American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2017 - 115

When Alliance members visited Washington, he said, there were signs that the
White House also supported retaining intangible drilling costs and percentage depletion provisions in the tax code, he said.

Stephen Minick, vice president of
government affairs for the Texas
Association of Business, updates
the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers on the Texas Legislature,
pointing to the state's $5 billion
state deﬁcit as the session's major
challenge.

federal regulations increasingly imposed
Washington between state governments
and local municipalities without congressional approval. He added that 28 of the
29 Republican attorneys general signed
on to the letter.
A team led by Alliance President Alex
Mills traveled to Washington on Jan. 9
to meet the Texas congressional delegation,
Tintera said, and at the same time FRED
representatives met with members of the
Texas Legislature to secure state support.
The Texas House and Senate approved
joint resolutions affirming legislators'
support, he indicated.
"The resolutions urge the executive
branch and Congress to work in conjunction
with Texas to identify these federal regulations promulgated during the last eight
years, and to revise them, delegate them to
state agencies or eliminate them," he said.

Federal Concerns
Other Washington concerns include preserving the oil and gas industry's exemption
from the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and halting EPA's Waters of
the United States rule, Stevens listed.
"That RCRA exemption is a big deal
to this industry. If the industry lost that
hazardous waste exemption, instead of
going to 35,000 Class II injection wells
to dispose of water, operators may have
fewer than 1,000 Class I disposal wells
in the nation," he pointed out.
Stevens asserted the WOTUS rule was
another example of federal overreach,
and warned the regulations would affect
not only oil and gas activities, but the
construction and agricultural sectors as
well. In conjunction with other industry
groups, the Alliance continues to challenge
other federal measures that interfere with
adequate state provisions, including Spill
Prevention, Control and Countermeasure

plans and the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System, he said.
EPA's purview over the SPCC program
authorizes the agency to access private
properties across Texas, although state
agencies, including GLO, RRC and TCEQ,
already have similar regulations in place,
he noted. The impacts of the federal
NPDES program are similarly harmful,
Stevens pointed out. "NPDES is a really
big deal, particularly when you look at
recycling produced water. It is almost
impossible to get a discharge permit
through the EPA," Stevens said. "We
should bring both SPCC and NPDES
home to TCEQ and the RRC, and get
some commonsense regulations that will
allow those permits to move forward."
On the tax front, Tintera reported there
were indications President Trump was
moving ahead with plans for an extensive
overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service.

Statehouse News
When the Alliance held its annual
convention, Texas legislators were slightly
more than a month from the end of their
140-day session, Stevens related, and the
squabbles between the two chambers
were rising in intensity. Oil and gas associations threw their support between
two measures involving the RRC, he
said: one to finally complete the agency's
sunset review and the other to secure adequate commission funding.
The Texas House approved HB 1818,
which authorizes the RRC for 12 years,
and sent it to the Senate in early April,
he said, adding this was the third legislative
attempt in as many sessions to pass a
sunset bill. Stevens noted that, in addition
to seeing progress on getting the agency
reauthorized with a $165 billion budget
for the biennium, the Alliance supported
changes in how the RRC was funded.
"With this downturn, there has just
not been enough activity for the RRC to
maintain what it needs to be doing. The
commission is about 23 percent off its
budget, and the oil and gas industry
wanted to implement that budget change,"
Stevens described. "The new funding
mechanism is based on industry activity
and all of the fees and production taxes
that the industry pays. The Oil Field
Cleanup Fund was expanded to a cleanup and regulatory fund."
Stevens pointed to Representatives
Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, and Larry

The country and western barbecue that closed out the ﬁrst day of the Texas Alliance of
Energy Producers' 2017 annual convention attracted more than 2,000. Food and drinks
for the event were provided by the Mavericks of Wichita Falls, Tx.

JUNE 2017 115

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2017

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