Marcellus Natural Gas Production Continues to Exceed Expectations

Marcellus natural gas production continues to surprise even the experts, reaching 12 billion cubic feet per day according to this report in the Daily Mail.  Oil  and gas industry employment is up, as Phil Kabler reports here. Not all the news is good, though.  Jared Hunt, Daily Mail business writer, reports on the diminished  likelihood of getting an ethane cracker in the region.

US Supreme Court to Hear Greenhouse Gas Rule Challenge

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of Texas v. EPA, in which the D.C. Circuit Court approved EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations.  Numerous industrial organizations and states had challenged the D.C. Court’s upholding of the Endangerment Finding, in which EPA concluded that GHGs from mobile sources represent a danger to U.S. health and welfare, and the Timing and Tailoring Rules, in which EPA described how it would regulate GHGs for stationary sources under the Clean Air Act.  The two primary objections raised by industry were that EPA’s conclusion that GHGs are a danger (and therefore a pollutant to be regulated) is  unsupported scientifically, and that EPA’s conclusion that GHGs are a pollutant under the mobile source program should not  automatically result in GHG regulations for  stationary sources under the New Source Review program.

The Supreme  Court has decided to  consider only the very narrow, but very important, question of “whether EPA permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases.” EPA has taken the position that once a pollutant is regulated under the Clean Air Act’s mobile source rule, it is regulated under other portions of the  Act as well, including New Source Review.  The Supreme Court will now tell us whether that is correct, or whether EPA’s GHG regulations are limited to mobile sources, at least until EPA would initiate rulemaking to impose GHG limits on stationary sources.

EPA recently set GHG New Source Performance Standards for electric generators that would essentially prevent construction of new coal-fired generating plants, and is presently preparing to set GHG standards for existing sources as well.   The Supreme Court decision will determine whether EPA has authority to adopt those rules.

The Supreme Court’sorder is at http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101513zor_4g25.pdf

ORSANCO Delays Mixing Zone Prohibition

ORSANCO (the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission)  has elected to delay its prohibition on mixing zones for bioaccumulative substances until October 16, 2015.  The prohibition had been scheduled to go into effect on October 16, 2013 for the following substances:

Bioaccumulative Chemicals of Concern

Lindane	Mirex
Hexachlorocyclohexane	Hexachlorobenzene
alpha-Hexachlorocyclohexane	Chlordane
beta-Hexachlorocyclohexane	DDD
delta-Hexachlorocyclohexane	DDT
Hexachlorobutadiene	DDE
Photomirex	Octachlorostyrene
1,2,4,5-Tetrachlorobenzene	PCBs
Toxaphene	2,3,7,8-TCDD
Pentachlorobenzene	Mercury
1,2,3,4-Tetrachlorobenzene	Dieldrin

During the extension of the mixing zone prohibition, dischargers will be expected to be working on reductions in bioaccumulative substances.

Ken Ward's article on the Commission's action is here. 

The High Cost Of Renewable Credits

Command and control economies just don't work.  Congress requires refiners to blend gasoline with ethanol, but right now  gasoline consumption is dropping  and  there are relatively few cars that can use more than a 10% ethanol blend,so  refiners can't use all the ethanol they are supposed to.  To compensate, they  have to buy credits - i.e., pay a penalty for failure to use enough ethanol.  That gets tacked onto the price of a gallon of gas.

Jeff Macke of Breakout summarizes it this way.

 The vast majority — around 90% — of American cars don't work with an ethanol blend over 10%. When the ethanol requirements continued to rise while demand for end product fell, the refiners were reduced to buying and selling RINs or Renewable Identification Numbers, which are, in effect, credits that allow refiners to meet the terms of the 2005 Clean Air Act without producing fuel that is unsuitable for most cars.

So as demand for gas falls, refiners need to buy more RINs. From just pennies-per-gallon in January, RINs had soared over $1.40 by last summer. Lutz says as much as 75% of the additional cost was passed along to the consumer.

 Therefore, in an attempt to force cleaner burning fuels into the marketplace, the EPA created a policy that ended up artificially inflating the cost of refining gas when demand fell. So the refiners and consumers got gouged for not burning enough fossil fuels. Only the government could make refinery companies look sympathetic.

See the story here.  The good news is that Macke believes EPA will provide some relief on  renewable fuel credits, dropping the price of gasoline to perhaps less than $3 a gallon.

West Virginia DEP Schedules Training For Electronic DMR Submissions

The state Division of Water and Waste Management has free training scheduled for the following dates for the regulated community and consultants who are required to submit certain water resources permit applications and discharge monitoring reporting (DMR) electronically to the DWWM. The training will be conducted at the state Department of Environmental Protection headquarters, located at 601 57th St, SE, Charleston, WV   25304.

The dates are:

September 26, 2013 Thursday

ePermitting  10:00 am to 12:00 pm

September 26, 2013 Thursday

eReporting 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm

October 7, 2013 Monday

ePermitting  10:00 am to 12:00 pm

October 7, 2013

Monday                                                               

eReporting 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm

October 31, 2013 Thursday

ePermitting 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

October 31, 2013 Thursday

eReporting 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm

To reserve a spot for the above training, contact either Mavis Layton at Mavis.L.Layton@wv.gov, (304) 926-0499, ext. 1025; or Megan Smith at Megan.D.Smith@wv.gov, (304) 926-0499, ext. 1281. E-mail is preferable.

                                                          

The WV Environmental Training Center is hosting DEP Training in the Bridgeport area around the end of November/early December 2013 instead of Morgantown as previously mentioned.  Check the wvetc.org website calendar in a month or so for actual date and sign up with them.  

  

District Court Interprets NPDES Permit Shield

Judge Chambers of the USDC for the Southern Dist of WV recently ruled, in a case pertaining to discharges from a surface coal mine, that the mine (owned by Marfork Coal Co.) was in violation of its NPDES permit if it discharged selenium in excess of the state water quality criteria, even though it had no permit limit for selenium.  As part of the permit application process, the mine had tested for selenium and found it at a level too low to qualify for an effluent limit, based on a reasonable potential analysis.  Sampling done by environmental groups at a later time allegedly revealed selenium discharges in excess of state criteria, and the environmentalists brought a citizen suit under the Clean Water Act, claiming that Marfork had violated its permit.

Marfork relied upon the permit shield that is found in the federal (CWA Section 402(k)) and state (W. Va. Code 22-11-6(2)) acts. The Court ruled that the permit shield provided no protection against a citizen suit alleging a violation of water quality standards, even where the agency had been provided selenium data at the time of the permit application, and had rejected effluent limits for selenium.  The Court decided that the permit required compliance with water quality standards, and the presence of any pollutant in excess of water quality criteria  (numeric or narrative, presumably) was a violation of the permit, even if no numeric permit limit had been placed in the permit. 

One  crucial difference between coal permits and other NPDES permits is that the  coal NPDES regulations have a provision that requires dischargers to comply with water quality standards, and the industrial NPDES regulations do not.  That may provide industrial facilities with a more expansive permit shield. 

The case is Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition v. Marfork Coal Company, Case 5:12-CV-01464 (Aug 23, 2103).  Thanks to Bob McLusky for bringing this to my attention.

Great Kanawha River Cleanup September 14, 2013

The 24th annual Great Kanawha River Cleanup, sponsored by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, is scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 14.

Cleanup sites include Kanawha Falls at Glen Ferris; Magic Island in Charleston; Winfield Beach/Locks; Daniel Boone Park in Charleston; and Roadside Park in St. Albans.

Those wishing to volunteer are urged to register with the DEP so enough supplies can be obtained for each cleanup location. The DEP’s REAP program (Rehabilitation Environmental Action Plan) will supply bags and gloves for volunteers and will arrange for trash to be hauled away.

All volunteers also will receive a T-shirt.

Last year, local citizens collected two tons of debris and trash from the Kanawha River’s banks. Over the last five years, volunteers have removed more than 30 tons of trash from the river and around 400 discarded tires.

For more information or to register to volunteer, contact Travis Cooper at 304-926-0499 ext. 1117 or email:

Travis.L.Cooper@wv.gov