Army announces it will grant easement for DAPL, terminate further environmental review

This excerpt from a filing in a federal court in Washington, D.C. indicates the Trump regime’s determination to remove the last obstacle to completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday that it will grant Energy Transfer Partners, L.P., the developer of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, the easement required to build beneath North Dakota’s Lake Oahe.

Further study of environmental impacts of DAPL will also be jettisoned.

A memorandum from a senior official temporarily serving as assistant secretary of the Army said that Donald Trump’s Jan. 24, 2017 executive memorandum demanded the move.

Opponents of DAPL denounced the Trump regime’s move to short-circuit further study of the $3.8 billion dollar pipeline’s impacts on the water supply of native Americans in the Dakotas.

“The Obama administration correctly found that the Tribe’s treaty rights must be respected, and that the easement should not be granted without further review and consideration of alternative crossing locations,” Jan Hasselman, an attorney with Earthjustice who is representing tribal opponents of the project, said. “Trump’s reversal of that decision continues a historic pattern of broken promises to Indian Tribes and a violation of Treaty rights. Trump and his administration will be held accountable in court.”

The decision removes the last hurdle to completion of the fossil fuel infrastructure project.

Work on the project was stopped by the Obama administration last September. Then the Army Corps of Engineers had decided in on Dec. 4, 2016 not to grant the easement beneath Lake Oahe. The agency instead determined that preparation of an environmental impact statement on DAPL was necessary to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.

The period in which the public could comment on that EIS began on Jan. 18 and was not set to expire until Feb. 20.

Trump, the real estate developer and reality television star who occupies the White House despite losing last November’s popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and despite Russian interference in the Presidential election, owned Energy Transfer Partners stock worth at least $500,000 in 2015.

Trump executive memoranda seek to expedite permits for GHG-intensive Keystone XL, Dakota Access pipelines

President Donald J. Trump has issued several executive memoranda aimed at speeding up consideration by federal agencies of the greenhouse gas-intensive Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

Two executive memoranda released late Tuesday relate to the controversial projects.

According to a report in the Washington Post, White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump acted because he is “very, very keen on making sure that we maximize our use of natural resources to America’s benefit.”

Because they aim to aid completion of two projects that would facilitate the burning of more than 1.2 million barrels of oil per day and raise the risks of serious environmental damage from spills and leaks, the directives are likely to reignite intense arguments over both pipelines.

The Trump memorandum related to the Keystone XL pipeline invites that project’s developer, the foreign firm TransCanada Keystone Pipeline L.P., to “to promptly re-submit its application to the Department of State for a Presidential permit for [its] construction and operation.”

The permit is necessary because the Keystone XL pipeline would cross the Canada-United States border.

It also imposes a 60-day deadline on the State Department’s consideration of any permit application, suggests that a 2014 environmental impact statement prepared for the project be considered sufficient to comply with applicable federal environmental laws including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, and waives all requirements to notify other agencies of the permit application and to wait for their responses before proceeding to a decision.

Trump used language designed to preserve discretion granted to the secretary of state to approve or deny any application TransCanada files.

“Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect . . . the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof,” the memorandum says.

At present there is no pending application for a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline across the Canada-U.S.  border. The Obama administration State Department rejected such an application on Nov. 6, 2015.

Arguments about the economic and environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline raged, and were considered by the Obama administration, for years after it was first proposed by TransCanada in 2008.

The  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected an initial environmental impact statement in July 2010 because it failed to adequately evaluate plans to respond to oil spills, pipeline safety issues, or potential greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project.

After a second EIS was prepared in 2011, the State Department delayed consideration of a permit to consider impacts on the Sand Hills region of Nebraska.

The Obama administration then rejected the pipeline construction application in January 2012.

TransCanada re-applied for the permit later that year. The 2014 EIS referred to in Trump’s memorandum was prepared after that second application.

Three phases of the Keystone XL pipeline are complete. Only the fourth phase, which is planned to run from a point near Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, is not yet complete. That portion of the project was blocked by the Obama administration. Graphic courtesy TransCanada L.P. and Wikimedia.

The 1,204 mile-long Keystone XL pipeline would run from a terminal near Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would connect to both a second pipeline that would carry crude to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and to a third that would move oil to collection points in Illinois.

With a maximum carrying capacity of more than 800,000 barrels per day of crude oil extracted from Alberta’s tar sands – a process that has caused extensive destruction to Canada’s 1.3 billion acre, wildlife-rich boreal forests – and the Bakken basin of eastern Montana and western North Dakota, Keystone XL would cause an annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere of 147 million to 168 million metric tons.

Greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of tar sands oil, which is extracted from a highly toxic mix of bitumen, clay and sand, would be equivalent to the GHG emissions of 7.8 coal fired power plants, according to a State Department document explaining the Obama administration’s 2015 rejection of the pipeline permit application.

Keystone XL would also open up foreign markets to tar sands crude for the first time.

“Keystone actually is really driving an expansion of tar sands oil extraction,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, chief program officer at Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “You have to look not only at the emission of what goes through the pipeline, but also opening up a market that would not otherwise exist.”

Climatologist James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who first drew significant attention to anthropogenic climate change in the late 1980s, has warned of the consequences of encouraging combustion of the Alberta tar sands crude. He wrote in May 2012 that facilitation of its use by construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would mean “game over” for the planet’s equable climate:

“The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon – 240 gigatons – to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. – a level that would, as Earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.”

In addition to the climate impacts of the project, then-secretary of state John F. Kerry also explained that the Obama administration had concluded that few jobs would be created by its construction or operation and that the project would not significantly lower the cost of fossil fuel energy.

Most legislators on Capitol Hill have favored the Keystone XL pipeline despite the climate and other environmental objections, including possible impacts on water supplies, that have been raised against it. The 114th Congress passed a bill that would have forced approval of the Keystone XL permit in Jan. 2015. Obama vetoed it the next month.

Earlier Congresses had considered measures aimed at speeding up consideration of the project.

Trump also issued another executive memorandum aimed at expediting consideration by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of an alternative route for the Dakota Access pipeline.

In that memorandum, Trump commanded the secretary of the Army to

“instruct the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), including the Commanding General and Chief of Engineers, to take all actions necessary and appropriate to:

“(i) review and approve in an expedited manner, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, and with such conditions as are necessary or appropriate, requests for approvals to construct and operate the DAPL, including easements or rights-of-way to cross Federal areas under section 28 of the Mineral Leasing Act, as amended, 30 U.S.C. 185; permits or approvals under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. 1344; permits or approvals under section 14 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, 33 U.S.C. 408; and such other Federal approvals as may be necessary;

“(ii) consider, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, whether to rescind or modify the memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works dated December 4, 2016 (Proposed Dakota Access Pipeline Crossing at Lake Oahe, North Dakota), and whether to withdraw the Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement in Connection with Dakota Access, LLC’s Request for an Easement to Cross Lake Oahe, North Dakota, dated January 18, 2017, and published at 82 Fed. Reg. 5543;

“(iii) consider, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, prior reviews and determinations, including the Environmental Assessment issued in July of 2016 for the DAPL, as satisfying all applicable requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., and any other provision of law that requires executive agency consultation or review (including the consultation or review required under section 7(a) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. 1536(a));

“(iv) review and grant, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, requests for waivers of notice periods arising from or related to USACE real estate policies and regulations; and

“(v) issue, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, any approved easements or rights-of-way immediately after notice is provided to the Congress pursuant to section 28(w) of the Mineral Leasing Act, as amended, 30 U.S.C. 185(w).”

The President’s repeated use of the phrase “to the extent permitted by law and as warranted” indicates that the Army Corps of Engineers may retain its authority to complete the preparation of an environmental impact statement that examines alternative routes for the Dakota Access pipeline, as ordered by the Obama administration in Dec. 2016.

On the other hand, the language in Trump’s Dakota Access memorandum requires the Army Corps of Engineers to decide quickly whether to proceed with the EIS and grant the developer, Energy Transfer Partners L.P., permission required to build underneath Lake Oahe.

A Sept. 2016 opinion by a federal district judge may reinforce any determination by the  Trump administration to reverse a decision by the Obama administration three months later to proceed with an environmental impact statement. The Army Corps of Engineers said that it would complete the EIS on alternative routes because of the objections against the project lodged by native American nations in the Dakotas.

“Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” Jo-Ellen Darcy, the then-assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, said. “The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.”

The Dakota Access project is considered by many native Americans to raise the risk that an oil spill would contaminate their water supply or flood tribal burial sites and other sites of cultural importance.

The September ruling by Judge James E. Boasberg  rejected arguments that the tribes had not been adequately consulted about the possible impacts on cultural resources during the permit review process, as required by the National Historic Preservation Act:

“[T]his Court does not lightly countenance any depredation of lands that hold significance to the Standing Rock Sioux. Aware of the indignities visited upon the Tribe over the last centuries, the Court scrutinizes the permitting process here with particular care. Having done so, the Court must nonetheless conclude that the Tribe has not demonstrated that an injunction is warranted here.”

Native American nations opposed to the Dakota Access did not argue that the Army Corps of Engineers had violated NEPA or any other applicable federal law in the extent of communication and discussion with them that had occurred or by initially proposing to apply a nationwide permit under the Clean Water Act to the project.

The Obama administration’s Dec. 2016 determination to undertake a full environmental impact analysis necessitated the denial of the permission to cross Lake Oahe needed by Energy Transfer Partners L.P., which is what likely drove Trump’s decision to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to reconsider whether to complete the EIS.

Planned to wind from its origin in North Dakota and through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois, Dakota Access would abut lands of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

This graphic shows the route of the proposed Dakota Access pipeline, which is complete except for the portion that crosses Lake Oahe in North Dakota. Image by NittyG (own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52776844).

The developer’s proposal to bury the pipeline beneath the bed of Lake Oahe in North Dakota has raised fears of water pollution and other environmental damage from pipeline leaks and other mishaps.

Dakota Access would permit the consumption of at least 470,000 more barrels of crude per day.

Most, or even all, of the oil carried by the two pipelines could be exported. Congress enacted legislation in 2015 that ended a longstanding prohibition on transport of American crude overseas.

A spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners L.P. refused to say, when asked by a reporter for The Intercept in Sept. 2016, that the company would remain committed to prior claims that all of the oil transported in it would be supplied to the U.S. market.

Environmental conservation community leaders vowed Tuesday to continue their opposition to both projects.

“The world’s climate scientists and its Nobel laureates explained over and over why it was unwise and immoral,” Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, said in a statement. “In one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump ignores all that in his eagerness to serve the oil industry. It’s a dark day for a reason, but we will continue to fight.”

Natural Resources Defense Council president Rhea Suh vowed an all-out battle, saying that the two pipelines “pose a grave threat to our water, communities, and climate.”

“We will use every tool available to help ensure that they are not built,” she said.

One legal academic who specializes in the application of federal environmental law said that he is not convinced that a court would defer to Trump’s executive orders.

“Some people think it’s a matter of snapping fingers, but the courts don’t work that way,” Professor Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School told Inside Climate News Tuesday, referring to the Dakota Access project. “There has to be a bona fide, legitimate reason why not proceeding with the assessment that just a month ago the United States government said in court was necessary in order to comply with the law. Why all of the sudden it is not?”

Trump’s precipitous actions on the fourth full day of his presidency overturns decisions taken after years of deliberation and study by his predecessor’s administration and follows a pattern of dishonest rhetoric about the validity of scientists’ understanding that fossil fuel consumption is driving climate change.

In Nov. 2012 businessman Trump labeled climate change a “Chinese hoax” aimed at destroying U.S. manufacturing capability. In Nov. 2016, the regime’s incoming White House chief of staff, lawyer Reinhold R. Priebus, publicly said that the 45th President regards climate change as a “bunch of bunk.”

NOTE: This post was updated on Jan. 25 to reflect that President Trump issued executive memoranda, not executive orders, and that the content of those memoranda allows some agency discretion in handling the pipeline projects.

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Bills to permanently block oil exploration off West Coast introduced

Ocean waters near Heceta Head lighthouse in Oregon would be among those protected from fossil fuel exploration activity if a bill introduced by West Coast senators becomes law. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

California’s senior U.S. senator has introduced a bill that would permanently block fossil fuel exploration on the outer continental shelf along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

The measure, sponsored by veteran Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was introduced Jan. 4.

In her comments on the Senate floor on the day she introduced S.31 Feinstein highlighted the huge economic impact of coastal counties in California, explaining that they produce 80 percent of the state’s gross domestic product, and said the likely close proximity of any drilling to the beaches makes offshore energy exploration too dangerous.

“The fact is that those of us on the Pacific coast do not want any further offshore oil or gas development,” Feinstein said.

Wildlife conservation concerns are a powerful argument against energy exploration off the Pacific Coast. Among the marine animals that may be adversely affected by oil and natural gas drilling are a variety of sea birds and fish, orcas, otters, salmon, seals, sea lions, and migratory whale species (including blue whales).

Those wildlife resources have previously been harmed by oil extraction in the Pacific.

In 1969 a spill near Santa Barbara polluted the Pacific Ocean with about 3.36 million gallons of crude. That incident remains the most severe oil spill in California’s history and the third-most severe spill in American history.

The Santa Barbara oil spill killed thousands of sea birds and many dolphins, elephant seals, and sea lions. The mortality rate among small marine organisms in the inter-tidal zone was as high as 90 percent.

This graphic shows the extent of ocean and beach area impacted by the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Map courtesy Wikimedia.

Despite the warning provided by the Santa Barbara oil spill, there are still 24 oil drilling platforms operating in ocean areas off the California coast.

In 1994 the Golden State’s legislature largely  precluded any future drilling leases in the six kilometer-wide band of Pacific waters under its regulatory control. The California Coastal Sanctuary Act allows leasing only if the “State Lands Commission determines that oil and gas deposits contained in tidelands are being drained by means of wells upon adjacent federal lands and leasing of the tidelands for oil or gas production is in the best interest of the State.”

The California State Senate passed a bill in 2015 that would have permanently banned all oil leases off the state’s coast. S.B. 788 was not considered by the state’s General Assembly (a body akin to the House of Representatives in most other states).

California’s State Lands Commission had stopped authorizing nearly all new leases after the Santa Barbara spill.

No fossil fuel exploration in waters of the Pacific Ocean off California’s coast subject to the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act has occurred since 1981. Congress included bans on leasing off California’s coast, as well as offshore of several East Coast states, in annual appropriations bills until 2008.

U.S. Presidents also included California’s (along with Oregon’s and Washington’s) coastal waters in exclusions from leasing included in executive orders. Presidents George H.W. Bush, in June 1990, and William J. Clinton, in June 1998, imposed a ban through 2012.

President George W. Bush lifted that ban by revoking those executive orders on July 14,  2008. He also said that he would veto any bill that continued the practice of banning leases off the coast of California and several other states.

President Barack Obama’s administration has returned to the long-time practice of keeping energy exploration activities away from California’s coast. The most recent five-year leasing plan for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management precludes any leasing off the Pacific coast of the continental U.S. between 2017-2022.

The factors weighing against energy exploration off the coasts of Oregon and Washington are largely the same as in California.

According to one 2015 report, Oregon’s rural coast region had more than 21,000 jobs directly dependent on tourism, which also generated more than $1.8 billion in economic activity in that part of the state.

As for fishing, the value of the Beaver State’s commercial onshore fisheries was more than $136 million in 2015, according to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, while spending on recreational fishing in coastal counties exceeded $68 million in 2014.

Washington’s coastal economy is similarly dependent on tourism and fishing. In 2011 tourism and recreation contributed about $3.4 billion to the Evergreen State’s “ocean economy,” while fishing is responsible for at least 16,000 jobs and half of billion dollars of economic activity in Washington.

Pacific waters off the coasts of the two northwestern states have not generally been considered likely to produce significant oil resources. In 1964 the Department of Interior issued leases for 2,400 square kilometers of ocean areas off the coasts of Oregon and Washington. Oil companies drilled 13 test wells before those leases expired in 1969.

In 1977 the Department of Interior ranked Oregon and Washington as being lowest among all potential lease areas in the country for “resource potential.” That assessment was essentially confirmed by a 2009 report by Environment America and Sierra Club, which concluded that the amount of oil and natural gas off the Oregon and Washington coasts is “miniscule.”

“The planning area is estimated to contain (i.e., undiscovered economically recoverable resource) approximately 0.3 billion barrels of oil and 1.28 trillion cubic feet of natural gas at recent price estimates, representing about 0.6% of total OCS resources for both oil and gas. At recent prices and usage, the oil and natural gas economically available from the Washington/Oregon planning area could supply the nation with 15 days of oil and 20 days of natural gas with a value of $26 billion.”

Oregon and Washington have nevertheless moved to toughen their laws on offshore energy development.

In 2007 Oregon imposed a three-year moratorium on new exlporatory activity and then, in 2010, extended it for 10 more  years.

Washington law forbids marine oil exploration only in the area “extending from mean high tide seaward three miles along the Washington coast from Cape Flattery south to Cape Disappointment, nor in Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay, and the Columbia river downstream from the Longview bridge . . .”

Feinstein’s co-sponsors include all of the senators representing the three west coast states covered by her bill: Democrats Kamala Harris of California, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington.

The California senator’s effort to ban drilling off the Pacific coast is not the first attempt she has made. She has introduced similar bills in several previous Congresses. Nor is her bill the first Pacific coast state oil drilling ban to be co-sponsored by West Coast senators.

S.31 has been assigned to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee for consideration. Cantwell and Wyden are members of that committee.

Similar legislation, known as the West Coast Ocean Protection Act, has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Democrat Jared Huffman of California and 13 co-sponsors. They include California Democratic Reps. John Garamendi, Derek Kilmer, Barbara Lee, Ted Lieu, Alan Lowenthal, Doris Matsui, Jimmy Panetta, Scott Peters, Jackie Speier, Eric Swalwell, and Mike Thompson, Oregon Democrats Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio, and Washington Democrat Suzan DelBene.

 

Obama blocks oil drilling in Arctic, part of Atlantic oceans

This photograph of a polar bear, one of the wildlife species that may benefit from President Barack Obama’s decision, was taken by Terry DeBruhn. Image courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Relying on a statute from the 1950s, President Barack Obama moved Tuesday to permanently shut off the Arctic and a significant portion of the Atlantic oceans along the nation’s coasts to oil and gas exploration.

The White House announced that Obama invoked authority granted by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw the Chukchi Sea Planning Area, most of the Beaufort Sea Planning Area, and 5,990 square miles of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean between New England and the Chesapeake Bay from fossil fuel activities.

Obama said in a statement that his decision was motivated by a desire to “protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth.”

“They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited,” Obama explained. “By contrast, it would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region – at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels.”

Map courtesy U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

The OCLA was enacted in 1953. Section 12(a) of OCLA, 43 U.S.C. § 1341(a), provides that “[t]he President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.”

The statute imposes no constraints on the President’s authority to order such a withdrawal. In that way it is similar to the American Antiquities Act of 1906, which gives Presidents the power to declare national monuments.

In both cases, Congress delegated its power over federal property to the President, but the grant could well be interpreted by a federal court as a “one-way ratchet” that does not permit a later President to reverse a predecessor’s decision to withdraw OCSLA areas from energy exploration activities.

The reach of section 12(a) has not been tested in litigation.

John D. Leshy, a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a former solicitor of the Department of Interior, told Atlantic Monthly that he believes Obama’s decision should be upheld in federal court if it is challenged by fossil fuel advocates.

“I think it was quite a realistic thing that Obama did, and it should be upheld—but who knows,” he said.

Congress could, of course, pass a bill reversing Obama’s move, but that legislation would have to clear a likely filibuster by U.S. Senate Democrats on the way to Trump’s desk.

Map courtesy U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Presidents also have authority under OCLA to craft five-year exploration plans. Obama has used that tool, too, as a way of reducing the American fossil fuel footprint in sensitive marine areas.

On Nov. 18 the administration issued the final five-year OCLA lease program that covers the years 2017-2022. It proposes one sale in waters off Alaska, in Cook Inlet, and none in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. The 2017-2022 lease program anticipates 10 sales of exploration rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

Canada also undertook action to ban future fossil fuel exploration in the Arctic on Dec. 20. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his country would impose the prohibition for five years.

“Canada is designating all Arctic Canadian waters as indefinitely off limits to future offshore Arctic oil and gas licensing, to be reviewed every 5 years through a climate and marine science-based life-cycle assessment,” Trudeau said in a joint statement by Canada and the U.S.

No Canadian oil and gas activity in the Arctic has occurred since 2006.

Alaska and other states retain authority to authorize oil drilling in the first three miles of ocean beyond their shores as management of those areas of the continental shelf are entrusted to them and is not subject to federal control.

Maria Cantwell, Tom Carper to lead Democrats on key Senate environment committees in 115th Congress

U.S. Senate Democrats, meeting this week to name a new minority leader to take over following the impending retirement of Sen. Harry M. Reid of Nevada, have chosen two veteran legislators to be the party’s leaders on the chamber’s two key environmental policy committees.

Sen. Maria E. Cantwell of Washington will be the ranking member on the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, while Sen. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware will be his party’s senior member of the Committee on Environment & Public Works.

Cantwell, 58, is a veteran politician, having first been elected to public office in 1986. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1993-1995 before returning to Congress as a U.S. senator after defeating her Republican predecessor Slade Gorton in 2000.

The former technology company executive has prioritized a comprehensive energy bill and worked with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to move that measure through the Senate during the 114th Congress. That bill, S. 2012, is now in a conference committee following passage of similar legislation by the House of Representatives.

Titled the Energy Policy Modernization Act, S. 2012 would mandate some improvement in the energy efficiency of buildings, encourage renewable energy production by requiring owners of transmission lines and transformers to assure that the electricity grid can accommodate power generated by solar panels and wind turbines, and reduce legal and bureaucratic obstacles to the export of natural gas.

S. 2012 would also permanently renew the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The conference committee consideration of S. 2012 has not yet been scheduled. With only a few weeks remaining in the 114th Congress, it is not clear whether the measure can be sent to President Barack Obama’s desk before adjournment.

“We are currently focused on whether we can reach agreement on the energy bill in this Congress,” a spokesperson for Cantwell who preferred not to be named said in a statement.

Earlier in her career Cantwell successfully convinced Congress to increase the size of Mt. Rainier National Park, establish the Wild Sky Wilderness in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and forbid oil exploration off Washington’s Pacific coast.

Murkowski will continue to chair the energy and natural resources committee, though Republicans will have either a three- or four seat Senate majority in the upcoming Congress, depending on the outcome of a pending election in Louisiana, instead of the 54 seats in the 100-member chamber they now hold.

Carper, 69, was also first elected to the Senate in 2000. He is a former governor of the First State and also served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1983-1993.

During the 114th Congress Carper voted for a bill that would override Obama’s decision to deny a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and authorize construction of mammoth fossil fuel project. He also supported a 2013 bill that aimed to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from requiring a Clean Water Act permit for the discharge of registered pesticides into lakes, rivers, and streams.

On the other hand,  Carper has often been a defender of strong environmental protections. For example, in January he voted against a resolution that would have killed EPA’s Waters of the United States rule and also voted “no” on two 2015 Senate resolutions that would have nullified the Obama administration’s electric power plant regulations.

Sen. John A. Barrasso III, R-Wyo., will be the chairman of the environment and public works committee during the 115th Congress.

Barrasso, who first came to the Senate in 2007, has established a reputation as being a firm denier of climate science. In that respect he represents little change from the committee’s current chairman, Oklahoma’s James M. Inhofe.

As of the time this article is published there has been no announcement of the other members of either committee.

UPDATE, Nov. 18, 2016, 11:44 am: A statement by a spokesperson for Sen. Maria Cantwell was added.

Obama administration seeks reduction in methane emissions from oil and gas facilities on public lands

The U.S. Department of Interior has proposed regulations aimed at limiting the amount of a potent greenhouse gas emitted from oil and natural gas exploration wells.

Announced Jan. 22, the new rule would require energy companies to scale back the amount of flaring from 7,200,000 cubic feet per month per well to 1,800,000 cubic feet per month per well within three years. Well operators would have the choice of capturing gases that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere or reducing production as means of achieving the target. Emergency flaring would not be limited.

“I think most people would agree that we should be using our nation’s natural gas to power our economy – not wasting it by venting and flaring it into the atmosphere,” secretary of the interior Sally M. Jewell said in a statement. “We need to modernize decades-old standards to reflect existing technologies so that we can cut down on harmful methane emissions and use this captured natural gas to generate power and provide a return to taxpayers, tribes and states for this public resource.”

Flaring is used by energy producers as a way of eliminating gases released from underground during extraction of fossil fuel resources, particularly oil. The gases are considered by the fossil fuel extractor to be either not economically useful or infeasible to store or transport.

These “waste” gases are mostly methane. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that about 29 percent of total American methane emissions to the atmosphere comes from fossil fuel extraction infrastructure, including wells, storage tanks, pipelines, and processing facilities. Worldwide, as much as 5.3 trillion cubic feet of methane is released to the atmosphere every year from fossil fuel extraction, transportation, storage, and processing systems.

Aside from the methane emissions caused by flaring, about 400 million tons of carbon dioxide are also added to the atmosphere every year as the result of flaring around the world.

Flaring also costs the taxpayer money. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the gases flared to the atmosphere from wells and related infrastructure on U.S. public lands means that about $23 million in royalties otherwise payable to the federal treasury is lost to the government.

Video courtesy U.S. GAO.

Environmental advocacy organizations reacted cautiously to the Obama administration’s initiative.

“These rules are an important start to reducing potent methane pollution—which fuels climate change and threatens public health—from oil and gas companies operating on our nation’s public lands,” Meleah Geertsma, an attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “However, they fall short of what’s necessary to tackle the full scope of the problem, including leaving significant gas leaks and flaring unaddressed.”

“At a minimum, the administration should require the industry to put all of the available and cost-effective measures in place to curb this rampant air pollution problem,” Geertsma continued. “That’s true not just for public lands—but all oil and gas operations, new and old, nationwide.”

The rules announced by Jewell are not yet final. The proposed rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Department of Interior, will accept comments for 60 days following publication.

President Barack Obama announced in Jan. 2015 that his administration would seek to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry by 40 to 45 percent by 2025. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed in August 2015 a regulation that would limit methane emissions from new or modified oil and natural gas extraction facilities.

 

NYT: Obama to ban new coal leases on federal land

President Barack Obama will announce Friday a ban on new federal coal leases, according to a report in the New York Times.

The story by veteran Times environment reporter Coral Davenport said that the move would come as part of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s periodic effort to update policy relating to leasing and royalties.

Any executive order by Obama would rely on authority provided by the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.

Coal production from lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service generated about $682 million in royalties during fiscal year 2015, according to data made available by the Department of Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue. Counting other fees and sources of income related to coal leasing, the federal government’s revenue from the program exceeded $1.2 billion in 2014. BLM alone leased more than 475 million acres of land for coal production during that year.

Federal coal leases generally allow production to occur for 20 years. Davenport’s story indicated that current levels of coal production from the federal estate would be likely to continue for about the same amount of time even if Obama acts to block new leases.

The President said during his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he would impose reform on the federal coal leasing program in order to assure that it takes account of the environmental cost of fossil fuel combustion. In addition, Interior secretary Sally Jewell said in a March 2015 speech that she thought “it’s time for an honest and open conversation about modernizing the federal coal program.”

Environmental groups seek intervention in oil industry effort to preserve Arctic leases

The drillship Kulluck in the Beaufort Sea, 2012. Photo courtesy Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

The environmental advocacy community aims to have a voice as the Department of Interior addresses oil industry arguments that rights to drill for oil in Arctic seas were unlawfully taken away.

In a motion filed Wednesday with the Interior Board of Land Appeals, nine organizations asked for permission to intervene in two Royal Dutch Shell PLC subsidiaries’ efforts to force the Obama administration to extend exploration leases for five years.

“The agency was right to reject Shell’s extension request, and we look forward to helping it defend that decision,” Erik Grafe, an attorney at Earthjustice who is representing the groups, said.

Royal Dutch Shell announced on Sept. 28 that it would cease all exploration activities in the Alaskan Arctic. However, the oil giant had asked the Obama administration in July 2014 to grant a Suspension of Operations for its leases in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. In legal terms, an SOO is a pause in the duration of an exploration lease that allows it to be extended by a time equivalent to that lost when drilling is economically impractical.

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement then said on Oct. 16 that it had denied the SOO request by the two subsidiaries.BSEE found that Shell had failed to provide a “reasonable schedule” of exploration resumption.

As a general rule, companies can retain marine exploration leases only if they are actively engaged in an effort to find and extract energy resources.

Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc. and Shell Offshore Inc. filed an appeal of the BSEE decision with IBLA, the department’s panel of administrative judges, on Dec. 15. The subsidiaries have not yet filed a statement of the reasons they argue justify a reversal of BSEE’s decision.

The Beaufort and Chukchi leases are due to expire in 2017 and 2020.

Conoco-Phillips Co., another giant in the energy industry, has also asked IBLA to force the administration to grant it an SOO for its Arctic leases.

House to vote on Senate-passed KXL bill next week

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote next week on whether to adopt the KXL pipeline bill approved by the Senate.

The chamber’s majority leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced Tuesday his intention to move the controversial proposal to President Barack Obama’s desk.

“Next week we will take up the Keystone pipeline as passed by the Senate and send it to the President’s desk,” McCarthy said during a press conference.

If the House, as expected, passes S.1 without changes, then Obama will soon be in a position to impose a promised veto of the legislation.

Senate votes approval of KXL pipeline bill

The U.S. Senate approved Thursday the contentious bill to cut the President out of the process of deciding whether to authorize the KXL oil pipeline.

The vote followed two more days dedicated, in part, to debate on a series of amendments to the bill.

Nearly all of those amendments failed to reach the 60-vote threshold for adoption.

Senators voted on about a dozen amendments this week, following a successful filibuster of S.1 by minority Democrats late last week, and several of them implicated the nation’s environmental policy:

• A  proposal by Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., to assure that communities along the pipeline route are notified of the risks of leaks or ruptures was defeated, 37 ayes to 67 nos.
• Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., sought to require a certification by federal pipeline regulators that they have adequate resources to assure safety; it was beaten back by Republicans, 40-58.
• An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to provide tax rebates for solar energy systems failed on a 40-58 vote.
• An attempt by Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to force the removal of the lesser prairie chicken from the federal list of endangered and threatened species was voted down, 54-44.
• Montana GOP Sen. Steve Daines offered an amendment that would have forced presidents to obtain the approval of state governors and legislatures before designating national monuments; it failed, 50-47.
• An amendment by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., that would have put the Senate on record as recognizing the impacts of climate change on the nation’s infrastructure was voted down, 47-51.
• Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, proposed to end wilderness study area status for all areas not designated by Congress as wilderness within one year of being considered; that amendment was rejected on a 50-48 vote.
• Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., offered an amendment that would have permanently re-authorized appropriations into the Land and Water Conservation Fund; that amendment lost by one vote, 59-39.
• An effort by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., to include in the bill a federal renewable energy standard was defeated, 45-53.

After debate and votes on all amendments, Democrats again sought to delay a vote on the merits. This time they were unsuccessful, as the Senate shut off debate with a 62-35 vote for cloture.

Democrats Michael Bennet of Colorado, Thomas Carper of Delaware, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Joseph Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, and Mark Warner of Virginia voted with all of the chamber’s Republicans to move to a final vote on the bill.

The final vote mirrored that margin, with the same Democratic senators voting with the majority GOP.

S.1 now moves back to the House of Representatives, where Republican Speaker John Boehner of Ohio will have to decide whether to ask that chamber to vote to approve the amendments approved by the Senate or, instead, send the different House and Senate versions to a conference committee.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesperson, reiterated Thursday that President Obama will veto any bill that attempts to deprive him of authority to decide whether to grant the permit necessary for a Canadian corporation to build the KXL pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border.

“[O]ur position on the Keystone legislation is well known,” Earnest said. “And if, in fact, the legislation that passed the House also passes the Senate, then the President won’t sign it.”