American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2017 - 91

small manufacturers come back."
However, warned Bill Polacek, who
heads a couple Pennsylvania manufacturers, the oil and gas industry's slump
of the past couple years has made some
potential employees gun-shy about working at companies with close ties to the
oil and gas patch. "People who made
great wages in the oil and gas industry
are now afraid to get back in," he reasoned.
"They lost their jobs and want stability.
As oil and gas have picked up, we are
hiring people. Their first question is
whether that is all we do, because they
have been burned. They are afraid that if
you serve only the oil and gas business,
it is hard to give them security."
As for whether Pennsylvania should
use incentives to attract companies, Fair
praised the state's labor costs and sales
taxes, but said its high corporate income
taxes and workers' compensation rates
were less appealing. On the subject of
tax incentives, Fair cited the legislature's
$700 million budget shortfall for this
year and projected $3 billion deficit for
2018.
"We have to be careful about revenue
when we look at incentives," he advised.
Mitchell mentioned that many of her
conversations with executives looking at
the area revealed they were acutely interested at the area's workforce and engineering talent. "We really can build on
our university relationships and those
strengths," she suggested. "We still have

Some potential employees are reluctant to work for manufacturers with close ties to the
oil and gas because they lost industry-related jobs during the downturn, warns JWF Industries and Environmental Tank & Container executive Bill Polacek (left), while fellow
panelists Petra Mitchell from Catalyst Connection and David Fair of SMC Business
Councils listen. Polacek, Mitchell and Fair participated in a manufacturing panel during
PIOGA's winter meeting, Feb. 1 at Pittsburgh's Rivers Casino.

a very skilled, very qualified manufacturing
workforce. With almost 100,000 people
employed in manufacturing, there is a
lot of historical knowledge."
The panel closed with a look at how
President Trump's election campaign had
emphasized revitalizing U.S. manufacturing and what that meant going forward.
"Manufacturing is cool again and that is
a wonderful thing," Fair considered.
Polacek called the Trump administration's friendlier attitude toward the private

sector reassuring. "There is more of a
sense of fairness in the regulatory system,"
he described.
He contrasted that with an example
of an Occupational Safety and Health
Administration inspection he experienced
during Obama's presidency. "OSHA did
a spot check at my facility and we came
out pretty clean, but still got fined. As
the guy was walking away, we heard him
say, 'We are going to find something.'
That is not fair."
❒

Industry Group Rips BOEM's Gulf EIS
WASHINGTON-A draft programmatic environmental impact statement
(DPEIS) on geological and geophysical
activities in the Gulf of Mexico is deeply
flawed, say four oil and gas industry
trade associations.
The criticism comes in comments submitted to the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management by the National Ocean Industries Association, American Petroleum
Institute, International Association of Geophysical Contractors, and Offshore Operators Committee. The group urges BOEM
to correct the DPEIS's shortcomings before
submitting a final version, and points to
what it calls a fundamental flaw regarding
the DPEIS use of an unrealistic scenario
in which G&G activities are projected to
result in supposed effects to marine mammals, despite the fact that BOEM admits
such impact estimates are unrealistic.
"The supposed adverse effects of this
worst-case hypothetical scenario then are
addressed in the DPEIS with burdensome
and unsupported mitigation measures.

This approach is contrary to both the
best available scientific information and
applicable law," the comments state.
According to the associations, the underlying technical analyses in several
sections of the DPEIS are almost impossible to review and understand. The groups
assert the document contains a substantial
amount of both conflicting and redundant
material, which is repeated in appendices
and in appendices to appendices.
As one example of contradiction, the
comments cite the assumptions and conclusions in Appendix D that go against the
main text and Appendix H, writing, "The
three sections on threshold criteria in these
three separate documents appear to have
been written by three different people who
did not view each other's work."
Marine Mammals
In its discussion of G&G's impacts on
marine animals, the associations say government and academic scientists have studied the potential effects for more than 40

years, and have concluded that any such
potential impacts are insignificant. BOEM
has reaffirmed this conclusion publically,
they note, adding the DPEIS fails to present
any evidence to counter that conclusion.
"The DPEIS's suggestion that such
impacts are 'moderate' (as opposed to
insignificant) is not supported by the best
available science, and is made possible
only by application of overly conservative
estimates that BOEM admits do not accurately reflect the actual anticipated impacts," the associations point out.
Many of the mitigation measures recommended in the DPEIS's alternatives
are economically and operationally infeasible, will impose serious burdens on
operators, and are unlikely to benefit protected species, the comments assert. The
associations add they support mitigation
measures that are grounded in the best
available science and consistent with practices proven to be effective and feasible.
"However, we cannot support mitigation
measures with no basis in fact or science,
MARCH 2017 91

American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2017

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