, which Bayer is appealing, to $78.5 million.
Last month, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80.3 million to another man with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who had used Roundup, a verdict Bayer also plans to challenge. Another trial is under way in Oakland, involving two more of the 11,200 U.S. farmers, landscapers and others who have filed suit, threatening product-liability costs at Bayer for years to come.
Bayer said hundreds of studies and regulatory decisions across the globe show the active ingredient in Roundup, called glyphosate, is safe and isn’t carcinogenic. Regulators in the U.S. and abroad have continued to approve its use, in some cases after having gone back and taken another look at research criticized by plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“Plaintiff lawyers have cherry-picked isolated emails out of more than 20 million pages of documents produced during discovery to attempt to distort the scientific record and Monsanto’s role,” Bayer said. A spokesman said the documents at issue relate only to secondary reviews of past research, not to the original science. He added that the outside scientists have stood by their conclusions.
In the U.S., Roundup has become almost as fundamental to farming as tractors. American farmers use it or other glyphosate-based herbicides on the vast majority of their corn, soybean and cotton acres, making it a factor in American agriculture’s steadily rising productivity.
Monsanto developed the chemical decades ago and later introduced crops genetically engineered to survive being sprayed with it, driving what is now a more than $9 billion seed business for Bayer. Annual sales of glyphosate herbicides, including by competitors, total around $5 billion, according to Sanford C. Bernstein.
Despite their regulatory acceptance, the herbicides have faced growing resistance, especially since a 2015 decision by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization unit, classifying glyphosate as likely having the potential to cause cancer in humans. In January, a French court banned a Roundup product with the ingredient, even though it had a European Union seal of approval.
Costco Wholesale Corp. recently pulled Roundup herbicides from its stores, according to an executive of the retailer. Certain cities in California, Florida, Minnesota and elsewhere have forbidden glyphosate weedkillers on municipal property. Other farm-state lawmakers have defended the herbicides.
The attack on Monsanto’s role in research that deems Roundup safe is led by Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman PC, a law firm representing more than 1,400 plaintiffs. It has selectively released hundreds of company emails obtained through legal discovery and put many of them on its website.
“These documents provide evidence that Monsanto’s been actively engaged in manipulating the science regarding glyphosate’s carcinogenicity,” said Michael Baum, the firm’s managing partner.
One document cited by plaintiffs’ attorneys is a 2000 email that Monsanto’s Hugh Grant, later the company’s chief executive, sent following the publication of a paper upholding Roundup’s safety. “This is very good work, well done to the team,” he wrote to Monsanto scientists.
They weren’t the paper’s authors. Outside scientists were. An acknowledgements section cited Monsanto researchers as having provided scientific support. They had reviewed the text and data, according to internal Monsanto communications.
Mr. Grant, who retired after Bayer acquired Monsanto for $63 billion, declined to comment, Bayer said.
Bayer said collaboration with outside scientists is important for purposes such as testing safety and efficacy, and it provides properly disclosed compensation for outside scientists’ work, adding that this pay isn’t given to influence their scientific opinions.
Helmut Greim, a retired toxicology professor at the Technical University of Munich who has worked with Monsanto, said, “There is this perception that industry is evil and that whoever is involved with them is at least equally evil.”
“If the industry asks a scientist to help,” he added, “I see it as my duty to do so. But one shouldn’t let oneself be influenced.”
Some regulators say when a research paper discloses industry funding, they take into account the possibility of corporate influence on the findings. “We generally are a bit more suspicious,” said Bjorn Hansen, executive director of the European Chemicals Agency.
The chemicals agency and the European Food Safety Authority both re-examined glyphosate studies questioned by plaintiffs’ attorneys and let stand their approvals. The agencies said they look at the raw data in research, so that the kind of study the attorneys question—a review of past research—generally doesn’t carry much weight.
Health Canada also recently took a second look at studies on which it had based its approval of glyphosate herbicides, after critics raised concerns about Monsanto’s role in research. The Canadian agency assigned a separate group of its scientists to go over the studies. Their review didn’t change its conclusion.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently doing a periodic review of the glyphosate science, ahead of a decision expected soon on extending glyphosate’s longstanding U.S. approval. The EPA’s most recent review of glyphosate’s potential human risk, in late 2017, continued to find the chemical unlikely to cause cancer in humans.
A spokesman for the EPA said it has practices in place to “ensure that [company]-developed data represent sound science.”
Scientific research in industry and academia has become more entwined over the years, scientists say, as corporations have become a more important funding source. Since 2007, U.S. federal government spending on basic scientific research has plateaued at around $38 billion annually, according to data from the National Science Foundation. Corporate funding has roughly doubled in that time, to about $27 billion.
Companies or industry groups that finance research often include in contracts a right to review early versions of studies, said academics, who added that government-funded entities may attach a similar requirement.
For researchers with fewer options allowing them to be fully independent, “to some extent, they have to play by the industry’s rules,” said Sharon Batt, an adjunct bioethics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
A 1998 review of 70 articles on the safety of a hypertension medication found that authors who produced conclusions supporting its use were nearly twice as likely as neutral or critical authors to have financial relationships with manufacturers. The review, on drugs called calcium-channel antagonists, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A 2003 analysis of studies on industry-sponsored biomedical research found corporate-funded studies were more than 3½ times as likely to show results favorable to companies as were studies with no industry funding. The analysis appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 2002, researcher Susan Monheit was writing an article on glyphosate herbicides used against aquatic weeds and sent a draft to a Monsanto regulatory-affairs official for fact checking. The official forwarded it to Monsanto toxicologist Donna Farmer, according to emails that the Baum Hedlund law firm obtained in discovery and that The Wall Street Journal reviewed.
Ms. Farmer told the official the paper needed organizational work. “During one editing I had basically re-written the thing—then decided that was not a good thing to do so I tried to just correct the inaccuracies,” she wrote to the regulatory-affairs official, Martin Lemon.
In an interview, Ms. Monheit, who worked at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said Mr. Lemon passed along Monsanto’s suggestions by telephone and she followed some of them, such as deleting references to old information. “I certainly didn’t want to use data that was out of date,” she said, but “I was wary of having Monsanto influence the article.”
When her article was published in a weed-control newsletter called Noxious Times, concluding the chemical posed minimal risk to wildlife, a note described it as the product of a review of previously published research and consultations with pesticide chemists and eco-toxicologists. The note didn’t name Monsanto.
Bayer didn’t make the employees available for interviews.
In the late 2000s, Monsanto financed a study done partly by Pamela Mink, then an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University, reviewing past research on glyphosate’s safety. Shown a draft, Monsanto’s Ms. Farmer suggested some edits, mostly to the introduction, and circulated the draft to fellow company scientists, according to documents produced in the litigation and reviewed by the Journal.
One of the Monsanto scientists, Daniel Goldstein, added his own suggestions. “There are a couple places where I read the sentences several times, and I just can’t gather what the underlying message is,” he emailed Ms. Farmer. The two suggested deleting redundant phrases, asked for math to be double-checked and corrected names.
When the paper was published in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology in June 2012, some of the critiqued passages didn’t appear, while others were rephrased and expanded. Brian Stekloff, a lawyer representing Bayer, said in court last month that Ms. Farmer moved around words in the introduction and added context about Roundup products that outside scientists would not have had.
The final paper was significantly different from the draft but had the same conclusion, which was that the researchers had found no pattern showing glyphosate exposure caused cancer in humans.
Its authors were listed as Dr. Mink and three other researchers who, like her, were affiliated with science consultancy Exponent Inc. The paper said one of the authors had been a paid consultant to Monsanto. “Final decisions regarding the content of the manuscript were made solely by the four authors,” it said.
Dr. Mink didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Greim, the retired Munich toxicology professor, said Monsanto approached him in 2013 about helping it publish some unpublished internal research it earlier submitted to regulatory bodies.
He said Monsanto officials sent him a draft of a report. “I told them, ‘That’s not how it’s done, you need a lot more information’” to support the conclusions, Dr. Greim said. He said he went back and forth with company scientists for months, asking them to add details such as the number of animals and organs studied, and changing the presentation of the results, until he felt the paper was satisfactory.
Monsanto accepted all of his suggestions, Dr. Greim said, and “there were a lot of passages I ended up writing.” He said he was paid €3,000, or about $3,400, for his work.
When the paper was published in Critical Reviews in Toxicology in 2015—finding no link between the Roundup ingredient and cancer—Dr. Greim appeared as lead author. A “declaration of interest” section said that he had been paid by Monsanto and that his three co-authors had connections to the glyphosate business, including one who was employed by Monsanto.
In an internal Monsanto memo released by the Baum Hedlund law firm, a Monsanto scientist listed among his accomplishments “ghost wrote cancer review paper Greim et al. (2015).”
Dr. Greim, who has sat on various German and EU scientific advisory committees, said he didn’t care what was said internally because that wasn’t what happened.
Bayer attorney Mr. Stekloff, speaking generally, said in court last month that there were instances of “dumb emails” and “bad language” among the many company documents produced in the case, but “the overall record demonstrates that this was a company committed to testing and committed to science.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roundup-the-weedkiller-that-changed-farming-faces-a-reckoning-11554735900?mod=hp_lead_pos5
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Ewire: Trump Slated to Announce Pipeline Order
Apr 8, 2019 | Inside EPA
President Donald Trump on April 10 will sign new directives attempting to speed up oil and gas pipeline deployment, with many expecting the measures to curtail states' Clean Water Act (CWA) authority to block projects due to their effects on water quality -- though states have been concerned about such limitations.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Trump is planning to announce the executive orders at a training center near Houston run by the International Union of Operating Engineers.
The content of the directives is not entirely clear, but a senior administration official told the paper that they would streamline permitting and help companies “avoid unnecessary red tape.”
The White House has been mulling such an order for weeks now, amid growing Republican and industry concern over Democratic states using their CWA 401 power to block such projects.
CWA Section 401 generally gives states authority to review and impose conditions on federal actions that may adversely impact water quality standards. Industry officials and some GOP lawmakers have suggested amending the program that governs state approval of federally permitted energy projects, charging that states have abused the authority to block construction of pipelines, coal export terminals and other projects.
One prior report from Politico said Trump administration officials were assuring Republican-led states that any order would not harm state sovereignty.
Though it appears the Trump order will focus on pipelines, the CWA 401 issue has also been a factor in Washington state's rejection of a high-profile coal export terminal -- a move that could have huge stakes for whether coal produced in Wyoming's Powder River Basin can be shipped to Asian markets to offset flagging domestic demand.
But state governors, legislators and regulators have strongly resisted EPA's efforts to curtail states' CWA 401 authority. Last month, several state groups proposed a series of steps the agency could take to speed reviews will still ensuring states keep their statutorily mandated one-year period to conduct a review.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/ewire-trump-slated-announce-pipeline-order
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EPA Says It Won’t Second Guess State Audits of Oil Firms
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Amena H. Saiyid and Abby Smith
The EPA isn’t going to second guess state-led audits of new owners of oil and gas drilling sites if the audits are on par with federal requirements, the agency told state regulators April 8.
The EPA recognizes that some states like Wyoming have well-developed self-disclosure and audit policies, Patrick Traylor, deputy assistant EPA administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, told a gathering of state officials at the Environmental Council of the States’ spring meeting in Arlington, Va.
Oil-producing states, particularly North Dakota, are concerned that the EPA’s recently released new owner self-auditing policy wouldn’t recognize similar state programs for oil and gas companies.
But the EPA has respected the state audit and self disclosure process for two decades, Traylor said. “And our view is why would we waste our resources on something that has been resolved through a state process?”
The self-audit policy, which the Environmental Protection Agency released March 29, will give oil and gas companies acquiring multiple drilling sites more time and flexibility to decide whether to identify and fix thousands of storage tanks that are leaking volatile organic compounds—such as benzene—because of poor vapor controls.
With oil and gas companies stepping up exploration in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, the self-auditing policy gives owners extra time to manage their newly acquired assets. The EPA said it would free up enforcement resources.
Companies Decide
Traylor said the EPA is leaving it up to the companies to join the federal or state program.
“It’s a company’s decision whether it does an audit or self disclosure with the state, EPA or both,” Traylor said.
Dave Glatt, environmental health section chief for the North Dakota Department of Health, told Traylor that oil and gas companies are concerned that they will “get nailed down the road” if the administration and its philosophy on compliance change.
“They’re very tentative about moving ahead,” Glatt told Traylor at the meeting.
Glatt said the EPA should work out some sort of memorandum of understanding with states saying that if EPA and state auditing systems are equally robust, each side will honor the auditing process of the other.
Traylor said the EPA has never brought civil enforcement against companies that voluntarily disclosed problems with leaking storage tanks to a state agency. But he said a state program must be as robust as the federal one to protect companies.
The EPA already has such an understanding in place with Wyoming, which has a program comparable to the EPA’s, Traylor said. “If we need MOUs to make that more clear, we would be open to doing that with states that actually have a vigorous audit program that would satisfy,” he added.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-says-it-wont-second-guess-state-audits-of-oil-firms
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Trump Heads to Houston Wednesday to Boost Oil and Gas Sector
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By James Osborne
President Donald Trump will travel to Houston Wednesday to announce executive orders aimed at speeding up pipeline and other energy projects and expanding oil and natural gas production, a senior White House official said.
The president is scheduled to appear at the International Union of Operating Engineers International Training and Education Center in Crosby, a union-run training facility spread over 265 acres. There he is expected to speak about how he plans to aid the United States' booming domestic oil and gas production and further shift away from foreign imports.
For now the White House won't release the exact details of the executive orders. But the senior official said they would streamline permitting and help energy companies to "avoid unnecessary red tape."
"American families and businesses in states with energy restrictions will be able to access affordable and reliable domestic energy resources," the official said.
Record oil and gas production, led by Texas, has played a large role in both domestic and foreign policy for the Trump administration. With U.S. crude oil production -- now at more than 12 million barrels a day -- surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia, it has provided the administration more leeway in targeting sanctions at oil producers such as Iran and Venezuela without fearing a spike in oil prices.
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking in Houston Friday, announced new sanctions against Venezuela, targeting ships carrying Venezuelan crude to Cuba, which is backing the socialist government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration is trying to oust Maduro, who has presided over an economic collapse that has left the country without adequate food, medicine and other necessities.
Domestically, shale drilling boom has provided a boost to the economy in generally lowering energy costs for consumer and businesses and moving the country ever closer to a once unimaginable goal of becoming a net energy exporter.
But even as natural gas prices have declined around much of the country, a shortage of pipeline capacity into New England has resulted in elevated prices there.
Part of the problem is New York state officials have held up pipeline projects passing through their state, arguing the pipelines could potentially pollute rivers and streams on their way from the gas-rich Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania into New England. But many in the energy sector have criticized the move as opening another front in the ongoing debate around climate change and America's reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Pipeline executives have urged Trump to assert federal authority over interstate pipelines and prevent states from blocking multi-billion dollar projects that are facing increasing uncertainty from investors.
In February, Dan Dinges, CEO of the Houston energy company Cabot Oil and Gas, criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for not doing more to get pipeline construction moving. Cabot is a partner in one delayed pipeline through New York
"The gamesmanship of the state of New York has never been more legally suspect," he wrote in a letter to FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee. "We urge you and your fellow Commissioners not to lose sight of the more substantial contributions to energy security and reliability in the region that can be achieved by decisive action on needed pipelines."
The president is set to arrive in Crosby about a week after a fire at a chemical plant killed one person and injured two others. KMCO, the company that owns the plant, has a history of environmental and safety violations.
Trump's visit comes a little more than 18 months ahead of the 2020 presidential election and follows a tumultuous period in Washington.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government wrapped up last month, with U.S. Attorney General William Barr reporting no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump.
Last week, the president backed off this threat to shut down the U.S. Mexico border if Mexico did not halt illegal immigration into the United States, saying instead he would place tariffs on vehicle imports from Mexico in one year's time if Mexico failed to act.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Trump-to-announce-energy-infrastructure-order-in-13748548.php?cmpid=ffcp
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Keystone Pipeline Permit Challenged as Unconstitutional
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Peter Hayes
The Trump administration violated the U.S. Constitution in issuing a new permit for TransCanada Corp.’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline, American Indian and environmental groups say.
The Indigenous Environmental Network and the North Coast Rivers Alliance filed their challenge to the pipeline in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana April 5.
The permit is illegal under the property clause of the Constitution because Congress, not President Trump, holds the “Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States,” the groups said.
The issuance of the permit also conflicts with Congressional power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce, the groups said.
The administration issued the new permit March 29, after a court ruling blocked a previous authorization by the State Department.
The pipeline would run 875 miles and transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Alberta Canada to existing pipeline facilities near Steele City, Nebraska. The pipeline would run through the states of Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.
Cause of Action: U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 3; U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8.
Relief: Declaratory and injunctive relief; attorneys’ fees and costs.
Response: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declined to comment on the filing.
Attorneys: Patten Peterman Bekkedahl & Green PLLC represents the Indigenous Environmental Network and North Coast Rivers Alliance.
The case is Indigenous Environmental Network v. Trump, D. Mont., No. 19-cv-00028, 4/5/19.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/keystone-pipeline-permit-challenged-as-unconstitutional
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Frackers, Chasing Fast Oil Output, Are on a Treadmill
Apr 8, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Rebecca Elliott
Shale companies from Texas to North Dakota have been managing their wells to maximize short-term oil production. That has long-term consequences for the future of the American energy boom.
By front-loading the wells to boost early oil output, many companies have been able to accelerate growth. But these newer wells peter out more quickly, so companies have to drill new ones sooner to sustain their production.
In effect, frackers have jumped on a treadmill and ratcheted up the speed, becoming ever more dependent on new capital to keep oil production humming, even as Wall Street is becoming more skeptical of funding the industry.
The emphasis on maximizing early oil output, largely by small and midsize shale drillers, contrasts sharply with how big oil companies such as Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. are seeking to develop some of the same areas.
“You don’t try to grow production fast,” Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said in a recent interview. “You really look at the entire life cycle of the asset.”
Pump Up
Wells are producing oil much faster than just a few years ago—and that means they taper off faster and generate huge amounts of natural gas. That has led to depressed gas prices in West Texas and record volumes of natural gas burned.
Though most shale companies have yet to consistently generate more cash than they spend, their rapid expansion has turned the U.S. into the world’s largest oil producer. That growth has begun to slow, however. U.S. production fell slightly to 11.87 million barrels a day in January, from 11.96 million barrels a day in December, after rising steadily for much of last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Chevron announced plans last month to more than double its production to 900,000 barrels of oil and gas a day in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico over the next five years. Exxon said it expects its output in the oil field to reach one million barrels of oil and gas daily as soon as 2024. But the companies say they are doing so patiently, with an eye toward extracting more oil over the life of the wells.
Neil Chapman, who oversees Exxon’s exploration and production business, told investors last month that Exxon is trying to be systematic about extracting the most it can from its acreage.
“There is a certain amount of energy in this reservoir, and when you drill them up, that energy starts to dissipate,” Mr. Chapman said.
Another side effect of front-loaded wells: They are unleashing enormous amounts of natural gas. That’s because gas escapes more easily than oil from underground reservoirs as pressure falls.
Gas production in the two largest U.S. oil fields, in Texas and North Dakota, grew 43% from January 2018 to the same period this year as oil output grew 35%, according to EIA data. There isn’t enough pipeline capacity to bring all of that fuel to market, so companies in West Texas effectively have had to pay people to take it away. Prices at the Waha trading hub fell to a record average low of negative $5.25 per million British thermal units for gas that flowed on Thursday, with some gas sold for as little as negative $9, according to S&P Global Platts.
Large quantities are also going up in smoke, as companies burn gas they cannot move or sell, a practice known as flaring. Operators in the Permian and North Dakota burned more than 1 billion cubic feet of gas daily in October, according to public data and Rystad Energy. The resulting greenhouse-gas emissions are equivalent to the daily exhaust from about 6.9 million cars, according to estimates from the World Bank and Environmental Protection Agency.
Many wells are producing more oil overall than those of a few years ago, thanks to improved techniques and technology. But in some cases, newer wells are producing more gas and less oil than wells drilled just a few years earlier, or than companies anticipated.
Because oil is more valuable than gas, the shift in the gas-oil ratio means that these wells are less profitable. Higher gas production paired with lower oil output also can be a sign of fatigue, symptomatic of lowered pressure in an overall subsurface pool or reservoir.
In the Williston Basin, which extends into North Dakota and Montana, newer wells drilled by EOG Resources Inc. are producing less oil and more gas than their predecessors, according to data from ShaleProfile, an industry analytics platform. The company’s wells there that began producing in 2013 generated an average of about 227,000 barrels of oil in their first year. At that point, they were producing on average 1,122 cubic feet of gas for every barrel of oil.
Wells in the same area that began producing four years later generated an average of roughly 134,000 barrels of oil in their first year, a 41% decline, data show. Meanwhile, the ratio of gas to oil produced climbed to an average of 2,027 cubic feet of gas for every barrel of oil.
EOG said it wasn’t unexpected for well results in an area to vary year-to-year. “These performance factors are predictable,” a spokeswoman said.
In the Permian Basin, Laredo Petroleum Inc. expects to wring an average of 15% less oil and 13% more gas than previously forecast from its wells over five years, the company told investors in February.
Laredo is adjusting by increasing the space between its future wells, though doing so means it will have fewer overall locations to drill. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment.
While exploration and production companies are modifying their approach, Julie Francis, an analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said they face an uphill climb because of the increasingly rapid decline of their shale wells, likening the situation to trying to refill a leaky cup.
“They will have to invest more in order to grow,” she said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/frackers-chasing-fast-oil-output-are-on-a-treadmill-11554721202?mod=hp_lead_pos6
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Shell to Plant Trees as It Offers Fuel Customers Carbon Credits
Apr 8, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Kelly Gilblom
Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to meet its climate change targets in part by planting trees to offset emissions from the fuels it sells.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major will invest $300 million over three years “in nature” to lower its net carbon footprint, a measure of how much carbon it emits per gigajoule of energy it produces and sells.
Investments will include reforestation and conservation projects from Australia to Spain. Shell will generate carbon offset credits through that work, which it will then provide to its diesel and gasoline customers in the Netherlands either at cheap rates or free of charge.
“A transformation of the global energy system is needed, from electricity generation to industry and transport,” said Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden. “Shell will play its part.”
The carbon credits will partially help Shell meet the goal of reducing its impact on climate change. The company has promised to plant more trees, invest in wetlands and other natural ecosystems, but environmental-advocacy groups such as Carbon Tracker have said they also want to see an absolute reduction in the sale of carbon-heavy products.
Short-Term Targets
Shell has led other oil majors in setting short-term emission reductions goals. Along with Total SA, it is the only company that has said it will take responsibility for its customers’ emissions. Shell plans to cut its net carbon footprint by 2 percent to 3 percent by 2021, compared with 2016 levels.
The carbon credits will be available for free starting April 17 to Shell service-station customers in the Netherlands who purchase its cleaner and more efficient gasoline or diesel, called V-Power. Customers who fill up with regular Shell fuel can buy the credits for 1 euro cent a liter. The program will be available to U.K. customers later this year.
One of Shell’s first nature investments will be planting 5 million trees alongside the Dutch state forestry over the next 12 years. Shell has also signed a deal with Land Life Company to create a 300-hectare reforestation project in Spain. It will also continue to buy carbon credits from existing projects.
Meanwhile, Shell will add 200 new rapid electric vehicle charge-points, which will be powered by renewable energy, at its filling stations in the Netherlands. It is installing 500 ultra-fast chargers across Europe in partnership with IONITY, a Munich-based venture between BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/shell-to-plant-trees-as-it-offers-fuel-customers-carbon-credits
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Drilling Down: Millennial-Run Oil Company Focuses on Permian Basin
Apr 8, 2019 | Houston Chronicle
By Sergio Chapa
They’re under 40 and they’re drilling for oil in the Permian Basin of West Texas.
Millennial-run oil company Double Eagle Energy Holdings III has received three drilling permits from the Railroad Commission of Texas for projects in Midland County. Two horizontal wells are planned for the company’s High Sky lease target the Spraberry field down to a total depth of 9,000 feet. On its nearby Billington lease, Double Eagle is taking a different approach to targeting the Spraberry, drilling a vertical well to a depth of 10,500 feet.
The Fort Worth company was co-founded by Cody Campbell and John Sellers in 2008. The Permian Basin is the latest shale play for the two 37-year-olds, who received $1 billion of backing from private equity firm Apollo Global Management in Feb. 2018. They had previously drilled in the Permian Basin under one of their previous companies and sold those assets to Parsley Energy.
Permian Basin
Fort Worth Point Energy Partners is preparing to drill its first oil wells. Over the past month, the company has received nine drilling permits for horizontal wells in Ward County, all targeting the Phantom field of the Wolfcamp geological layer at depths ranging from 11,021 to 12,116 feet.
Eagle Ford Shale
ConocoPhillips of Houston is preparing to drill four oil wells on its Morrill Ranch lease in McMullen County to target the Eagleville field of the Eagle Ford geological layer down to a total depth of 17,000 feet.
Haynesville Shale
Less than a week after receiving a water diversion permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Dallas oil company Aethon Energy is preparing to drill four horizontal wells on its Revolution 9 GU lease in Nacogdoches County. The wells target the Carthage field of the Haynesville geological layer at depths ranging from 13,200 to 14,000 feet.
Barnett Shale
Mexican oil company Petrobal continues to gain experience with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in Texas. The company is seeking permission to recomplete a horizontal well on its Anderson-Cooper Unit lease in Jack County. The project targets the Jack County Regular field to a depth of 6,000 feet.
Conventionals
Dallas natural gas pipeline Atmos Pipeline is taking yet another step forward to develop a storage facility in East Texas. The company received a pair of drilling permits to develop two saltwater disposal wells on a facility it owns northwest of Palestine. The injection wells target the Bethel field of the Woodbine geological formation down to a depth of 6,500 feet.
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Drilling-Down-Millennial-run-oil-company-focuses-13749370.php?cmpid=ffcp
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Apr 8, 2019 | Denver Post
By Judith Kohler
A jam-packed month of debate and hours of public testimony ended with the passage last week of legislation that will dramatically change how oil and gas is regulated in Colorado.
Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign Senate Bill 19-181, which received no Republican votes in the Democratic-controlled legislature. Supporters say the bill is needed to put public health, safety and the environment first when oil and gas development is considered. They say it’s needed to give cities and counties more say over drilling inside their borders.
Business organizations, some local elected officials and industry representatives warn the sweeping changes will undermine an industry that a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute said contributes about $31 billion to the Colorado economy and supports roughly 232,000 jobs.
The debate isn’t going to die down anytime soon. Ballot proposals have been filed to repeal SB 181 and could go to voters if enough signatures are collected. And the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment must now write rules to implement the law.
Far away from the capitol, those bracing for the changes include workers who drill and service the wells; people concerned about the potential health effects of nearby drilling; and mineral rights owners and business people dependent on revenue the industry produces.
Among the Coloradans watching and waiting are Ethan Lutz ; who works for Denver-based Liberty Oilfield Services; Kathryn Maciula, whose family left Erie to get away from drilling; Pam Evans, the general manager of an extended-stay hotel in Greeley; and Dave Devanney, head of a homeowners’ group in Battlement Mesa.
Ethan Lutz, a supervisor for Liberty, says sand is one of the most essential components used in hydraulic fracturing, and the sand must maintain a specific level of crush strength while in use. Liberty created a specialized box delivery system for the sand, which Lutz says virtually eliminates dust particles from being discharged into the surrounding air. Liberty Oilfield Services maintains and houses its hydraulic fracturing equipment at the company’s facility, pictured March 30, in Henderson.
Uncertainty and anxiety
Lutz takes pride in his work, his crew and his company, which provides hydraulic fracturing — fracking — and engineering services for oil and gas companies in fields from North Dakota to Texas. Walking through the Liberty Oilfield Services yard and maintenance facility in Henderson, Lutz talks about the changes to equipment and practices the company has made to reduce the noise, dust and other nuisances that huge trucks, pumps and traffic can generate.
“A typical pumping unit runs with about a 2,500-horsepower engine,” Lutz said of equipment that blends and injects water, sand and chemicals underground to fracture the shale and release oil and gas. “A 2,500-horsepower engine is pretty loud when it’s throttled up.”
But the big enclosure developed by Liberty to fit over the engines allows people standing right next to it to have normal conversations, Lutz said. He explains that the company has changed how the sand it uses is trucked and delivered to cut down on dust.
Lutz, who oversees one of the company’s eight Colorado-based crews, said he and other Liberty employees care about the neighborhoods and places they work. He said that when he testified against SB 181, the oil and gas bill, he told legislators, “I’m not Big Oil, I’m not a shareholder, a dividend earner. I’m just a Colorado local who cares about the environment, cares about my state, cares about my family.”
Certain parts of the bill, like stronger oversight of pipelines and well flow lines, aren’t the problem, Lutz said. He worries that other parts, like giving cities and counties the option of writing their own regulations, could stifle production.
“I told (lawmakers) that having to watch my guys struggle again, like we did in the last downturn would be hard. It’d be especially hard knowing that it was at the hands of politicians that I potentially helped elect, because I’m a Democrat,” Lutz said.
Drilling just wasn’t on the radar
Are the drilling rigs moving into neighborhoods or are the neighborhoods moving to the oil and gas patch? Both are happening. But there’s no question Weld County has long been a drilling hot spot. Erie, in both Weld and Boulder counties, has 240 active wells, according to the state oil and gas commission website.
However, the prospect of being surrounded by wells wasn’t on Kathryn Maciula’s mind when her family moved to Erie in May 2017.
“The location was good. My husband works in Louisville and we have a lot of friends in Boulder,” Maciula said. “The school district is good. The views (of the mountains) from our neighborhood were just gorgeous.”
But just a few months later, when drilling began on wells about a quarter mile from their house, Maciula said she and her husband realized their dream of sending their children — now 4 and 2 — to high school in Erie wasn’t going to come true.
Maciula, a pediatric speech pathologist, said she, her son and daughter started getting sick. The kids had some of the normal childhood illnesses — colds, flus — but couldn’t seem to shake them.
Maciula decided to have blood tests run on her and the children. The results of tests ordered by an area naturopathic doctor and shared by Maciula showed high levels of benzene in all three and a high level of ethylbenzene in her daughter.
Benzene, which can cause cancer, and ethyl benzene, are toxic volatile organic compounds associated with drilling that can be released through emissions. A 2018 study by the Colorado School of Public Health concluded that the air quality around oil and gas wells puts those who live close at an increased risk of developing cancer. State health officials have disputed the conclusions, saying they conflict with the state’s monitoring.
More study is definitely needed, Maciula said. Since moving to the Golden area, her daughter’s blood levels have returned to normal, she said. She decided to test only her daughter to try to save money.
“I don’t have definitive proof that this is where my children got benzene,” Maciula said during a visit last week to her old neighborhood. “But I think there needs to be studies done immediately because these children are growing up in this environment.”
Pam Evans said she doesn’t have to wait for the fallout from SB 181. It’s already happening.
Evans is the general and operations manager of the Greeley Homewood Suites, an extended-stay Hilton hotel. About 60 percent of the hotel’s clients work in oil and gas and associated businesses. Uncertainty about the future of the industry in Colorado has led one company to cancel its rooms, she said.
“They’ve been with me over two years,” Evans said. “Some of the companies they work for are putting things on hold until they find out what happens with this bill.”
Evans testified at the capitol against the legislation. She told lawmakers that 14 Greeley hotels employing 500 people owe half of their business to oil and gas employees, accounting for $5 million in revenue annually.
“I’m in the hospitality business, and if I treated people like I didn’t want them here, it would have an impact,” Evans said. “Essentially that’s what the state is saying to oil and gas companies — we don’t want you here.”Not in my backyard — or anybody’s
Dave Devanney said he doesn’t have a problem with the oil and gas industry.
“We need natural gas. We need crude oil. We need to not be dependent on other countries for our energy supplies,” Devanney said. “But we don’t need to develop those resources in residential communities.”
Devanney, who lives in Battlement Mesa, near Parachute in western Colorado, said he hopes passage of SB 181 will help communities that don’t want drilling in neighborhoods. Members of Battlement Concerned Citizens, which Devanney heads, have joined with the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance to sue the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over its approval of 24 wells in the community.
The wells, slightly farther than the mandatory 500 feet from homes, would be the second phase of a project by Ursa Resources that includes 31 other wells. In the past two years, Ursa drilled 52 wells in Battlement Mesa, Devanney said.
Before moving from the Denver area to the West Slope, Devanney said he didn’t know much about oil and gas but has received a crash course since. There were wells outside Battlement Mesa, but Devanney said, “We saw the activity around us getting closer and closer.”
“I’m a modified NIMBY — not in my backyard, not in your back yard. Not in anybody’s back yard.”
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/08/coloradans-oil-gas-bill-impact/
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Pennsylvania's Energy Future Pivots on What Harrisburg Does with All This Gas, Deliberators Decide
Apr 8, 2019 | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
By Anya Litvak
In summer 2017, Pennsylvania convened a group of 35 people to envision the state’s energy future. Leading the exercise was a team from Royal Dutch Shell, the company behind the sprawling petrochemical campus rising in Beaver County.
The group’s assignment was grand: to imagine “how might Pennsylvania’s energy system evolve in 25 years, and what might it mean for Pennsylvanians?”
Will there be nuclear plants? Will cities horde the profits from energy resources? What does the decline of coal have to do with the opioid epidemic?
It was fair to wonder if a group so diverse that the phrase “climate change” was ruled too much of a “trigger” in their early sessions could reach any sort of consensus.
And there was another question that the group knew would require a public justification: Why was Shell shepherding these discussions?
For Katrina Kelly-Pitou, a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, it was among the most “contentious document(s) I’ve ever been involved in.”
The participants — even some inclined to be wary of the involvement of a major energy company like Shell — say the process turned out to be enlightening and unbiased.
The Pennsylvania report is now ready for prime time. According to Team PA, a Harrisburg-based public-private nonprofit that promotes workforce and economic development and that led the effort, the intent is to take it on the road and launch discussions among groups across the state.
Looking at the whole system
Shell’s Scenarios team, based in London, has been doing these kinds of exercises since the early 1970s. The goal isn’t to forecast the future — at least not a single future — but to identify forces that could swing outcomes.
This particular effort “forced us to look at the entire energy system,” said Denise Brinley, executive director of a newly-created Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Energy.
It was a way to organize disparate variables like an aging workforce, shale gas, automation, the state’s public pension crisis and severe flooding into a framework that shows how pulling the lever on one condition impacts the others, Ms. Brinley said.
This is the first time that Shell has facilitated this kind of effort for a U.S. state.
Shell was “pleased” to do so, free of charge, said spokesman Ray Fisher, “as a core extension of Shell’s efforts to begin productive dialogues on the long-term energy transition at a state level.”
The transition, he clarified, would be to low-carbon energy.
Two possible futures
After more than a year of meetings, Shell’s experts — many from the London School of Economics — produced a report that imagines two scenarios. Both begin with gridlock in Harrisburg and pivot on what the state decides to do with its natural gas resources.
If shale gas appears to play an outsized role, it’s because Pennsylvania has a ton of it and that is pushing the state into a position of global importance as international players — like Shell — clamor to take advantage of it.
In the first scenario, legislators work together and come up with a policy that encourages using shale gas to expand industry and fund innovation, bring in more manufacturing, and launch “the fourth Industrial Revolution.”
Employment and GDP grow. Pennsylvania becomes a global powerhouse. With tax revenue from a healthy economy, the state invests in carbon capture and low-carbon energy to drive down emissions.
The second scenario takes Pennsylvania inward and its gas elsewhere. Partisanship in the Legislature leaves towns to fend for themselves. So they develop disconnected, artisan economies and distributed energy resources.
In this version, the shale gas mostly finds its way through pipelines to other markets. Then the pipelines get harder to build. Economic growth is stagnant. People learn to enjoy their “grounded, connected, and self-sufficient” lives.
The report says neither scenario is good or bad, although it’s hard to imagine a Pennsylvania state politician advocating for the second trajectory.
A new state Office of Energy
Pennsylvania consumes less than a quarter of the gas it produces, and the number is even lower for natural gas liquids that currently get shipped to chemical plants, mostly on the Gulf Coast.
For those inclined toward the first scenario, the role of Harrisburg in coming up with a cohesive stance on energy cannot be overstated.
Today, disparate departments dole out energy grants or help retrain displaced coal miners, advocate for energy microgrids, write policies to encourage combined heat and power projects, and guide development of new pipelines.
That’s where the new Office of Energy comes in.
It is housed in Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development — to create a new stand-alone state agency would require approval of the Legislature -— and is, thus far, an amorphous entity with six employees and no publicly disclosed mission statement.
Its formation was not announced and its sole public whimper was a change in Ms. Brinley’s LinkedIn profile. She was a senior energy adviser at DCED until a few weeks ago.
“We are really lifting this up from the ground,” she said in an interview.
‘A gift from Shell’
Christina Simeone, a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy in Philadelphia, knew that the optics of Shell helping Pennsylvanians think through their energy future might ruffle feathers.
Shell Chemical Appalachia is building a $6 billion facility on the Ohio River that will turn ethane from shale gas into plastic pellets — a project the state wooed with more than $1 billion in incentives.
“Given the cracker plant and given the gas industry, I think those are appropriate questions to ask,” Ms. Simeone said.
Appropriate but unfounded, she added.
A half-dozen members of the group interviewed for this story, including Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of energy at the Environmental Defense Council, said the Shell facilitators did not steer the group toward any particular policies.
There were discussions about economic equity between urban and rural areas, about Pennsylvania’s legacy of environmental stewardship and energy innovation, about what role immigration will play in the state’s future.
The group included representatives from utilities, coal plants, environmental groups, Habitat for Humanity, pipelines, labor, and state regulatory agencies.
Ms. Kelly-Pitou, the Pitt researcher whose last gig was writing energy scenarios at the World Energy Council in London, has been through this before. She said that when she worked on scenario projects in the European Union, the conversations started with a baseline agreement that climate change is established science and that human activities are a driving force.
In Pennsylvania, the group took a few sessions to get past all that, she said.
“In our second session, we weren’t allowed to use the word ‘climate change’ because it was a ‘trigger,’” Ms. Kelly-Pitou said.
It was suggested that ‘extreme weather variability’ would be a more neutral term. “Then people really started coming on board and saying, ‘Yeah, there is something funny happening,’” she said.
‘An asset no matter what’
By the end, the discussion turned to what would best offer incentives to transition to a low-carbon economy in Pennsylvania — a carbon tax or a carbon price, she said.
The major gas decision appears to be whether the state generally favors keeping the gas within its borders by encouraging industrial and petrochemical uses, or whether a hands-off approach results in most of the shale bounty being piped to other regions.
“It’s an asset no matter how you look at it,” said Ryan Unger, executive director of Team PA, the Harrisburg economic development organization.
What happens affects whether emissions decrease when dirtier coal plants are pushed out by cheaper and cleaner natural gas. And whether that same gas inches out zero-carbon nuclear plants, pushing emissions higher.
It’s not just a philosophical discussion. Even now, the Legislature is considering bills to support what sponsors say are 16,000 nuclear industry jobs by shifting millions of dollars from electricity ratepayers to save the state’s nuclear plants from early retirement.
But determining how to guide the use of the state’s shale gas resources also will affect what’s left of the farmland in Greene and Washington counties after the fracking equipment has come and gone.
“We don’t want what took place following the coal boom to take place during this,” Mr. Unger said, in a nod to the legacy of streams that run orange from acid mine drainage to this day.
The economic and jobs impact of keeping those molecules within the state, whether they power a paper mill or a chemical plant, is undeniable, said Gideon Gradman, CEO and managing director at Integrated Energy Advisors.
He said it was “a gift from Shell” that the company was willing to facilitate this kind of effort and establish the “banks of the river” of what’s possible in Pennsylvania.
“Frankly, the government in general can learn from processes like this,” he said.
https://www.post-gazette.com/business/powersource/2019/04/08/energy-shale-gas-fracking-Brinley-Pennsylvania-Shell-nuclear-carbon-climate/stories/201904070088
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Houston Ship Channel Shut As Storm Hits Chemical Disaster Site
Apr 8, 2019 | Bloomberg (In Transport Topics)
By Joe Carroll
The Houston Ship Channel was shut April 7 as violent storms wracked the site of one of the worst Gulf Coast industrial disasters in 14 years.
All outbound vessels emerging from the northwest end of the waterway were halted, and inbound traffic was limited to ships and barges already en route to final destinations, Intercontinental Terminals Co. said in a statement.
Decontamination stations used by the U.S. Coast Guard to make sure ships don’t drag toxic residue into Galveston Bay or the Gulf of Mexico also were closed, according to the statement.
The channel, Houston’s lifeline to the Gulf and to foreign markets, has been shut or under strict limitations since ITC’s complex erupted into flames three weeks ago and spewed dangerous oil byproducts into the air and water.
ITC crews were in the process of draining tanks holding xylene and naphtha — highly volatile gasoline ingredients — when severe thunderstorms rolled through Houston’s eastern suburbs April 7, spawning a tornado warning. A company spokesman said he didn’t know if the layers of foam used to secure the chemicals in damaged tanks had been disrupted.
The disaster site will be inspected April 8, according to the statement. As of early April 6, there had been 39 cases of wildlife deaths attributed to the incident, including red-eared slider turtles, opossums and various types of birds and fish, ITC said.
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/houston-ship-channel-shut-storm-hits-chemical-disaster-site
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Chemical Plant Fires Renew Safety Debate in Oil-Friendly Texas
Apr 7, 2019 | Insurance Journal
By Paul J. Weber
Two major chemical plant fires near Houston just 17 days apart closed schools, leaked toxic chemicals into coastal waters and killed a worker, but there’s a good chance they won’t lead to big industry crackdowns in oil-friendly Texas.
Federal investigators have yet to announce what caused either fire — the first in March that triggered shelter-in-place warnings amid elevated levels of benzene in the air and a second that left one worker dead and two others critically injured.
The blazes sent plumes of ominous black smoke billowing into the sky and drew widespread attention, but there are already signs that any new safeguards will be slow in coming, if they come at all. The fires haven’t slowed the progress of industry-backed bills that would, in the view of environmental groups, give oil producers paths to easier permitting and weaker enforcement. There were also proposals to siphon money from clean-air programs just days after the first fire triggered an air quality warning.
Meanwhile, long-shot proposals by Democrats to slap plants with tougher fines appear all but dead this year, while another that would set new rules for above-ground storage tanks has also languished.
Local officials say tougher state penalties would be a good start to deterring more accidents.
“I would hope that if one thing we take away from this is that we need to look at the enforcement scheme and process the state uses to make sure they mean something,” said Rock Owens, the managing environmental attorney for Harris County, who testified Thursday during the first legislative hearing about the fires.
New lawsuits his office filed against Intercontinental Terminals Co. and KMCO — where the fires occurred — amount to the third time each operator has been sued by Harris County in the past decade. Some resulted in penalties of $25,000 per day and per violation, the maximum amount under state limits that were last raised in 2011.
“It just hasn’t been enough to get people to stop doing what they need to stop doing,” Owens said.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board and other agencies are investigating the fires. The first produced a plume of smoke that could be seen for miles and burned for days. Schools closed over air quality warnings and petrochemicals from the tanks seeped into nearby bayous and the Houston Ship Channel after a dike adjacent to the facility failed.
The second fire happened after a tank at a KMCO chemical plant in Crosby that was holding a flammable chemical caught fire and burned for more than 5 hours before it was extinguished.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced on April 5 that the city will roll out an alert system that would notify residents of emergencies, including air quality warnings.
Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the plants over allegations that they violated the Texas Clean Air Act, a move welcomed by both Democrats and environmental groups. State environmental officials would get more money under a tentative budget plan.
But attempts to tighten industry regulations generally fail in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“I don’t know that I have concerns about the industry necessarily,” said Republican state Rep. Ed Thompson, the vice chairman of the House environmental regulation committee. “I think what we really need to get our arms around is what we’re doing as a state, in terms of inspection of these facilities and making sure that they’re operating in the proper way. Accidents do occur.”
After a fertilizer plant near Waco exploded in 2013 and killed 15 people, Texas strengthened some rules for storing ammonium nitrate and gave more authority to the state fire marshal. But some lawmakers viewed the changes as insufficient after some recommendations, such as requiring sprinkler systems, were excluded over concerns that they would be too burdensome on business.
“When it’s a major headline-grabbing incident, the state will usually take some sort of action but it’s usually pretty narrow in addressing the fundamental problems we’re seeing,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of the advocacy group Environment Texas. “My fear is that after this fades from the headlines, the state will go back to business as usual.”
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2019/04/07/523125.htm
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(ACC Mentioned) STB to Review Petition to Amend Rail Performance Reporting Rules
Apr 8, 2019 | Progressive Railroading
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has opened a rule-making proceeding in response to a petition from the American Chemistry Council to amend the board's railroad performance data reporting rules.
In a filing last week, the STB stated that by opening the proceeding, it is not ruling on the petition's merits but is seeking more information about several issues raised in it as well as in a reply from the Association of American Railroads (AAR).
In December 2018, the ACC filed the petition asking that the STB amend its railroad performance rules that require all Class Is and the Chicago Transportation Coordination Office, through its Class I members, to report certain service performance metrics on a weekly, semiannual and occasional basis.
The ACC asked the board to modify its rules to include chemical and plastics traffic as a distinct reporting category, as well as make other reporting changes. The ACC argued that shippers benefit from the board's existing rules and ACC members use the data to identify, monitor and respond to service issues. Access to performance data also helps ACC members to hold "collaborative discussions with carriers and allows shippers to suggest service adjustments," according to the STB filing.
On Jan. 28, the AAR filed a reply to the ACC's petition, arguing that additional commodity-specific reporting should not be adopted. Among other things, the AAR argued that amending the STB's performance reporting rules would impose ongoing costs on railroads, which would have to make programing changes to their systems in order to comply.
The STB is asking the ACC and AAR to provide additional information on the issue by May 6. Other interested stakeholders may file comments addressing the information requests by May 6, the STB filing stated. Replies will be due by May 20.
https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_regulation/news/STB-to-review-petition-to-amend-rail-performance-reporting-rules--57286
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The Energy 202: Trump Keeps Inventing New Details About the Green New Deal
Apr 8, 2019 | Washington Post
By Dino Grandoni
President Trump can’t stop trashing the Green New Deal.
Even though the Democratic resolution to rapidly reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions was defeated last month in the Senate, the president is still hoisting it as a punching bag when rallying his political base -- and inventing new details about it.
During a speech in Las Vegas in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump insisted that the U.S. economy must be strong for Israel to be secure -- and derided the Green New Deal as a “$100 trillion” boondoggle that proposes building “trains to Europe, Hawaii and Australia” and limiting people to having just “one car.”
“You know, I’m bringing so many car companies in,” Trump said. “I don’t think they’re going to be thrilled to hear that.”
The issue with those claims, which he has used before in speeches in Michigan and Maryland, is that the broad-stroke plan introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) does not mention anything about rolling out transoceanic trains or scaling back the number of cars in any one person’s driveway.
The plan did call on Congress to make a nonbinding pledge to reach net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. Many experts, including President Barack Obama’s energy secretary Ernest Moniz, have called such a rapid reduction in emissions impossible to achieve.
Yet Republicans have largely chosen to criticize the plan by embellishing what's actually in it.
However, unlike Trump's latest lines of attack on the Green New Deal's effects on transportation, which seem out of the blue, many of the other GOP jabs stemmed from documents related to the plan.
When, for example, Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah or Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee claimed beef would be outlawed under Ocasio-Cortez's plan, they could at least point to an erroneous fact sheet published, but later withdrawn, by the freshman lawmaker's office.
Ocasio-Cortez's fact sheet sought to explain a nuance of the Green New Deal's call for a net (rather than absolute) reduction in climate-warming emissions. “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” the fact sheet read.
The text of the resolution itself does not mention meat.
The "$100 trillion" figure is also a familiar line of attack. The figure likely originated from an analysis done by right-wing think tanks that implied that the high end of the total cost could be $93 trillion.
Yet the resolution, which also includes significant changes to the social safety net, didn't come with a price tag attached. That analysis made a number of assumptions that reached beyond the text of the resolution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/04/08/the-energy-202-trump-keeps-inventing-new-details-about-the-green-new-deal/5caa394b1b326b0f7f38f344/?utm_term=.6729e047781d
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Energy, Environmental Agencies to Merge
Apr 8, 2019 | AP (In E&E - Greenwire)
Two Nebraska state agencies that oversee environmental and energy issues are set to merge under a new law approved by Gov. Pete Ricketts (R).
Ricketts signed the measure last month to combine the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality and the Nebraska Energy Office.
The governor's office said Friday that Jim Macy will oversee the combined agency in place of his current role as head of the Department of Environmental Quality. Former Energy Office Director David Bracht stepped down last year.
The new agency will be renamed the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy.
Ricketts proposed the merger as a way to increase state government efficiency. State officials say the merger could save roughly $207,000 in annual personnel expenses. That money will be used instead for operating costs and state aid programs.
https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2019/04/08/stories/1060149341
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