Proposed new air quality regulations in Colorado draw acclaim

Colorado has proposed revisions to the state's air quality regulations that aim to crack down on pollution by oil and gas operations, including first-in-the-nation provisions that would limit methane emissions from the industry's infrastructure.

Gov. John Hickenlooper announced the changes Monday.

"The rules will help Colorado prepare for anticipated growth in energy development, while protecting public health and the environment," Hickenlooper said. "They represent a significant step forward in addressing a wider range of emissions that before now have not been directly regulated."

Methane is among the most potent of greenhouse gases. The second-most prevalent warming air pollutant in the U.S., after carbon dioxide, it has 20 times the impact of CO2 over a century.

It constitutes as much as 90 percent of natural gas and is emitted during all stages of the process to extract the booming energy source from subterranean chambers and caverns.

A January 2013 study published in the journal Nature concluded that as much as nine percent of the methane extracted from the ground during hydraulic fracturing operations in Colorado and Utah escapes to the atmosphere. 

Unlike federal air quality rules, the Colorado proposal would impose specific limits on discharges of the gas to the atmosphere.

The proposal would also require oil and gas producers, who in Colorado are primarily engaged in hydraulic fracturing, to detect leaks from storage tanks, pipelines, and other facilities, repair any such leaks on a specified timeline, and to conduct regular inspections of potential air pollutant sources.

The rules would cover volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions in addition to being the first in the nation to specifically limit methane discharges to the air.

A prominent spokesperson for the environmental community lauded the Colorado proposal, as did representatives of the energy industry in the state.

"If this package is adopted, Coloradans will breathe easier, knowing they have the best rules in the country for controlling air pollution from oil and gas activities,” Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense Fund, said.

A joint statement by energy companies Anadarko, Encana, and Noble promised support for the regulations.

"This collaboration is a good model for developing effective regulations and activities to monitor, control and reduce methane leaks and VOCs," the statement said. "The process and increased accountability established by the proposal will provide transparency and build public trust."

The new rules will not be finalized until after the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission conducts hearings.

The Hickenlooper administration's proposal for increased regulation of the air pollution caused by the state's burgeoning oil and gas industry follows indications that the state's residents are becoming restive over the presence of extraction activities.

Four communities along the northern Front Range voted earlier this month to ban, either permanently or for several years, fracking operations within their municipal boundaries. 

AP: Nearly 300 oil spills in ND in two years, none reported to public

The Associated Press reports that, in North Dakota, nearly 300 oil spills occurred during the last two years and the public was not notified of any of them.

North Dakota is the second-largest producer of oil in the United States.

Attention to the ubiquity of oil spills in the northern Great Plains state was drawn by a significant leak in its northwestern region earlier this month. That spill, which exceeded 20,000 barrels, was not announced to the public for 11 days after it commenced.

Colorado city becomes second in state to ban fracking

The Colorado city of Fort Collins has become the second municipality in the Centennial State to ban hydraulic fracturing.

The community's governing council gave final approval Tuesday evening to an ordinance that also forecloses any oil and gas exploration within the city limits.

Colorado's Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, has publicly threatened to sue any city or town in the state that bans fracking.

Fort Collins officials were not swayed by the threat.

Denver 9News quoted criticism of Hickenlooper by the city's mayor pro tempore, Kelly Ohlson.

"He seems at times to be more concerned about the gas industry, rather than the health and safety of the citizens he represents," Ohlson said. 

Loveland, a community in Boulder county, has also prohibited fracking.

 

Enviros to Obama: Kill Keystone XL pipeline

Dozens of environmental organizations urged President Barack Obama Monday to permanently terminate any prospect of the Keystone XL pipeline being built, warning that the project would deepen the nation's climate-changing commitment to fossil fuels.

The request came in a short letter signed by representatives of 70 organizations.

"Reject dirty fuels," the groups argued. "We should not pursue dirty fuels like tar sands  when climate science tells us that 80 percent of existing fossil fuel reserves need to be kept in the ground. More specifically, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in our national interest because it would unlock vast amounts of additional carbon that we can’t afford to burn, extend our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, endanger health and safety, and put critical water resources at risk."

The U.S. Department of State is expected to decide soon whether to grant the authorization necessary for construction of the pipeline's northern section, which crosses the U.S.-Canada border, to begin.

The pipeline would allow transport of synthetic crude oil extracted from oil sands in Alberta to refineries in the midwest and along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

Obama previously rejected the pipeline in Jan. 2012 on grounds that it might have an adverse impact on the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region of Nebraska. However, the state's Department of Environmental Quality issued a report last week that is skeptical of arguments that significant adverse environmental impact would occur if the pipeline is built.

The report acknowledges that the pipeline's route would traverse the Ogallala aquifer, but asserts that any harm to the groundwater contained in the aquifer would be of limited geographic reach.

The developer of the pipeline now proposes to avoid the Sand Hills region altogether.

The report will not be finalized until it is reviewed by the state's Republican governor, Dave Heineman.

Oil removed from the the Bakken formation in eastern Montana and western North Dakota could also be carried by the Keystone XL pipeline.

NOTE: This story also appears at Examiner.com.

Bipartisan group of senators asks Obama for action on Keystone pipeline

A group of U.S. senators from both parties is pressuring President Obama to grant permission for construction of the massive Keystone XL pipeline to begin.

The legislators wrote to Obama on Nov. 16, requesting a meeting at which they would press the case for the 1,897 kilometer-long project.

Obama declined to grant the necessary permits last January, citing threats to ecological conditions in and near Nebraska's Sand Hills.

The pipeline's developers have since agreed to re-route the project, which would enable the transportation of bitumen and synthetic crude oil from Alberta to a variety of U.S. destinations.

It would also provide a means for moving oil from North Dakota's booming Bakken formation to refineries.

Environmentalists oppose the pipeline project on grounds that it might threaten the Ogallala aquifer and lock in U.S. reliance on fossil fuels as the nation's primary energy source. 

The Canadian government authorized construction of the portion of the pipeline that will run within that country in 2007.

Canada's natural resources ministry has criticized U.S. delays of the pipeline project, arguing that the fossil fuel use it facilitates would equal only about 0.1 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

The section of the pipeline that would meet the coast at the Gulf of Mexico is under construction because that part of the project does not require a permit.

CNN: House of Representatives on verge of passing bill that eases regulatory burdens to Arctic oil drilling

The Republican House of Representatives is ready to pass a bill that would lower regulatory barriers to Arctic oil drilling, according to a CNN report.

The measure, which is sponsored by a freshman congressman from Colorado, would limit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's authority to review exploration permits for activities on the nation's Outer Continental Shelf.

Technically, the bill would accomplish that goal by, first, requiring that the Clean Air Act apply to drilling vessels in the same way that it applies to land-based stationary sources and, second, by removing the authority of EPA's Environmental Appeals Board to review permit decisions by the agency.

Proponents of the legislation, including House speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, argue that the bill's enactment into law is an essential component of efforts to increase domestic energy security.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, assert that the potential damage from a marine oil spill in frigid Arctic waters compels caution.

“An oil spill in these remote and icy waters would have catastrophic impacts and be nearly impossible to clean up; no technology exists that would effectively clean up oil spilled in icy Arctic waters," Erik Grafe, an attorney for Earthjustice, said in testimony about the bill before a House committee.

HR 2021, labeled the "Jobs and Energy Permitting Act of 2011" by its sponsor, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., would not be limited in impact to Alaska. It covers all areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.

In May the GOP-controlled House, with help from some Democratic members, passed a measure that would impose time limits on the U.S. Department of Interior's consideration of offshore drilling permit applications.

The House has also cleared proposed legislation that would open up more areas of the nation's coasts for oil drilling.

Report: Oil drilling off Atlantic coast, Gulf coast of Florida to be banned

Reuters is reporting today that the Obama administration has decided to ban oil drilling off the Atlantic coast and the Gulf coast of Florida.

The decision, which Reuters says was shared in a briefing to members of Congress, would apply for the five-year period between 2012-2017.

The report also says the administration won't approve leases off the coast of Alaska until 2012.

The Washington Post reports that the next Outer Continental Shelf drilling plan will also prohibit exploration activities off the Pacific coast.

If accurate, the decision to block drilling off the Atlantic coast and Florida's Gulf coast would be a reversal of the policy direction announced by Interior secretary Ken Salazar last spring.

Senate committee holds hearing on Gulf oil spill, Obama plans to expand off-shore drilling

A Senate committee is scrutinizing the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this morning, as well as President Obama's plans to expand oil drilling off the nation's coasts.

The Energy and Natural Resources Committee convened at 10 am EDT.

The committee's chairman, New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman, said the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20 indicates that the country's energy extraction activities are plagued by deep-seeded problems.

“At the heart of this disaster are three interrelated systems – a technological system of materials and equipment, a human system of persons who operated the technological system and a regulatory system," Bingaman said in his opening statement. "These interrelated systems failed in a way that many had said was virtually impossible.”

The committee's ranking Republican member, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, expressed regret about the spill but said oil drilling at sea should be pursued even if the environmental and economic costs are significant.

"Under anyone’s most optimistic scenario, our nation will need a lot of oil for a long time to come," she said.

One early witness defended the federal government's principal regulator of oil firms, the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service, which has come under attack recently for an approach some critics consider too deferential to industry.

"Even when their own personal lives were disrupted, these people were on the job the next day," the agency's former head of offshore energy extraction regulation, Elmer Danenberger, said in reference to MMS employees work during hurricanes. “And ethics? These people won’t take a doughnut from industry. I know. I’ve tried to set them up."

In 2008 an investigation revealed that MMS employees had accepted financial gifts from the oil industry, engaged in financial self-dealing, and become involved in a sex and drug use scandal involving the companies they help to regulate.

Danenberger also said that the government must rely on the industry to self-regulate.

"There’s no number of volumes that is going to tell the operator precisely what to do in every situation," he said.

Under questioning from Murkowski, another witness said it is too early to say whether the oil spill could have been prevented through use of a device called a "blowout preventer."

"I don’t see that the conditions that this well was drilled into were severe or extreme relative to what the industry drills into," Dr. F.E. Beck, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University, said. “We’re capable of handling much higher formation pressures than my observation or deduction from the data tells us we encountered."

Beck also said it was not likely that the explosion was the result of a terrorist attack.

NOAA scientists recommend protection of coastlines from oil and gas drilling

The federal government's chief oceanographers are recommending that the Obama administration preclude oil and gas drilling along much of the country's coastline.

The suggestion, which is not binding, was made last month by officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today.

It says that the Department of Interior should decline to approve permits that would allow drilling along much of the coast off Alaska, the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico.

NOAA also recommends caution in allowing oil and gas extraction activity in protected waters off California.

The Bush administration had indicated a willingness to allow drilling in all of those areas.

The Los Angeles Times has a detailed story.

Senate GOP Blocks Deputy Interior Secretary Nominee

President Obama's nomination of a deputy secretary of interior continued to be stalled in the Senate Wednesday as Republicans rallied to defeat a cloture motion.

David Hayes, who would be Interior secretary Ken Salazar's number two, cannot take the job for which he has been chosen until the filibuster is stopped and confirmation by the Senate is secured.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said that the filibuster is aimed at convincing Salazar to explain further his recent decision to cancel certain oil and gas leases in the West.

The vote on the cloture motion was 57-39. Sixty votes are required to stop a filibuster.

Federal Judge Halts Redrock Country Oil & Gas Leases

A federal judge in Washington, DC has blocked Bush administration efforts to open 110,000 acres of land in Utah's famous red rock country for oil and gas drilling.

The judge, Ricardo Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order. He wrote in his opinion that he needed more time to evaluate the arguments of both parties. As is necessary in any case in which an injunction is issued, the judge found that the plaintiff conservation groups "have shown a likelihood of success on the merits" and that the "'development of domestic energy resources' … is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment."

Environmentalists welcomed the decision.

"Under the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management pushed through Resource Management Plans that treated some of America's most sensitive and spectacular public lands as the private playgrounds of the oil and gas companies," Grand Canyon Trust executive director Bill Hedden said. "Today's heartening court decision gives these unique places a last second pardon from forever sacrificing their archaeological treasures, pristine air and remote wildness in order to sate only an hour or two of our national addiction to oil and gas."

Urbina's ruling means that the checks written to the U.S. Treasury by the successful bidders for the drilling rights cannot be cashed and no drilling activity can occur on the affected land.

The parcels at issue are near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument and some are located within the roadless Desolation Canyon area, which is being considered for wilderness designation. The area covered by the auction also contains a large amount of prehistoric archaeological sites and other cultural resources, including those within Nine Mile Canyon.

The parcels had been auctioned Dec. 19 after having been announced on election day and the Bureau of Land Management had announced it would finalize the leases on Jan. 19.

The issuance of the temporary restraining order will give the incoming Obama administration an opportunity to re-consider the sale of the leases. Aides to the president-elect have voiced concerns about opening the parcels to oil and gas drilling.

Judge Urbina's decision came in Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance et ux. v. Allred et al., No. 1:08-CV-02187-RMU (D.D.C.).

A New York Times story from November 2008 on the controversy is here.