American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2017 - 30

until the administration could reconsider it,
notes an e-mail alert by IPAA President and
Chief Executive Officer Barry Russell.
"The reconsideration action will address
two compelling issues in the regulations,"
Russell explains. "The first involves
whether there are alternative fugitiveemission methods that can be used instead
of the costly, inefficient requirements of the
regulations, which differ from state regulations that address the same emissions.
"The second could be more important,"
he continues. "It opens the opportunity to
revisit EPA's removal of its proposed exclusion of low-production wells from the
final regulation without seeking any comments on that action."
Fuzzy Math
In the long term, Fuller suggests, the energy EO's requirement for a robust and
transparent calculus behind the social
cost of carbon may prove extremely significant. "If you start pulling back on using that to justify regulations, it really can
change the cost-effectiveness calculations," he reasons. "Skewing the social cost
of GHGs can conjure and inflate a rule's
actual benefits."
The Obama administration's metrics for
the social costs of carbon may be likened
to a "magic black box," Fuller characterizes. "You put a number in, you get a number out, but the criteria never were subjected to strong review," he compares.
Sgamma indicates she is especially
gratified the EO initiates another look at
the BLM and EPA methane rules, as
well as the BLM fracturing rule. However, she emphasizes, rescinding the presidential memo on endangered species
habitat mitigation is especially welcome
because the EO eliminates it without
need for any further protocol.
"Under a net conservation gain requirement, people could not produce food, fuel
or fiber unless they not only mitigated their
impacts, but went above and beyond
them," she describes. "That standard was
not set in any law and was a blank check
to make agencies require companies to do
whatever they wanted. Should the acreage
requirement be four acres of mitigation for
every one that is impacted? What about 77to-1, or 300-to-1? We literally have seen
some documents floated that set it as high
as 300-to-1."
A similarly nebulous cloud hung over
the Obama administration's NEPA review
requirements, Fuller says, which expanded the criteria for considering environmental impacts to incorporate projects' broader impacts, which for oil and gas projects
included their upstream and downstream
implications and climate influence.
"Environmentalists have been filing le30 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

gal challenges if a permit's environmental assessment fails to consider implications beyond the project's immediate
scope to include all the climate factors,"
he describes. "The effort was pretty aggressive to try to force an assessment for a
pipeline, for instance, to not only consider the pipeline component, but also to speculate how many more gas wells might be
drilled to fill that pipeline, and how much
gas might be burned when it got to market. Now that there is no federal directive
telling agencies to do that, it considerably
weakens that argument in court."
Nominees Needed
Unfortunately, the Trump administration's efforts to untie a host of intricate regulatory knots may prove superficial and
short lived if the executive branch continues to drag its feet on placing political appointees, Sgamma warns. "Why is it taking so long?" she poses. "The Senate does
not even have nominees before it. People
need to start moving through the process;
the agencies need to be staffed. None of
the hard work in these agencies is going
to get done without very smart, hard-working people."
That is because, Sgamma emphasizes,
many encouraging aspects of Trump's EOs
may not survive legal challenge without
significant, legally defensible followthrough. "Taking down these regulations
is a deliberative process that has to be
backed by pointing out specifically why
they are unlawful," she details. "If the
Trump administration truly is going to take
down the climate change edifice, it needs
to do so in a very deliberative process that
includes showing why EPA's endangerment finding for carbon dioxide was
based on flawed, incomplete science and
bad economics."
Therefore, Sgamma advocates, the administration must dig deep into the regulations' underlying calculations and assumptions. "None of this is impossible, but
if these things are incorrect, it takes a lot
of time and thought to show why," she considers. "It is not a slam-dunk. It is not easy,
but it is worth doing."
Further Developments
Other news in Washington includes
EPA's April 11 request that the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit delay oral arguments in nine
states' lawsuit against the 70 parts per billion National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone, which the agency released
in 2015. Press accounts note that the
court granted the request, but EPA must
file status reports every 90 days.
The Bush administration set the previous 75 ppb standard in 2008.

"EPA wants an opportunity to consider whether it wishes to take a different
tack," Fuller describes. "There are litigants
on both sides of the standard: Some environmentalists and states argue it is too weak
and should be 60-65 ppb. The industry and
other states say it should be left at 75."
Other recent developments emanating
from the executive branch deal with the
regulatory reform task forces established
by an earlier executive order. Fuller notes
federal agencies are to submit progress reports this spring, and that the administration has opened a docket to receive comments on regulatory reform.
He says IPAA will submit comments on
that subject, and has done so already on the
Trump administration's permit-streamlining proposal for American manufacturing.
Fuller says IPAA hopes the president will
take a broader view of the subject.
"(The order) relied on a narrow definition of American manufacturing," he explains. "It basically was limited to things
such as refineries, chemical plants, steel
mills, and things such as that. But it is important to look at more than those industrial classifications, because if you do not
have energy to power manufacturing,
you still have a problem. That means looking at the permit streamlining upstream."
In Congress
Not all early spring activity in Washington with the potential to affect oil and gas
producers emanated from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Some originated on Capitol Hill.
However, there was no news on one legislative initiative, a Congressional Review Act resolution to repeal BLM's venting and flaring rule. The House passed HJR
36 on Feb. 3 (AOGR, March 2017, pg. 34),
but as of late April, the measure still languished in the Senate.
Although supporters need only a simple majority to move the legislation,
Fuller observes, the vote remains very
tight. Some Republicans may be reluctant
to support it because they fear environmentalist backlash, Fuller reasons, while others seem concerned about a negative impact to federal revenues.
He cites a key flaw in the second objection. "In cases where methane capture
is not economic or feasible, a key way to
meet the requirements is to curtail crude
oil production, which curtails revenue,"
Fuller observes. "Because it never will be
economic to capture that gas, the government only can lose royalties, but never
gains any in that scenario."
According to the Texas Independent
Producers & Royalty Owners Association,
April also saw the House pass a couple
SEE POLICIES PAGE 39



American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - May 2017

Contents
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