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Chemical Management News

(ACC Blog) What you may have missed at SOT: How ‘Show and Tell’ Can Lead to a Greater Understanding of Chemical Assessment Results
Apr 23, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

Scientists are exploring new visual approaches to improve how chemical hazard values (and their inherent uncertainties) are determined and communicated to risk managers and the public so that we can all make more informed decisions about the safety of chemicals. http://blog.americanchemistry.com/2015/04/what-you-may-have-missed-at-sot-how-show-and-tell-can-lead-to-a-greater-understanding-of-chemical-assessment-results/
(ACC Mentioned) ACC Opposes Prop 65 'Super List'
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has urged California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to withdraw the proposed changes to its Proposition 65 warning regulations (CW 14 January 2015), claiming they would confuse consumers, increase costs and compliance burdens for business, and increase litigation.
States' Lobby Group Engages with Vitter-Udall Staff
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Dinesh Kumar

Advocates for the right of states to regulate toxic chemicals find positive elements in the bipartisan bills in the Senate and House to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) but say they do not go far enough to preserve that right.
Chemical Watch Survey Reveals Key Chemical Management Drivers
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The regulatory landscape for chemicals management is becoming increasingly complex, according to a survey conducted for the latest edition of our annual Global Service Providers Guide, which is published this week.
Poll Shows Divergent Views on TSCA Reform
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Leigh Stringer

The bipartisan bill put forward by Senators Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been supported by two thirds (65%) of those responding to a Chemical Watch poll.
TSCA Reform Legislation: Confidential Business Information
Apr 23, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund
By Richard Denison

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts looking at less talked-about, but critically important, elements of bipartisan legislative proposals to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Review Points to Possible Endocrine Effects from Cleaning Chemicals
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch
By Emma Davies

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene may have endocrine disrupting properties at exposure levels below reference concentrations issued by the US EPA, according to a review by NGO The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX).
Assembly Passes Toxic Children’s Product Bill (updated)
Apr 23, 2015 | Times Union
By Matthew Hamilton

As Albany County is sued over its plan to deal with “toxic toys,” state lawmakers have passed a bill that would crack down on certain chemicals in children’s products.
Change to Vermont Law on Children’s Products Rejected
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

A proposal in a Vermont Senate bill that would have made it easier for state regulators to issue rules to manage the sale and distribution of children’s products, containing chemicals of high concern, was struck down in a close vote on 9 April.
US Body Consults on Draft Brominated Flame Retardant Report
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) has announced that it will release its draft technical report on pentabromodiphenyl ether mixture, a brominated flame retardant, on 14 May.
Big Brands Back Bipartisan Cosmetics Bill
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

Law would strengthen FDA's authority to regulate cosmetics ingredients
US EPA Received 51 Pre-Manufacturing Notices in March
Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA received 51 pre-manufacturing notices (PMNs) for new chemicals in March. Several had their manufacturer or importer protected as confidential business information. The agency also received one application for test marketing exemption.

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

Cyber Threat-Sharing Bill Heads to Senate
Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - Floor Action
By Cory Bennett and Cristina Marcos

It’s on to the Senate for Congress’s major cybersecurity bill.
House Approves Cyber Info-Sharing Legislation -- With More to Come
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Energywire
By Blake Sobczak

The House yesterday approved a bill to smooth out cyberthreat information sharing between the government and private sector, responding to a spate of online attacks against U.S. companies.

Energy and Environment News

Exxon CEO: Oil Prices Won't Spike for Years
Apr 23, 2015 | CNN Money
By Nick Cunningham

There is mounting evidence that oil prices are poised to rebound from a historic bust.
No Hurry to Lift Oil Export Ban, Federal Data Chief Says
Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama

The head of the federal government’s data energy chief said the United States should be in no rush to lift the ban on exporting crude oil.
Crude Export Bill Gains Democratic Co-Sponsor
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Nick Juliano

Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar today became the first Democrat to add his name to legislation that would lift the ban on crude oil exports.
Wood Mackenzie's York Discusses Supply Impacts of a U.S. Policy Shift on Crude Oil Exports
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - TV

As volatility in the Middle East continues, what is the outlook for oil and gas markets?
New Rules, Cheap Energy Heighten Battle Between Coal and Gas
Apr 23, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal
By Amy Harder

Tough new environmental rules and cheap energy prices are heightening the battle between coal miners and natural-gas pumpers over which will dominate the U.S. power market.
EPA Denies Last Requests to Reconsider Air Toxics Standards
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka

U.S. EPA has decided to deny all remaining requests from stakeholders to reconsider parts of its new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants.
EPA Preps 'Pretty Slick' System for States' Clean Power Plan Filings
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Peterka

U.S. EPA is developing a system modeled after TurboTax for states to submit Clean Power Plan requirements, an agency official said yesterday.
Carbon Tax Could Replace Obama's Climate Rules, Democrat Says
Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Evan Lehmann

Rep. John Delaney told an audience at a conservative think tank yesterday that he's drafting a bill to tax carbon that could lead to the repeal of President Obama's signature policy of regulating CO2 emissions at power plants.
The Obama Administration Wants to Slash Emissions From Agriculture. Here’s Why That’s a Really Big Deal
Apr 23, 2015 | The Washington Post
By Chris Mooney

When we talk about why the planet is warming, we talk about fossil fuels — oil, gas, coal and their many variants.
163 Republicans Push for More Offshore Drilling
Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Timothy Cama

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) led 161 of their Republican colleagues in Congress Thursday pushing the Obama administration to open more of the outer continental shelf to offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
Obama: US Can Profit from Climate Change
Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Devin Henry

President Obama told National Geographic this week that the fight against climate change “represents one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.”

Transportation News - There are no clips to report at this time

Industry and Association News - There are no clips to report at this time.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Blog) What you may have missed at SOT: How ‘Show and Tell’ Can Lead to a Greater Understanding of Chemical Assessment Results

Apr 23, 2015 | American Chemistry Matters

Scientists are exploring new visual approaches to improve how chemical hazard values (and their inherent uncertainties) are determined and communicated to risk managers and the public so that we can all make more informed decisions about the safety of chemicals.
At the Society of Toxicology (SOT) Annual Meeting in San Diego last month, Drs. Nancy Beck and Lynn H. Pottenger chaired a workshop to help people better understand the confidence associated with hazard values that are derived in a chemical assessment, and to help users understand the limitations for using these values.
The workshop follows a November 2013 ACC Center for Advancing Risk Assessment Science and Policy (ARASP) multi-stakeholder gathering that developed and discussed best practices for presenting hazard characterization summaries and tables. Many of the SOT workshop presentations in San Diego were built on these earlier discussions.
Increasing transparency
To begin the session, Dr. Bette Meek set the stage by discussing why problem formulation and transparency are critical parts of sound chemicals and risk management. She also introduced attendees to the new WHO/IPCS harmonization project which in resulted in the 2014 Guidance on Evaluating and Expressing Uncertainty in Hazard Characterization. While the document shares the same title as the ARASP workshop, it takes a different and welcomed new, more technical, approach to expressing hazards regarding chemicals.
This approach allows one to understand what percentage of the population might be at risk during a lifetime, and also presents the confidence in the risk value. The approach requires those conducting the risk assessments to draw upon a wider range of existing information to inform this new probabilistic determination. This will allow risk assessors to do a better job communicating the range of possible implications of different risk management options, while making the health protection goals associated with different options more clear.
Improving data presentation
Addressing a different aspect, Dr. Roberta Grant, the second speaker in the workshop, presented methods that don’t necessarily require the risk analyst to change their approach but allows for more complete communication of any approach. The tools Dr. Grant emphasized present existing and available information in a more transparent manner. As shown in her slides, users of the assessment can understand the overarching confidence in the full hazard assessment by clearly expressing the confidence in each key decision made by the risk analyst.
Chris Kirman presented an approach which improves transparency and helps to inform the user on impact of key decisions and the prioritization of research gaps. The graphical tool simulates a sliding scale where one can compare decisions made to what the central estimates would be. As noted in his slides, this useful tool has already been used to help better understand decisions made in at least three recent chemical assessments.
Dr. Bill Farland showed a way of visually expressing hazard characterization information in the context of toxicological, biological monitoring, and exposure information. The graphics he presented allow information to be displayed in different levels of detail, for example offering detail on margins-of-exposure, and provide a general sense of the strength of the available data and confidence in the overall assessment. These graphic tools, like the ones discussed above, provide for useful comparisons with other derived values and exposure levels, both within and across assessments, so that risk assessors and managers can compare risks across substances.
Dr. Lynn Flowers provided a perspective on what EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) is doing to help people better understand the characterization of uncertainty in their hazard assessments. Her presentation included how the Agency is addressing comments from the National Academies as well as new approaches EPA is taking to improve tables and figures depicting hazard values they consider when conducting a review.
In the engaging panel discussion, many participants provided comments on the risk managers’ perspective and reminded us all of the necessity of keeping their needs in mind as tools are developed and tested.
ACC and the workshop participants are hopeful that aspects of these tools and approaches will be considered for purpose-specific applications in future assessments. This will help all stakeholders, including the public, better understand the decisions that are made and the uncertainties associated with them.
While ACC looks forward to the workshop EPA will be hosting on Communicating Uncertainty in early 2016, consideration and use of the tools presented at the SOT workshop will help to provide more case studies for robust discussion.

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(ACC Mentioned) ACC Opposes Prop 65 'Super List'

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has urged California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to withdraw the proposed changes to its Proposition 65 warning regulations (CW 14 January 2015), claiming they would confuse consumers, increase costs and compliance burdens for business, and increase litigation.
Proposition 65 requires the state to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. The list, which must be updated at least once a year, comprises more than 800 substances.
The ACC has also written separately to raise the same objections on behalf of a coalition of 24 organisations, representing various consumer and building and construction products.
It said it was encouraged by several changes made since the release of the pre-regulatory draft, such as eliminating requirements to include the pictograms included in the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labelling, and changing the safe harbour warning language from “will expose” to “can expose”.
But the trade body also has concerns. These focus on three key elements: the “List of 12” or “super list” of chemicals; the “no-dilution” provision that would prohibit manufacturers from providing supplemental information on their products’ safety; and the creation of a website to give consumers advice.
Describing the “List of 12” as “seriously flawed”, the ACC said the OEHHA has no statutory authority to create a secondary, regulatory “super list” for differentiated warning labels. The “cherry-picking” of chemicals to get consumers to pay attention, said the ACC, was arbitrary and not based on any scientific or risk data, or external peer review.
After reviewing the OEHHA’s references for selecting the 12 chemicals, the ACC said the list appeared to be incomplete, outdated, reflecting the wrong endpoints and chemicals, lacking exposure and risk information, and largely divorced from specific consumer products. It said an external peer review of the scientific basis for the regulation, including the “List of 12” criteria, must be undertaken.
The trade body also criticised the use of chemical categories, or groupings, arguing that it “obscures accurate information and completely impedes a consumer’s ability to conduct additional research or learn more about the chemical at issue”.
It cited the “striking” example of grouping phthalate esters into one “phthalates” category, saying that neither the studies nor reports available, relied upon by the OEHHA, warranted the target listing of phthalates. “Federal agencies”, it said, “have repeatedly acknowledged insufficient data to confirm phthalates – in general – have detrimental human effects.”
In addition, it objected to the proposed warning label – which would carry a symbol showing a triangle containing an exclamation mark – as fraught with problems; partly because it is already used in other contexts, which could add to consumers’ confusion.
Instead, it wants the OEHHA to conduct consumer focus group testing to determine the perception and understanding of the new labels. “If OEHHA chooses not to conduct this review, the symbol should be removed from the proposal as unsupported by evidence in the administrative record,” said the ACC.
Regarding the “no-dilution” provision, although the OEHHA’s current proposal allows businesses to offer supplemental information, this “may not contradict, dilute, or diminish the warning”, said the ACC. It wants the clause removed or “truthful, accurate supplemental information from the manufacturer or other regulated entity” to be permitted.
The OEHHA is also urged to reconsider its proposal for an agency-administered website. Describing the plan as counterproductive, duplicative and unnecessary, the ACC said excellent sources of information were already widely available from a range of academic, professional and industry organisations, as well as government and regulatory bodies, and that such a website could duplicate or conflict with information related to California’s Safer Consumer Products programme.

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States' Lobby Group Engages with Vitter-Udall Staff

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

By Dinesh Kumar

Advocates for the right of states to regulate toxic chemicals find positive elements in the bipartisan bills in the Senate and House to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) but say they do not go far enough to preserve that right.
Three TSCA reform measures have been introduced in Congress this year – the bipartisan Udall-Vitter bill (CW 10 March 2015), the Boxer-Markey (CW 13 March 2015 ) bill in the Senate and the discussion draft(CW 15 April 2015), introduced by John Shimkus (R-Illinois), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.
The Udall-Vitter bill has made a “lot of strides” in terms of states' rights, which “we are happy with”, said Melanie Condon, policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), an NGO representing the members and staff of state legislatures.
In particular, she said, it supports the provisions that would allow all state laws and regulations that took effect, before January this year, to stand. But it has yet to decide how it wants to proceed because the Boxer-Markey bill has no preemption provision, and it would be more amenable to that, as an organisation representing all state legislatures.
Because the Udall-Vitter bill has the best chance of passing, the NCSL is working with the staffs of the two sponsor senators to work out “some things of concern to us” in the preemption provisions, Ms Condon said. She declined to discuss the areas that NCSL is seeking to address with the senators' staff, saying they were still being discussed.
The NCSL has not “delved into” the House draft measure, said Ms Condon. There are certain provisions “we are interested in” but other aspects of the preemption clause have not “taken into account state legislatures' feelings” and Mr Shimkus's staff have not sought input from the NCSL, she added. “So we are basically focusing on the Senate right now.”
Both the Udall-Vitter bill and the House draft are “flawed on preemption from our perspective”, said Sarah Doll, national director of NGO Safer States. The House bill allows for state co-enforcement of federal laws, which the Senate measure does not.
But the House draft does not allow existing state laws to stand, she added. “Both the bills restrict states, albeit in different ways, but neither does truly preserve the role of the states in stepping up to protect their citizens in the absence of federal action.”

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Chemical Watch Survey Reveals Key Chemical Management Drivers

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The regulatory landscape for chemicals management is becoming increasingly complex, according to a survey conducted for the latest edition of our annual Global Service Providers Guide, which is published this week.
REACH is still identified as the main driver of demand for chemicals management and control services. But legislation in other countries, including the US, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, Canada and Brazil, also rate highly as market drivers with at least 10% of respondents.
In addition, regulation targeting chemical use in specific sectors is seen as increasingly important – especially for biocidal products, food contact materials, cosmetics, packaging and agrochemicals.
Controls relating to the implementation of the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of classification and labelling of chemicals also feature highly. The EU CLP Regulation, US HazCom 2012 Standard and other national GHS activities are seen as drivers by over a third of respondents.
As well as regulatory drivers, economic growth and customer pressure are identified areas of increasing importance for chemicals management.
Based on responses from nearly 1,300 people around the world, along with indepth interviews with regulatory experts and practitioners, the Guide provides information on the current state of play and outlook for the chemicals management market, with specialist sections on jobs and salaries, IT, and alternatives to animal testing, plus a listing of companies providing chemicals management services.

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Poll Shows Divergent Views on TSCA Reform

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

By Leigh Stringer

The bipartisan bill put forward by Senators Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been supported by two thirds (65%) of those responding to a Chemical Watch poll. A quarter prefer the Boxer-Markey bill, while 10% felt neither are better options for reform.
We asked our readers in the global, expert community specialising in chemicals risk management if they prefer the Udall-Vitter bill (CW 10 March 2015), or the counter bill put forward by Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Edward Markey (CW 13 March 2015).
Of the 70 respondents, 42% are from the chemical manufacturing industry, while 17% are downstream chemical users, 15% from NGOs, just under 10% are authorities or regulators and the remainder from other organisations. Almost 60 (85%) of those who participated in the poll are located in the US.

Of the participating chemical manufacturers, 86% prefer the Udall-Vitter bill, with 4% choosing Boxer-Markey and the remaining 10% selecting neither.
Many of those from chemical manufacturers who commented said that the Boxer-Markey bill’s clause to allow states to maintain rights to enforce restrictions on chemicals, would be “burdensome”. One said that regulations at the state level create a “patchwork that is highly complex, nearly impossible to comply with, and does not appear to offer any tangible benefits to safety”. Another said that a bill without preemption of state regulation would “just end up adding another layer of bureaucracy, not clarification”.
Taking a different view, one chemical manufacturer, who chose neither bill, said that there is “nothing wrong with the existing TSCA rules, which have managed chemicals quite well over the last 40 years”.
The respondent added that the existing rules should be improved, starting with amendments written in “simple, clear, easy to understand non-legal speak”. This would be cheaper “mainly for industry” to deal with and perhaps easier to administer by the authority, the comment said.
The picture is much the same for downstream chemical users, with 75% preferring the Udall-Vitter bill, but the number that preferred the counter legislation is higher at 15%. The remaining 10% opted for neither.
For NGOs, 60% prefer the Boxer-Markey bill, with 30% favouring Udall-Vitter and 10% opting for neither. One said that the US, in contrast to the EU, lags far behind contemporary hazardous chemicals management. “Any new legislation must contain the ‘no data-no market’ provisions of REACH and a hazard-based criteria for identifying hazardous substances (SVHCs), plus a mandatory substitution pending viable alternatives provision.” They said only the Boxer-Markey bill moves TSCA in this direction.
Another NGO, that prefers the Vitter-Udall bill, said it “fixes the major flaws in the current law and has the bipartisan support needed to be enacted into law, which is the only way we get better protections”.
In another comment, an NGO that selected neither bill, said it supports a compromise between the two, adding that the standard of protection is much better in the Boxer-Markey bill, while it prefers Udall-Vitter's one standard concept. However, the latter “needs to allow for state inclusion and enforcement”.
In the regulators and authorities category, more than 30% chose neither bill, while 50% prefer Boxer-Markey. The remaining participants picked the Udall-Vitter bill as the better option.
A toxicologist working for a state health agency, who chose the Boxer-Markey bill, did not support the preemption of state chemical regulations, a clause in the Udall-Vitter bill. “Not only do individual states often have different priorities than the US as a whole, but we are often out ahead of the regulators at the US EPA, because we don't have the intense scrutiny that leads to paralysis at the federal level,” said the respondent.
For those who identified themselves as ‘other’ organisations, the vote was not as one sided. Almost 58% prefer the Udall-Vitter bill, while the remaining 42% favour Boxer-Markey's.
Because of the strong response, the poll will be open for another week to allow others to participate. You can access it here. The cut off time for entries will be Friday 1 May at 5pm UK time.

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TSCA Reform Legislation: Confidential Business Information

Apr 23, 2015 | Environmental Defense Fund

By Richard Denison

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts looking at less talked-about, but critically important, elements of bipartisan legislative proposals to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This post deals with how EPA would address industry claims for protection of confidential business information (CBI) pertaining to chemicals, and disclosure of CBI to various parties. The discussion is divided into three parts, addressing: (1) CBI claims for chemical identity, (2) access to health and safety information and (3) duration of CBI claims.
CBI claims for chemical identity
Under current TSCA, companies can claim the identities of any of their chemicals to be CBI. As a result, the identities of about 17,000 chemicals (out of the 85,000) on the TSCA Inventory are hidden from public view, having been claimed by their makers to be CBI. EPA can challenge such CBI claims on a case-by-case basis, but it has no mandate to review them and rarely mounts challenges because of the resources required.
Why is knowing the identities of chemicals in use important? When a chemical’s identity is hidden, that means people – consumers, researchers, health professionals, etc. – cannot determine whether that chemical is present in products, the environment or even in our bodies, nor can they link it to other information about potential health effects or exposures.
The Lautenberg Act limits any presumption of protection from disclosure of chemical identities to the period before they enter the market; and any such claim for a chemical after market entry has to be substantiated and reviewed by EPA.
Importantly, EPA is also required to review and require substantiation of past chemical identity claims for all active chemicals now on the confidential portion of the TSCA Inventory. This review must be completed within five years of enactment. EPA must also review any CBI claim for the identity of any inactive chemical at the time it is moved to active status. Chemical identities not already on the confidential portion of the inventory or added to it per prescribed procedures cannot be claimed confidential in any context.
The House discussion draft makes no changes to current TSCA for chemical identity claims that were made before enactment. That means it would continue the status quo under which those claims are not required to be reviewed by EPA, nor subject to a requirement for companies to re-justify whether the chemical identities are still legitimate trade secrets, sometimes long after the chemicals first entered the market. Such claims made after enactment would be required to be justified by the claimant, but, as under current TSCA, no EPA review of such claims would be mandated.
Access to health and safety information
Under current TSCA, companies are free to claim virtually any information they submit to EPA is CBI. EPA cannot disclose information claimed CBI to the public, to state and local agencies, to health providers or even to first responders. Health and safety studies and their underlying data are generally not eligible for CBI protection under TSCA, but, until recently EPA routinely allowed those studies, or the identities of the studied chemicals, to be hidden from public view.
The Lautenberg Act retains current TSCA’s exclusion of health and safety studies and their underlying data from being claimed CBI. For claims going forward relating to other types of information (e.g., the uses of the chemical or the identity of the company making it), they can only be protected from disclosure if they are legitimate trade secrets, and generally must be substantiated at the time they are asserted. EPA is required to review a representative subset, including at least 25 percent, of all such claims.
For the first time, state and local governments as well as health professionals would have access to CBI, per agreements made with EPA that they keep the information confidential.
EPA would have authority, at any time, to review and require resubstantiation of any claim – whether asserted in the past or future – for chemicals EPA designates as high-priority, finds have sufficient information for a safety determination, or are inactive. EPA also could review and require resubstantiation of claims for information the disclosure of which would assist EPA in conducting safety assessments, making safety determinations, or developing risk management rules.
EPA is mandated to review a CBI claim and require resubstantiation if necessary to comply with a FOIA request; if EPA has reason to believe the claim is not valid; or for chemicals found not to meet the safety standard. CBI claims for a chemical that EPA bans or phases out would generally expire.
The House discussion draft requires CBI claims made after enactment to be justified by the claimant, but as in current law, no EPA review of such claims would be mandated. EPA has authority – but not a mandate – to provide State and local governments with access to CBI. EPA must provide health professionals (though not first responders) with access to CBI, per agreement that they keep the information confidential.
Duration of CBI claims
Under current TSCA, CBI claims are not subject to time limits and remain in place until and unless challenged by EPA. That means information subject to claims made many years or even decades earlier remains hidden from public view, even though the original basis for the claim may have long since changed.
Under the Lautenberg Act, except for claims for information deemed always eligible for protection (e.g., customer lists, detailed process information), CBI claims expire after 10 years unless resubstantiated. Claims made before enactment that EPA reviews (including the past chemical identity claims discussed above) would also be subject to the 10-year, renewable, limit. In both cases, EPA is required to review all requests for renewals of claims pertaining to chemical identity, and a representative subset (including at least 25%) of all other renewal requests.
The House discussion draft subjects all claims made after enactment to a 10-year time limit, which can be extended by filing a renewal request. EPA review of any such requests is not required. Past CBI claims would not be subject to any time limit and hence would remain in place indefinitely unless challenged by EPA.

Next up: Consideration of costs and other non-risk factors in risk management decisions.

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Review Points to Possible Endocrine Effects from Cleaning Chemicals

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

By Emma Davies

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene may have endocrine disrupting properties at exposure levels below reference concentrations issued by the US EPA, according to a review by NGO The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX).
The chemicals, commonly known as BTEX, are used as solvents in consumer and industrial products, and as intermediates for synthesising organic compounds. They are also used in fracking (CW 10 December 2014).
The substances have been found globally in human blood samples. Although most commonly released to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and from vehicle emissions, they are also present in indoor air from consumer cleaning products, says TEDX, resulting in sorption to various indoor surfaces, which contributes to persistent background levels after cleaning.
Studies have linked occupational BTEX exposure to endocrine disruption, says TDEX, and research also suggests that ambient concentrations of the chemicals can affect endocrine systems, especially during prenatal exposure.
“To our knowledge, neither BTEX as a mixture, nor the individual compounds, have been tested for regulatory purposes at ambient levels of exposure,” the NGO says.
“US EPA safe levels are supposedly set low enough to account for uncertainty in the data, but endocrine-based science is revealing that they are often not protective enough for the health of the general population,” says lead author Ashley Bolden.
The review authors suggest that in vitro and in vivo models should be used to help understand the possible effects that ambient BTEX exposure may have on human endocrine systems. The information could be used to “inform the creation of more accurate regulations,” says Ms Bolden. “The main sources of indoor emissions should be studied more aggressively so measures can be taken to reduce exposure.”
Next, the TEDX team plans to look at studies into a possible link between BTEX and asthma.
The review is published in Environmental Science and Technology.

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Assembly Passes Toxic Children’s Product Bill (updated)

Apr 23, 2015 | Times Union

By Matthew Hamilton

As Albany County is sued over its plan to deal with “toxic toys,” state lawmakers have passed a bill that would crack down on certain chemicals in children’s products.
The legislation cleared the Assembly on Wednesday as part of a lineup of Earth Day bills. For now, much of what it would do is force children’s product manufacturers to disclose the use of “priority chemicals” (benzene, lead, mercury, formaldehyde, arsenic, cobalt, to name a few) to the state. But come 2018, sales of children’s products containing priority chemicals would be banned.
“Currently, New York identifies or prohibits the use of dangerous chemicals on a chemical by chemical basis,” the bill’s memo states. “This approach is especially problematic for children’s products since children are often more vulnerable to smaller amounts of chemicals. Several other states, including Washington, California, and Maine have adopted more comprehensive chemical policies. This legislation is modeled after those slates and is intended to prevent the use of dangerous chemicals and ensure the use of safer chemical alternatives in children’s products.”
The bill is mirrored in the Senate by a proposal from Long Island Republican Phil Boyle. It is sitting in the Environmental Conservation Committee.
Combating “toxic toys” has become popular on the local government level of late. Albany County lawmakers passed a first-in-the-state ban on the sale of children’s products containing one of a list of harmful substances in December. Adopted last January, it would take effect in January 2016.
Other counties, including Suffolk and Westchester, followed suit by beginning to consider their own pieces of legislation.
But the toy and children’s product industries are trying to put the breaks on those efforts. The Safe to Play Coalition of industry groups filed suit against Albany County last week, claiming that the new legislation violates the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit seeks to have the law scrapped.
After the Assembly passed its bill Wednesday, the state Business Council, the National Federation of Independent Business and a number of others under the moniker New York Businesses United for Product Safety released a statement expressing disappointment that the legislation advanced.
“The Business Council strongly believes that independent, well-financed national and/or international regulatory bodies dedicated to the protection of human health, including a focus on sensitive populations, should review suspected health hazards when legitimate concerns are raised,” state Business Council President and CEO Heather Briccetti said. “Chemical regulation is better handled on a national level, rather than having different states with varying standards for chemical and product safety. This legislation will create a patchwork of arbitrary regulations that will further put New York manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage with those in other states and discourage new businesses from relocating to or expanding in New York.”
Also part of Wednesday’s Earth Day focus, the Assembly passed a bill that would ban the sale of cosmetic products containing plastic microbeads. That bill, which now awaits action in the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, is being pushed by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Update: A number of community groups praised passage of the Child Safe Products Act Wednesday. Among them was Clean and Healthy New York, a group advocating for passage of such legislation at the state and local levels.
“Assembly passage of the Child Safe Products Act was a nice Earth Day gift to all parents across New York State,” Clean and Healthy New York Executive Director Kathy Curtis said in a statement. “But more must be done. It’s still legal and common practice to add toxic chemicals to infant’s and children’s products. To make the dream of safe products for all children a reality, the Senate must pass this initiative and deliver it to the Governor.”
In his statement, Boyle urged additional senators to sign on to the bill as “as more legislators across the political spectrum see the importance of protecting our children against toxic chemicals.”

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Change to Vermont Law on Children’s Products Rejected

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

A proposal in a Vermont Senate bill that would have made it easier for state regulators to issue rules to manage the sale and distribution of children’s products, containing chemicals of high concern, was struck down in a close vote on 9 April.
The tie vote in the Senate (15-15) was resolved by State Governor Phil Scott.
The proposal took the form of an amendment, tucked into a health care bill (S.139), and would have changed Vermont’s Toxic-Free Families Act, which was signed into law, last year (CW 14 May 2014). The Act requires manufacturers of children's products to notify the government of any of the listed 66 chemicals of high concern in their products.
However, the amendment would have allowed the state health commissioner to issue regulations, without prior consent from the Chemicals of High Concern to Children Working Group, a body comprising industry and advocacy group representatives.
It would also have reduced the amount of scientific evidence needed to allow the commissioner to regulate certain chemicals.
The working group, which is yet to be appointed, will review proposed chemicals for listing as chemicals of high concern to children [at least two per year, beginning 1 July 2017]. It will also recommend to the health commissioner “whether rules should be adopted […] to regulate the sale or distribution” of concerned products.
Andy Hackman, of the Toy Industry Association (TIA), said the proposed amendment would have stripped down the CHCWG’s work, and that it is necessary to give some time to see how the current law can work.
Mr Hackman also said that regarding the proposed rule, submitted on 13 February, on information to be notified under the Act, the TIA wants more consistency with other state chemical notification schemes, such as Washington’s, for which the toy industry has already submitted data.
Sarah Doll, national director of NGO Safer States, said she was disappointed with the outcome of the vote, but it was just “one chapter in the book”, and that they were looking at strategies to make the law effective.
Democratic Senator Ginny Lyons, who introduced the bill leading to the Act, said the proposed amendment would have provided better protection of children, and that she will propose a new amending bill in the next legislature.
From 1 July 2016, and biennially thereafter, manufacturers of children’s products, or trade associations that represent them, must notify information to the Vermont Health Department. The details of the procedure and content of the notification are set out in the proposed rule.

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US Body Consults on Draft Brominated Flame Retardant Report

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) has announced that it will release its draft technical report on pentabromodiphenyl ether mixture, a brominated flame retardant, on 14 May.
The deadline for submitting comments is 11 June, and a peer review meeting, which is open to the public, will take place on 25 June.
Details are available in the Federal Register.

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Big Brands Back Bipartisan Cosmetics Bill

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

Law would strengthen FDA's authority to regulate cosmetics ingredients
A bipartisan bill in the US Senate would require the FDA to evaluate the safety of at least five ingredients per year in personal care products.
The Personal Care Product Safety Act was introduced this week by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
While the personal care product industry's revenue is expected to gross $60bn this year, federal regulations on these products have not been updated in 75 years, the lawmakers said.
The first set of chemicals for review include:lead acetate, used as a colour additive in hair dyes;methylene glycol/formaldehyde, used in hair treatments;propyl paraben, used as a preservative in products, including shampoo, conditioner and lotion;quaternium-15, used as a preservative in products, including shampoo, shaving cream, skin creams and cleansers; anddiazolidinyl urea, used as a preservative in products, including deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, bubble bath and lotion.
The review process, stipulated in the bill, would provide companies with clear guidance about whether certain ingredients should continue to be used and if so, at what concentration levels, and whether consumer warnings are needed.
The measure would also give the FDA the authority to recall certain products that harm consumers, and require labelling of articles that have inappropriate ingredients for children and those that should be professionally administered.
The bill has industry and NGO support, including from the Personal Care Products Council, the International Fragrance Association, Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Revlon, L'Oreal and Estee Lauder, plus the Environmental Working Group.
Manufactures would be required to register annually with the agency, with information on ingredients in their personal care products.
“From shampoo to lotion, the use of personal care products is widespread. However, there are very few protections in place to ensure their safety,” said Ms Feinstein. “Europe has a robust system, which includes consumer protections like product registration and ingredient reviews.”
She said there is broad support from consumer groups and companies alike for the Senate bill that will require the FDA to review chemicals used in the products and provide clear guidance on safety.

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US EPA Received 51 Pre-Manufacturing Notices in March

Apr 23, 2015 | Chemical Watch

The US EPA received 51 pre-manufacturing notices (PMNs) for new chemicals in March. Several had their manufacturer or importer protected as confidential business information. The agency also received one application for test marketing exemption.

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

Cyber Threat-Sharing Bill Heads to Senate

Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - Floor Action

By Cory Bennett and Cristina Marcos

It’s on to the Senate for Congress’s major cybersecurity bill.
The House on Thursday passed, by a 355-63 vote, the second of two complementary measures meant to increase the public-private sharing of hacking data in the wake of mammoth cyberattacks on Sony Entertainment, Anthem, Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase.
The National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act, backed by House Homeland Security Committee leaders, will give companies legal liability protections when sharing cyber threat data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"Right now, we are in a pre-9/11 moment in cyberspace. In the same way legal barriers and turf wars kept us from connecting the dots before 9/11, the lack of cyber threat information sharing makes us as vulnerable to an attack," said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
Lawmakers will now work to combine it with the House Intelligence Committee’s cyber info-sharing bill, which passed overwhelmingly on Wednesday, before sending one bill to the Senate. Together, the bills would shield companies sharing data with any civilian agency, like the Treasury or Commerce Departments.
"With carefully crafted liability protections, private entities would finally be able to share cyber threat indicators with their private sector counterparts without fear of liability," said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas).
The White House has already given a cautious thumbs up to the House’s efforts and appears positive about the Senate bill, putting the onus on the upper chamber to determine whether Congress enacts a cyber threat-sharing bill that has been nearly five years in the works.
The intent of the law is to enhance the flow of information about hackers’ tactics between the government and private sector. Both sides need more data on the threats they face, advocates say, so they can bolster the nation’s faltering network defenses.
Lawmakers, government officials and most industry groups have strongly backed this argument, lobbying hard to make cyber info-sharing a top 2015 legislative priority.
Privacy advocates and a contingent of Democratic lawmakers fear the bills would simply empower the National Security Agency (NSA), handing it more sensitive data for the agency’s surveillance efforts. Congress should move on a bill to curb the NSA’s authority before considering any cyber legislation, they maintain.
The Homeland Security bill was the more palatable of the two House bills to privacy advocates throughout the drafting process.
The DHS is seen as the agency most technically capable of stripping personal information from any data received before it is shared with the rest of the federal government. A cyber info-sharing hub at the DHS — with its established privacy oversight measures — is also considered the ideal locale under which to consolidate domestic cyber efforts.
Last year’s version of the Homeland bill even got the American Civil Liberties Union’s blessing, a rare occurrence for a cyber bill.
Privacy groups withheld their endorsements from this year’s iteration, in part because of the knowledge it would likely be combined with the Intelligence panel’s measure, decried as a surveillance bill.
Before final passage, the House adopted, by a vote of 405-8, an amendment from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) that would require the Government Accountability Office to report to Congress five years after the bill's enactment to review its impact on privacy and civil liberties.
"The public benefit of this amendment is that it will provide public assurance from a reliable and trustworthy source that their privacy and civil liberties are not being compromised," Jackson Lee said.
Cybersecurity has quietly faded as a focus in the Senate, amid dust ups over Patriot Act reauthorization, the Iranian nuclear negotiations, a human trafficking bill and fast-track trade legislation.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently proclaimed the Senate would soon take up its companion cyber legislation, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). But it’s no longer clear when the bill might reach the floor.
While CISA languishes, an expanding coalition of Democrats are banging the drum in opposition to the bill. At least four privacy-minded senators have expressed an intent to offer amendments on the floor that could hijack debate and further stall the bill.
Some believe the Senate may now try to deal with reupping the Patriot Act — which authorizes the NSA’s more contested surveillance programs — before addressing cyber.
McConnell this week fast-tracked a clean reauthorization of the law that would keep the NSA’s spying programs in place until 2020. The move sparked outcries from NSA critics who have vowed to kill the effort and move their own reform bill.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) — one of the four senators threatening to amend CISA on the floor — called McConnell’s move a “tone-deaf attempt to pave the way for five and a half more years of unchecked surveillance” and added that it “will not succeed.”

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House Approves Cyber Info-Sharing Legislation -- With More to Come

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Energywire

By Blake Sobczak

The House yesterday approved a bill to smooth out cyberthreat information sharing between the government and private sector, responding to a spate of online attacks against U.S. companies.
"The Protecting Cyber Networks Act" offers some legal protection to firms that share cyberthreat data with one another or with civilian federal agencies. It would also formally establish a "Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center" intended to centralize analysis for the troves of cyberthreat data collected in the U.S. intelligence community (EnergyWire, Feb. 11).
The bill's lead sponsors in the Select Committee on Intelligence -- Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) -- cast the measure as a way to push back against persistent hackers who have recently targeted Sony Pictures, critical energy companies and major health care providers.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), who led similar cyber legislation last year that failed to pass the Senate, called encouraging threat information sharing "the single most important thing" the government can do to help combat cyberattacks.
"It's only a matter of time before our critical infrastructure is targeted -- what would happen if someone were to take out our electrical grid, or 9-11 call centers, or air traffic control?" he said.
The White House, which had threatened to veto Ruppersberger's bill last year, supported yesterday's House measure in a statement of administrative policy -- albeit with some hesitation.
"Appropriate liability protections should incentivize good cybersecurity practices and should not grant immunity to a private company for failing to act on information it receives about the security of its networks," the statement said.
The Obama administration also expressed worry over part of the bill that would grant companies the right to use far-ranging "defensive measures" to protect private information systems.
Critics of the language have said it treads dangerously close to approving attempts to "hack back" against would-be attackers. The White House fears such counterstrikes could set off a cyber escalation when not backed by the U.S. military.
Despite such reservations, the "Protecting Cyber Networks Act" passed easily on a 307-116 vote and is set to be merged with another information-sharing bill expected to pass the House today.
The PCNA includes provisions to strip technical cyberthreat indicators of any personal information, but language in the bill has been criticized by privacy groups concerned over recent revelations of National Security Agency surveillance on U.S. citizens.
More than a dozen government and civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, signed a letter Tuesday urging Congress to reject the "Protecting Cyber Networks Act" as a door for further cyber espionage.
"Although less pernicious than its Senate counterpart, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act ("CISA"), the PCNA would undermine government transparency and potentially result in the bulk collection and mining of sensitive personal information by intelligence agencies that would have little to do with cybersecurity," the groups wrote.
Their position earned sympathy yesterday from Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who warned that the House Intelligence Committee bill offers a "blank check" for the U.S. government to potentially boost surveillance.
Several leading technologists from companies such as Mozilla, Amazon and Cisco Systems Inc. have also voiced skepticism over the new legislation, calling on Congress to drop both House bills and the Senate's CISA.
"We have devoted our careers to building security technologies, and to protecting networks, computers and critical infrastructure against a wide variety of even highly sophisticated attacks," said the signatories of an April 16 letter addressed to lawmakers backing the bills. "We do not need new legal authorities to share information that helps us protect our systems from future attacks."
But many U.S. businesses, including critical infrastructure operators, have supported efforts to shield companies from liability in the event they share potentially actionable cyberthreat information.
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jo Ann Emerson has come out in support of the PCNA and the measure set to come to a vote today, the "National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act of 2015."
"Robust, voluntary information sharing between and among members of the electric sector and government agencies will be absolutely vital to electric utilities, including America's electric cooperatives, in the event of a cyberattack," the former Missouri Republican congresswoman said.

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Energy and Environment News

Exxon CEO: Oil Prices Won't Spike for Years

Apr 23, 2015 | CNN Money

By Nick Cunningham

There is mounting evidence that oil prices are poised to rebound from a historic bust.
Rig counts hit new lows each week. For the week ending on April 17, Baker Hughes says the U.S. lost an additional 34 oil and gas rigs, bringing the total down to 954. Domestic crude oil production appears to have plateaued and the EIA expects a contraction in May.
Nearly every driller is dramatically scaling back spending, which should increasingly cut into new output. And oil consumption is finally picking up, as drivers far and wide take advantage of cheap fuel.
But what if the bust is not over yet? Despite the signs of a rebound, Exxon Mobil (XOM) CEO Rex Tillerson has a much more bearish take on oil prices. Speaking at the IHS CeraWeek conference in Houston, Tillerson predicted that oil prices would remain subdued for the next several years.
What's ahead: While the longer-term is harder to predict, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that oil prices may not rise much higher than where they are right now in the short-term. For one, crude oil inventories continue to build. Although the stock build has slowed in recent weeks, it is still dramatically higher than the five-year average. Until production slows to the point that consumers are drawing down inventories faster than they can be replaced, oil prices have little room to rise.
Another significant factor that could limit any further increases in oil prices is the enormous backlog of wells awaiting completion. Since most of the value of oil and gas coming out of shale occurs in the first few months of production, drillers are avoiding completing hundreds of wells because selling into the current low-price environment would earn them a lot less cash than if they wait until prices rise again.
As a result, there is a vast collection of shale wells that will be completed once oil prices increase (an estimated 900 in North Dakota alone), which could bring a flood of new production online. The effect on prices is debatable, but the CEO of ConocoPhillips (COP) thinks it could send oil prices down once again.
"If you get a price signal, you'll see more supply come on," ConocoPhillips Ryan Lance said at CeraWeek. "That certainly has the opportunity to exacerbate the problem depending on where demand is."
He went on to add, "If $80-$90 [per barrel] comes back, there's a good chance that $50-$60 comes back as well because of all the new oil that will come online from completed wells. Boom, bust, boom, bust."
The global factors: Moreover, the industry is seeing substantial declines in costs for drilling. When oil prices are high, costs to drill rise as demand for equipment, rigs, and other oil field services increases. But, just as high oil prices can be inflationary on costs, an oil bust has a corresponding deflationary effect on costs.
As companies like Halliburton (HAL), Schlumberger (SLB), Baker Hughes (BHI), Transocean (RIG), and others are finding out, service companies are being forced to slash their prices for drilling services amid collapsing demand for drilling. Upstream producers stand to benefit in the meantime. In other words, low oil prices allow for costs to decline, which allows more companies to stay business. As a result, oil prices tend to stay lower, longer.
Finally, there is the issue of OPEC. Saudi Arabia is now producing oil at the highest level in decades, in an effort to keep the heat on higher cost producers. Elevated production from OPEC probably won't change anytime soon. Worse yet for oil prices, is the potential for Iranian crude to come to global markets. If a nuclear deal can be finalized, Iran could step up production in 2016, adding more supplies to an already well-supplied marketplace.
Bottom line: Obviously, there is a ton of uncertainty. Oil markets are already starting to adjust with the pending production cutbacks from U.S. shale. That could lead to higher prices.
But facing headwinds, it may not be enough to raise prices any further, increasing the possibility of an extended down period for oil. For smaller companies, that could be devastating. But the majors view this is a normal a business cycle.

When asked what the energy industry would look like several years from now after a long stretch of lower prices, ExxonMobil's Tillerson said defiantly, "we will still be here."

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No Hurry to Lift Oil Export Ban, Federal Data Chief Says

Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Timothy Cama

The head of the federal government’s data energy chief said the United States should be in no rush to lift the ban on exporting crude oil.
Energy Information Administration head Adam Sieminski told Bloomberg Business that slowing domestic production of light, tight oil — which has been the main product at the center of the recent domestic oil boom — is giving oil refiners more time to adjust and process that kind of oil.
Refiners are better equipped to handle the heavy crude oil that had been imported prior to the recent domestic boom. Sieminski said that slowing production delays a possible “wall” at which refiners could not handle more light oil.
“If there was a wall that light tight oil production is going to hit in refining capacity ability to process — that’s one of the theories — the pace that production was approaching that wall, the speed, has slowed down,” Sieminski said Wednesday at CeraWeek, an oil and natural gas conference in Houston.
“From that standpoint, it probably means it might not be as critical for a policy maker to decide immediately to do something about that.”
Lawmakers, led Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) have been pushing to end the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude, arguing, among other reasons, that refiners cannot handle the light oil being produced domestically, and it should be exported.
Sieminski’s office cannot change any export policies itself, although lawmakers are likely to use its data in making such decisions.

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Crude Export Bill Gains Democratic Co-Sponsor

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Nick Juliano

Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar today became the first Democrat to add his name to legislation that would lift the ban on crude oil exports.
Cuellar, whose South Texas district includes part of the oil-rich Eagle Ford Shale formation, signed on to co-sponsor H.R. 702, introduced by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) earlier this year. The bipartisan imprimatur adds momentum to the push by oil producers and their allies in Congress to end the export ban, which was imposed in the wake of oil supply shocks in the 1970s.
U.S. oil producers say they should be able to sell their crude abroad to correct for the glut of oil that has followed the advances in hydraulic fracturing technology that spurred the shale drilling boom of the last few years. Much of the crude coming out of shale formations is of a lighter variety than can be easily absorbed by U.S. refineries, which are typically better equipped to process heavier imported crude. That forces U.S. producers to sell their oil at a discount compared to international markets, which they say reduces their incentive to expand their operations, sapping economic growth and forcing workers to be laid off.
"It's time for the crude oil ban to be lifted, allowing the U.S. to compete in the global marketplace and reap the benefits of doing so, including hundreds of thousands of jobs -- many of which will be in Texas," Cuellar said in a statement.
Refiners and labor unions warn that lifting the export ban could end up forcing some refineries to shut down, risking jobs in that sector of the industry. But some organizations have indicated a willingness to consider crude exports in the context of broader policy shifts. Options most often floated by refinery supporters include reforming the Jones Act, which requires U.S.-flagged ships be used to transport goods between domestic ports, thereby raising shipping costs, or the renewable fuel standard, which requires that increasing amounts of biofuels be blended into U.S. fuel supplies. However, both of those policies have their own bipartisan constituencies behind them, making reform a tricky proposition.
Cuellar in his statement said he was sympathetic to refiners' plight but did not specify any policy recommendations.
"While I work with my friends across the aisle like Congressman Barton to ensure that the current, outdated bans on oil exports are lifted, I will also fight to ensure America's refineries have equal access to American oil -- we cannot enact legislation that benefits only one portion of the energy sector while disadvantaging another to the benefit of foreign competitors," he said.
Barton's is the first bill introduced this year to end the export ban. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who was instrumental in elevating the issue last year, said earlier this week that she soon would be introducing a bill in the Senate to end the export ban.

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Wood Mackenzie's York Discusses Supply Impacts of a U.S. Policy Shift on Crude Oil Exports

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - TV

As volatility in the Middle East continues, what is the outlook for oil and gas markets? During today's OnPoint, Harold "Skip" York, vice president of integrated energy at Wood Mackenzie, explains why he believes oil market volatility has leveled out and talks about how a lift in the ban on crude oil exports could affect markets and supply. York also weighs in on Oklahoma's continuing challenges of addressing earthquakes resulting from oil and gas production.Transcript
Monica Trauzzi: Hello and welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. With me today is Skip York, vice president of integrated energy at Wood Mackenzie. Skip, it's nice to have you here.
Harold "Skip" York: It's great to be here.
Monica Trauzzi: So, Skip, let's talk oil to start. There's growing interest in Congress to work towards lifting the ban on crude oil exports. How could a U.S. policy shift on crude oil impact the supply outlook?
Harold "Skip" York: Well, we don't really think it would materially impact the supply outlook from a global perspective. Our analysis suggests that if you lift the crude oil export ban, you narrow that differential between the international price of crude, say with Brent, versus some U.S. crude like WTI. And that narrowing from where it is today, about $5 or $6, really probably brings maybe 300,000 to 400,000 barrels a day of extra U.S. crude to the market. When you're in a 95 million-barrel-a-day global market, 300,000 barrels is not going to really materially move prices around, but it would be of a benefit to the upstream producers who would be producing more than they would without the export ban.
Monica Trauzzi: So it's a significant policy impact, but overall would it have a big impact on the United States?
Harold "Skip" York: It probably has a large economic -- a fairly decent economic impact. The upstream part of the industry tends to be more labor-intense than other parts of the value chain, so as those exports increase and that production increase you'd be creating -- in addition to all the jobs we've created so far around the tight oil evolution, we'd be creating just even more of those jobs. And that would be measurable not just in the producing states, but in the other states around the country that supply materials and services to support those -- the activities inside the resource states.
Monica Trauzzi: So we hear many members of Congress talking about lifting the ban on crude oil exports, but is the policy debate at this point constructive, or are there many details that we don't actually know?
Harold "Skip" York: Well, I'll say I think it's both. I think it's constructive to have the debate. I mean, it's probably good for the nation to have -- let's have a debate about whether the policy we've put in place 40 years ago is still the appropriate policy in the 21st century. At this point -- but at the same time there are still a lot of details that need to be worked out. I mean, we still have to figure out where would you be allowed to export crude from? What countries would you be allowed to or would there be restrictions to some places? Would we restrict certain kinds of crude from being exported? So there's a lot of detail that needs to be worked through, but it's part of the process.
Monica Trauzzi: So we've seen so much volatility in the price of oil over the last several months. Are we at the point where things have leveled out?
Harold "Skip" York: We think we are. We felt that oil prices were going to bottom out sort of in the early part of the year, in January or February. So far that's the way things have tracked out. We think that the market has seen what it was looking for, which was when you had a dramatic decrease in prices that you would sort of see changes in activity, and we saw companies cut their capital budgets. We've seen a lot of the oil rigs in the U.S. coming out of service and being cold stacked, is the industry term. So once we -- now once the market sort of saw that producers were reacting to the lower price environment, then prices did sort of stable down -- stable out, and now we're starting to see a bit of an upward drift. It's not dramatic, but we are $10 a barrel higher than we were a few weeks ago.
Monica Trauzzi: So how does Saudi Arabia factor into all of this, and does the leveling out of prices have to do with the Saudi government's involvement in Yemen, for example, and some of the other issues that we're seeing in the Middle East?
Harold "Skip" York: I think the way that Saudi -- I think the Middle East will always be a factor in oil prices. I mean, one of my colleagues, Ann-Louise Hittle, once put it perfectly when she said that the advent of tight oil in the U.S. did not remove chaos from the rest of the world. There's still political tensions in the Middle East; Yemen's just the latest example of it. We think that that's probably put a little bit of upward pressure on the oil price, but if you look at it, probably the oil price has reacted less than it would have for a similar level of crisis or tension in the Middle East say five or six years ago. So it's a factor, but it doesn't appear to be as much of a factor as it has been historically.
Monica Trauzzi: And how do you account for that? Why is it not as much of a factor?
Harold "Skip" York: Not as much because if you think about tight oil, what tight oil in the U.S. has done is really done two things to the global oil market. One, it's diversified where we get our oil from geographically. So we are now producing a significant amount of oil from a part of the world where it had been in decline for 20 years. The other thing it does is it's a barrel of crude oil that comes from a more politically stable part of the world. The combination of those two both act as comfort to the oil market, and so there doesn't need to be as much of a risk premium priced in as probably the market would have done a few years ago.
Monica Trauzzi: Let's talk natural gas. The Oklahoma government this week formally accepted the conclusion that underground disposal of wastewater from oil and gas development is causing the earthquakes that that state is seeing. With so much of Oklahoma's economy tied to the oil and gas industry, do you think we'll actually see any real impact on the practices of that industry because of the government basically signing onto this idea?
Harold "Skip" York: I think you probably will see some adjustment. I think the question will be how much activity or how much adjustment will the producers make on their own versus how much is sort of imposed in a regulatory environment. I'll draw a similar example in North Dakota where we've seen reductions in methane emissions requirements and reduction in the vapor pressure that crude oil's allowed to be, and those are state-mandated regulations. And the industry was already moving in the direction of where the regulations were when the regulations were imposed. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar path that we see in Oklahoma, precisely because oil and gas has been such a long-term part of the state's culture and economy that I think you've got a whole community -- not just the upstream producers, but you've got a whole community that understands how the industry has to work and it has to operate in a safe and effective manner.
Monica Trauzzi: But does this acknowledgement by the government sort of tee up potential future battles between state governments and oil and gas associations around the country?
Harold "Skip" York: I think it certainly -- I would say it probably doesn't help, but I think if you think most producers would rather work with state and local governments because you're dealing with people who know the particulars of that specific location. So I think the industry would feel that the regulators in Oklahoma understand what the situation is in Oklahoma better than a regulator that's several thousand miles away, sort of -- and that's also part of the history of the industry, is that the industry historically has worked more at the state level than the federal level because every geology is unique and every state is going to have its own particulars that need to be addressed.
Monica Trauzzi: Just quickly on the renewable fuel standard, EPA has agreed to finalize its 2014 and 2015 RFS targets by November 30th. How significant is that step, and do you see it as a signal from the agency that they're looking to move quickly on the broader RFS issues?
Harold "Skip" York: I think it's very positive news, especially I think from the refiners' standpoint. You know, they went through a lot of uncertainty in 2014; they're now going to get that certainty later this year, not only for 2014 but 2015. And hopefully what that does is it now sets up an environment where there can be a more constructive conversation between industry and the government and sort of other stakeholders as to exactly what do we want to achieve through a renewable standard. What is achievable within that standard and how can we actually go about doing it? Hopefully we're now past a lot of the acrimony of the last 12 to 18 months and we can now move forward, both as an industry and as a government regulatory entity and push this forward and get to where the intent of where the legislation was to be.
Monica Trauzzi: All right, we'll end it there. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate your time.
Harold "Skip" York: OK, thank you very much.
Monica Trauzzi: And thanks for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.
[End of Audio]

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New Rules, Cheap Energy Heighten Battle Between Coal and Gas

Apr 23, 2015 | The Wall Street Journal

By Amy Harder

Tough new environmental rules and cheap energy prices are heightening the battle between coal miners and natural-gas pumpers over which will dominate the U.S. power market.
At the IHS CERAWeek energy conference here, there were heated words on both sides.
“Cleaner coal, there’s no such thing,” Eldar Saetre, chief executive of the Norwegian oil giant Statoil, told an audience of hundreds of people, most of them employed in the fossil-fuel industry. He added climate-conscious electric companies should burn natural gas instead.
“The only thing that gets tense is when somebody like the head of Statoil makes a comment like there is no such thing as clean coal,” said Gregory Boyce, chief executive of Peabody Energy, one of the biggest coal companies in the world. “In my view, that’s an irresponsible statement to make,” Mr. Boyce said in an interview.
The dispute over whether coal can be considered a clean fuel isn’t merely semantic. In 2007, coal powered almost half U.S. electricity production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last year, its share dropped to 39% and under climate-change regulations proposed by the Obama administration will fall to 30% by 2030.
Natural gas, which fueled 21% of U.S. electricity in 2007, rose to 26% last year and could account for close to 40% by 2030. A decade ago, natural gas was considered to be in short supply in the U.S. and therefore was relatively expensive. The advent of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has now unlocked a glut of cheap gas from American shale formations. The price of competing coal has also been battered, leading money-losing companies to close mines.
The two fuels are duking it out over more than price. Governments in Europe and the U.S. have been pushing utilities to slash the amount of pollution and greenhouse gases they emit.
Mr. Saetre said in an interview that putting a price on carbon, such as the carbon tax Norway has imposed, works well.
“Something will be left in the ground,” he said. “I would leave coal in the ground.”
Mr. Boyce, who is stepping down as Peabody CEO next month but will remain executive chairman, disagreed.
“For him to say there’s no such thing as clean coal, I would say there’s no such thing as clean gas,” Mr. Boyce said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has increasingly pushed to clean up pollution from power plants, and is ramping up its effort to fight greenhouse-gas emissions. Under the agency’s proposed carbon rules, any new coal plants must use technology called carbon capture and sequestration, meant to capture and store carbon gases produced by burning fuel instead of allowing it to flow into the atmosphere. That technology isn’t commercially available yet, most in the energy industry agree.
Natural gas emits about half the carbon of coal when burned for electricity. But, Peabody Energy’s Mr. Boyce said he believes eventually gas-fired plants will also have to adopt carbon-capture technology to meet climate-change goals.
Mr. Boyce’s speech at the conference Thursday will underscore coal is essential to ensure poor people have access to electricity, which he says isn’t acknowledged under President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.
“Where we think the conversation has gotten off track,” Mr. Boyce said, “is we talk about trying to address climate model estimates versus the reality of the human condition.”

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EPA Denies Last Requests to Reconsider Air Toxics Standards

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Amanda Peterka

U.S. EPA has decided to deny all remaining requests from stakeholders to reconsider parts of its new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants.
In a notice posted late Tuesday, the agency said it has determined that the issues raised by remaining petitions either did not meet the criteria for reconsideration or were moot. The MATS rule became effective April 16.
"After careful consideration, EPA has decided to deny all remaining requests -- a step that affirms the agency's approach in the final MATS rule and provides stakeholders with certainty moving forward," EPA said in the notice posted online.
The Obama administration issued the standards in December 2011, requiring existing power plants to demonstrate through performance testing that they are meeting certain emissions limits for mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.
EPA received 20 petitions to reconsider the MATS rule, as well as three petitions that asked the agency to take another look at new source performance standards for utilities that were issued at the same time.
The agency has taken final action on a few issues raised in the petitions, including adjusting the provisions pertaining to releases of emissions during periods of startup and shutdown (Greenwire, Nov. 14, 2014).
In the notice this week, EPA denied a total of nine remaining requests, including ones concerning the treatment of natural gas, the frequency of visible emissions testing, the use of affirmative defense by power plants and record-keeping requirements.
EPA noted that many of the stakeholders that filed petitions for reconsideration are among those industry groups that have challenged the rule in federal court. In April of last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the rule.
The rule's future, however, is still up in the air as the Supreme Court is currently weighing a challenge from 21 Republican-led states and industry groups. They argue that EPA should have taken into account the costs of compliance when deciding whether to issue regulations stemming hazardous air pollution from power plants.
Despite the legal uncertainty, EPA has moved ahead with rolling out the rule. April 16 marked the initial deadline for existing coal- and oil-fired power plants to comply with the standards (Greenwire, April 16).
At a meeting yesterday of EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee in Arlington, Va., EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe said that implementation of the rule was "going quite smoothly."
"We're confident that we have a strong legal basis" for the rule, she said.

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EPA Preps 'Pretty Slick' System for States' Clean Power Plan Filings

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire

By Amanda Peterka

U.S. EPA is developing a system modeled after TurboTax for states to submit Clean Power Plan requirements, an agency official said yesterday.
EPA envisions states being able to check whether they're working on individual or multi-state plans and to reach guidance documents and templates with the click of a button, according to Juan Santiago, associate director of the air quality policy division in EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.
Like TurboTax, the automated system will not let a state continue if it's missing an item.
It's "actually pretty slick," Santiago said in a presentation at a meeting yesterday of EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee in Arlington, Va.
The presentation came as EPA is working toward finalizing the Clean Power Plan, which would compel states to draft plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. At the meeting yesterday, EPA acting air chief Janet McCabe confirmed that the rule would be finalized in midsummer, at the same time as requirements for new and modified power plants.
The goal of the electronic system is to not only provide a place for states to submit plans but also for them to collaborate and share information, Santiago said.
For example, if a state is depending on a neighbor to implement a certain program, it can access the forum to see what that neighboring state is planning.
"We'd like to be able to set it up in a way that it provides an environment of collaboration," Santiago said. "We would also like to provide a common forum for the staff that's working on this through EPA."
The system is currently in a "beta" stage. EPA will begin testing in a few weeks with some state partners that have volunteered, Santiago said.
He also said that the system would be used as a type of "centralized storage location" for plans and to make plans available to the public.
"That's what we're envisioning right now, a portal where the general public can see the plan," he said, though he added that the agency was still determining exactly how much of the planning process to make publicly available.
As EPA develops the system, it is concurrently figuring out the process for agency officials to review state plans, as well as putting in place a massive training program for staff and stakeholders, EPA officials said yesterday at the Arlington meeting.
EPA has determined that regions will be responsible for reviewing plans but is still working on the specific people who will be in charge of the reviews.
According to Julie Rosenberg, branch chief of state and local climate and energy programs at EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, the agency has put together a training plan that includes webinars, videos, workshops and a website. The plan has been reviewed through a formal committee that includes state regulatory agencies.
"We've put together a pretty comprehensive training program that is designed to help get other EPA folks up to speed," Rosenberg said, "as well as be a really important, rich resource for our stakeholders."

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Carbon Tax Could Replace Obama's Climate Rules, Democrat Says

Apr 23, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire

By Evan Lehmann

Rep. John Delaney told an audience at a conservative think tank yesterday that he's drafting a bill to tax carbon that could lead to the repeal of President Obama's signature policy of regulating CO2 emissions at power plants.
"I think it would inevitably lead to that," the Maryland Democrat said.
Delaney made his Earth Day announcement at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy shop that has made splashes in Republican circles, not all of them welcome, by hosting discussions about taxing carbon.
The highest-profile of those, in 2012, were described by conservative critics as occurring in secret, leading to some speculation that AEI might be promoting the tax to replace revenue that would be lost by cutting income taxes.
Supporters see a carbon tax as one way to unlock broader tax reform. The benefit? Lots of cash, lower emissions and smaller taxes elsewhere. Opponents see more taxes.
None of that has happened, but at the time, it prompted the National Review to ask of AEI, "What are they thinking?!"
Those early discussions, which featured AEI economists and others from Democratic-leaning groups, has led to a new book that's described as a key resource for lawmakers interested in pursuing a carbon tax. It's named "Implementing a U.S. Carbon Tax" and was unveiled at the event yesterday.
The event's moderator, Aparna Mathur, a resident economist at AEI, described a carbon tax as arguably the most efficient way to address climate change. It could also raise an estimated $1.2 trillion over 10 years, she said, potentially creating enough revenue to pay for other tax cuts.No more 'war on coal'?
That was the backdrop for Delaney's announcement. The bill, named the "Tax Pollution, Not Profits Act," is in draft form, and he hopes it will generate discussion among lawmakers. It would place a $30 price on each metric ton of carbon dioxide, and it would rise by 4 percent above inflation annually.
Half of its revenue would be applied to reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent.
"If we want a competitive corporate tax system, we've got to lower the rate," Delaney said. "The problem is you can't pay for it. There's no agreement about how to do that. This creates an agreement on how to do that."
Delaney also addresses the Republican argument that emission taxes are a "war on coal." He would use a "multibillion-dollar program" generated from the tax to help coal miners receive retraining, relocation, long-term health care and early retirement.
"In the scheme of the revenues that come from a carbon tax, you can fully take care of these individuals who are great Americans ... for the rest of their lives," he said. "So you kind of take that issue off the table."
The rest of the revenue would be used to offset higher energy costs for American households. The bill uses a sliding scale to determine how much in tax credits families would receive, with those under 150 percent of the poverty line getting the most. That translates to a family of four with an income of about $36,000. Families between that level and $48,500 would get fewer tax credits under the bill, and families over that level would be eligible for less.
The bill does not call for the replacement of U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan. But Delaney said that he's open to that outcome if the measure is debated in a legislative process.
"I think that's something that's on the table," Delaney said.Is there support for a carbon tax?
The bill also is not strictly revenue-neutral, because it uses some of the proceeds from taxing carbon to help coal miners. But Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, expressed optimism.
"He's ready as a Democrat to lower the corporate tax rate," Inglis told the audience. "Now that is pretty exciting."
Inglis, who runs the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University, has been urging Republicans to support a carbon tax for the dual purposes of addressing climate change and cutting other taxes.
He believes his party has gradually receded from its height of climate denial during the recession. It then moved through an "agnostic" period, he said, in which some politicians would say, "I'm not a scientist." Now, he said, Republicans are in a "defeatist" mode in which they say the nation can't afford to address rising temperatures. He didn't mention a specific presidential candidate, but he might have been referring to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who said this week that any solution to climate change will ruin the economy.
"I've seen some of my fellow Republicans taking that defeatist position, but you can hear those words around the room and realize you can't continue that and run for president, saying America's an exceptional nation," Inglis said. "So ditch that position and go to the obvious one: Free enterprise can solve this problem."
Adele Morris of the Brookings Institution, who helped craft Delaney's bill and is also an author of the book released yesterday, said that she sees movement around a carbon tax. She credits the Clean Power Plan. In years past, it was easy for policymakers to dismiss a carbon tax because there wasn't a different mechanism pricing emissions.
Now the status quo is a cumbersome and potentially expensive set of regulations. That might make a carbon tax more attractive, she said.
"A carbon tax has gone from a policy that only an economist could love to #carbontax," Morris said.

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The Obama Administration Wants to Slash Emissions From Agriculture. Here’s Why That’s a Really Big Deal

Apr 23, 2015 | The Washington Post

By Chris Mooney

When we talk about why the planet is warming, we talk about fossil fuels — oil, gas, coal and their many variants. What we rarely say or think to say, though, is that’s not the whole story.
The fact is that plants take in carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis, and release it again when they die. So if you clear large swaths of land, so that it does not contain as many trees, crops, or grasses as before, then you are also contributing to global warming. The same goes for other agriculture related emissions, ranging from nitrous oxide emissions from the use of fertilizers to methane emissions from “enteric fermentation” in cattle (those infamous “cow farts” — although really, it’smainly cow burps).
No wonder there have been complaints over the years about U.S. agriculture “getting a pass,” or land-use changes being “largely ignored,” when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate policy. It’s in this context that a new move by the Department of Agriculture to slash the sector’s emissions markedly by the year 2025 — and to do so simply through voluntary measures — is so significant.
“It’s roughly the amount of emissions that would be generated from the energy use of 11 million homes on an annual basis,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who is slated to unveil the plans at Michigan State University on Thursday.
The expected reductions would come from curtailing agricultural emissions, increasing the ability of lands to store or sequester carbon, and also increasing renewable energy use in rural areas and energy efficiency in farming. If achieved, the net effect would help the United States reach its intended goal of slashing total emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2025, a target announced in the fall in a historic agreement with China.
The new policy will include 10 “building blocks” which the Agriculture Department says will cut more than 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually by 2025. The broad suite of policies includes targeting livestock related emissions — by increasing anaerobic digestion, making sure there are roofs to contain some methane emissions, and also changing grazing habits so as to preserve more carbon in soils — the reforestation of fire or pest-damaged areas, and much more.
Most intriguing, perhaps, is a program to use damaged trees from those same kinds of disasters to construct buildings, thereby storing the wood’s carbon (which would otherwise be released back into the atmosphere when the tree decomposes).
“We’re basically treating them, putting them into a building,” said Vilsack. “That will restore and retain that carbon storage, but also, as a building material, has less emissions than cement or steel.”
The Agriculture Department also said it is using the federal crop insurance program to bring about emissions reductions, since farmers have to fill out several forms about conservation practices to be able to receive such insurance, and that it will work to increase renewable energy and energy efficiency on farms and in rural areas.
How significant would the changes be? Recently, the EPA released new figures on the U.S.’s total 2013 greenhouse gas emissions, noting that net emissions — including all sources, but also subtracting sinks where carbon is stored, such as forests — totaled 5791.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. Total agricultural emissions in 2013, EPA added, were 515.7 million metric tons.
Thus, the Agriculture Department said, agricultural emissions are about 9 percent of the U.S. total, and the new policy — a net reduction of 120 million metric tons — would be equivalent to a more than 20 percent cut. (Granted, the reduction does not solely come from agricultural emission reductions, since it also includes new carbon storage in forests and lands, and changes in energy use.)
“This is a very innovative and creative effort to look across all of the programs and tools that USDA has, and find voluntary and incentive based programs where you can help increase the bottom line of farmers and ranchers and others in the sectors, while at the same time mitigating carbon emissions,” said Brian Deese, a senior White house adviser focused on climate and energy policy.
It is also voluntary, not mandatory. Many of the new steps, said Vilsack and Deese, draw on existing powers in the 2014 Farm Bill to either help or incentivize farmers and landowners to adopt different practices. In many cases, Vilsack asserted, farmers will actually benefit from the new programs.
“The critical message here is that conservation, focusing on reducing greenhouse gases, doesn’t have to cost you, it can actually be something that in the long run you profit from,” said Vilsack.
After the historic climate agreement with China — and more recently, after the State Department submitted, to the United Nations, its “intended nationally determined contribution” detailing how the United States plans to cut greenhouse emissions to meet its targets — some critics pounced, saying the numbers just didn’t add up.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, has questioned how the United States will meet the targets announced in the China deal, saying that “about 40% of necessary reductions” are “still unidentified.” And in a blog post last week, the heads of Element4 Consulting, former Sierra Club chief counsel David Bookbinder and former ExxonMobil climate policy manager David Bailey, questioned President Obama’s “Dubious Climate Promises.”
Bookbinder and Bailey suggested, through a series of estimates, that the United States could not meet its intended 2025 target based on the programs currently outlined, such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. There were, in their analysis, about 330 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year left to cut.
Adding in the newly announced agricultural emissions cuts would reduce that by over a third.

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163 Republicans Push for More Offshore Drilling

Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Timothy Cama

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) led 161 of their Republican colleagues in Congress Thursday pushing the Obama administration to open more of the outer continental shelf to offshore oil and natural gas drilling.
They sent the letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in response to her agency’s January proposal for drilling activities between 2017 and 2022.
The GOP said the plan would offer an historically low level of leases while putting new restrictions on leasing and drilling activity. Murkowski and Bishop chair the congressional committees that oversee offshore drilling.
The administration has closed off 85 percent of the nation’s outer continental shelf, which has been “counterproductive to efforts to boost our nation’s economy,” they write.
“As members of Congress committed to a strong, comprehensive domestic energy strategy, we wholeheartedly believe that the United States must not shrink away from developing our nation’s offshore energy resources,” they said.
While the Obama administration wants to hold a single lease sale in the Atlantic Ocean and allow drilling for the first time in decades, the Republicans said the plans for the Atlantic and for the Arctic Ocean are overly restrictive.
“While we were pleased to see the administration finally take a step in the right direction by including one potential lease sale in the Atlantic in the draft plan, this step was offset by the additional restrictions in the Atlantic and area withdrawals in the offshore of the Arctic, the Republicans wrote, referring to areas near Alaska’s shore and in whale hunting spots that were closed off.
Interior must write a final plan based on the public comments it has received.

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Obama: US Can Profit from Climate Change

Apr 23, 2015 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Devin Henry

President Obama told National Geographic this week that the fight against climate change “represents one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.”
In an interview with the magazine published Thursday, Obama said advancements in the clean energy sector could drive job creation in the future.
He also highlighted the success of past environmental protection laws while defending his administration's actions on climate change and the science behind it.
“Rapid advancements in clean energy, energy efficiency, and low-carbon energy technologies are creating jobs, stimulating investment, and spurring innovation, proving that there does not have to be a conflict between a sound environment and strong economic growth,” Obama said. “Moving to a low-carbon economy is creating new industries and unlocking cleaner forms of affordable and reliable American-made energy.”
Obama he is “always eager to work with Congress to strengthen and improve our environmental safeguards,” but that he will work on his own to implement climate change policies if he has to. That means climate protections in trade negotiations, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plans or entering into international climate accords, a major goal before the year is out.

“Where Congress doesn’t act and my administration has the authority to make progress on important issues, from climate change to other public health threats, I will move to make progress,” he said.
The National Geographic interview — consisting of written replies to the magazine's questions — covered everything from the drought in California to his administration's reaction to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“The reality is that we will continue to rely in part on fossil fuels while we transition to a low-carbon economy,” he said when asked why the administration is considering expanding the areas available for fossil fuel extraction. “Safe and responsible development of our domestic energy resources has benefits for our economy, jobs, and enhanced global energy security”
Obama, who spent part of Earth Day mocking lawmakers who are skeptical of climate change, was again defiant against those who question the science behind it.
“Science has also been central to helping us meet our greatest challenges, from economic growth to improving health care to keeping our homeland safe,” he said. “So it’s up to us to keep nurturing and cultivating the curiosity and ingenuity that make discovery possible.”

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