Oil and Gas Blog Archives

11
December

The Trump Administration Is Poised to Gut Environmental Review. What’s at Stake?

In the coming weeks, the Trump administration is poised to make some major changes to how much—or more likely, how little—environmental review and public input is required for federal projects, including for roads and bridges, oil and gas development, and pipeline construction.
In yet another handout to Trump’s corporate donors and oil, gas and coal industry allies, the administration is expected to gut implementation of the only law that requires the federal government to consider the environmental impacts of its actions and gives the public and communities a voice in federal decision-making. Thirty industry groups—including the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute—recently sent a letter to the Trump administration asking it to “expeditiously proceed” with its changes to the law’s implementation. That 50-year-old bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), has never been under such grave threat.
Simply put, these upcoming proposed changes could have extreme implications for every single federal project, action, and decision—and how those actions impact our health and communities.

Why Trump, Neumayr and the administration are targeting this law
Under the guise of “reform” and “streamlining,” White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chairwoman Mary Neumayr and the rest of the Trump administration are readying to make it easier for companies to steamroll neighborhoods and pollute our air and water. Because only Congress can amend the actual NEPA statute, in June 2018, the CEQ announced its attempt at the next best thing: It planned to reconsider the regulations that direct federal agencies on how to implement NEPA. Since they were written more than four decades ago in 1978, these regulations have only been amended twice for minor reasons, including once to update CEQ’s mailing address. But now, the administration is in its review phase for changes to these regulations before publicly proposing what could be significant changes, given Trump’s focus on attacking environmental protections to benefit polluting industries.
At present, the NEPA regulations cover the following categories (among others), which provide some insight as to why the Trump administration could target these regulations whole cloth to achieve its anti-environmental agenda:

The types and sizes of projects that trigger review in the first place
The scope of impacts from projects that are considered in the environmental review process, including to cultural sites, water, air, wildlife, climate and communities
The actual review procedures and deliverables (the Trump administration has already set page limits, and some agencies have set a time cap for review)
Avenues for public input in the federal decision-making process
Which categories of projects are excluded from review

By targeting this law, Trump and his team will likely weaken these regulations—allowing his cabinet and corporate pals to unilaterally sidestep communities, public health, worker safety, and environmental protections. In addition to damaging Americans’ access to clean air and water, these proposed changes have the potential to be the most significant action the Trump administration takes to limit the government’s response to climate change.
So, what’s really at stake? In short, hamstringing NEPA could threaten our health, environment and communities—and our ability to adjust to the impacts of climate change.

Our clean air, clean water, and wildlife
The Trump administration’s attempted attacks on NEPA would be a scam to weaken protections for clean air and clean water, public lands, and wildlife, making it easier for project sponsors to bulldoze communities and decimate natural habitats without proper review and input.
Right now, NEPA requires that agencies consider a project or permit’s impacts to “the human environment,” including air quality, water sources, and public health. By changing how impacts are measured, the Trump administration could weaken these protections by directing agencies to only consider impacts on a small area around the project; limiting the types of impacts (air, water, wildlife, and toxics) that an agency must consider; or drastically reduce the possible categories of projects that are eligible for environmental review. If the administration were to reduce the types of projects that get reviewed, this would allow for many more projects to proceed without information from the public or analysis of how the project will impact cultural sites, air, or water. Drillers and developers might be able to pollute drinking water or emit toxins into the air near communities without any kind of consideration in the planning process.
For example, in Florida in 2000, the Army Corps of Engineers reviewed permits to mine limestone in the Lake Belt region of Miami-Dade, Florida—and their analysis of impacts to water was insufficient, failing to fulfill the requirements of NEPA. As a result, the review failed to consider how the mining could impact nearby wetlands that provide drinking water to more than 1 million Floridians. Opponents offered a legal challenge—alleging that the Corps had not followed the full review process required by NEPA—but by then, a carcinogen from the mining process had already leaked into nearby water supplies. Ultimately, after a judge cancelled the permits, the Corps conducted a more in-depth environmental analysis of the project—resulting in a process change to protect drinking water.

Communities’ input on impacts in their own neighborhoods
One of the ways in which NEPA has most benefited the American public, apart from protecting our clean air and clean water, is by giving public citizens and communities a voice in the federal decision-making process. During the review process, the government must clearly lay out its alternative plans and accept any and all public comment on these plans. Agencies must respond to all comments received from the public in their final decision, allowing for careful consideration and even opportunities for public redress, if necessary. But that wasn’t always the case. Before NEPA existed, federal infrastructure dollars were used to bulldoze vulnerable communities who were given no say in the matter—in particular, communities of color.
For example, in 1956, Minnesota planned to construct a major highway with federal dollars—I-94—right through St. Paul’s historically African American neighborhood of Rondo. Even after the community organized the Rondo-St. Anthony Improvement Association to make their voice heard in the fight against the highway, federal dollars still greenlit the bulldozing of 650 homes and 100 African American-owned businesses. This was because, at the time, the Rondo community had no other avenue for recourse. This could be the kind of future the Trump administration envisions for Americans, if his administration attempts to limit public input by shortening public comment periods; decreasing the number of opportunities in a review process where communities can provide input; and changing how public input is considered by agencies.

Planning for climate change
Finally, the Trump administration’s undoing of NEPA could severely exacerbate climate change—a crisis Trump refuses to recognize. Already, the Trump administration tried to undo any consideration of future climate impacts from federal decision-making by removing mentions of climate change from agency websites and rolling back guidance to agencies on how to consider it. The Trump administration has already lost in court more than 12 times for not considering the climate impacts of its actions—for example, when leasing land for oil and gas development and mining. These regulatory reforms to NEPA could therefore likely be the administration’s effort to override these court losses and barrel forward with their misguided “energy dominance” agenda. Yet, without the authority to consider climate change in federal decisions, there could be serious impacts on the government’s ability to build climate-resilient infrastructure and climate-prepared communities.

For example, in November 2018, a Montana federal judge halted the Trump administration’s permitting for the Keystone XL pipeline, finding that the administration had ignored the climate impacts that would come from building the pipeline when conducting its rushed environmental review. In fact, in his opinion, Judge Brian Morris of the U.S. District Court for Montana wrote that the Trump administration “simply discarded prior factual findings related to climate change to support its course reversal.”
Additionally, a recent CAP analysis found that the proposal from Trump’s Interior Department to expand offshore drilling could lead to total greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 10 billion cars, which is nine times greater than the number of cars on the road worldwide today. The Trump administration did not calculate or consider the emissions that would follow from this action. That an outside group’s analyses of federal agency actions were even necessary shows just how critical it is that agencies consider climate change in their project planning as well as how devastating the impacts could be if ignored.

Conclusion
If the Trump administration were really interested in “streamlining” environmental review, there are plenty of other options already available. For example, Congress has provided sufficient authority to speed environmental review through permitting reforms presented in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, and the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act. However, the administration has not fully implemented those authorities, which include a federal permitting dashboard for tracking project process and increasing staff and staff training for agency employees implementing NEPA.
Definitively, however, sacrificing our clean air, clean water, public health, and even our future is not the right choice. There’s too much at stake if the Trump administration goes forward with rewriting how agencies should conduct environmental review. These changes are arguably more sweeping than any other anti-environmental action that the Trump administration has taken; it’s this administration’s last opportunity to undermine the government’s ability to prepare for climate change and protect communities. Americans deserve better than a scam to sell out our clean air, clean water, and safe climate to Trump’s corporate allies.
Sally Hardin is the deputy director of the energy and environment War Room at the Center for American Progress. Claire Moser is the director of the energy and environment War Room at the Center for American Progress.

The authors would like to thank Will Beaudoin for his contributions to this column.

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8
October

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Bureau of Land Management Headquarters to Move in with Chevron. Will They Share a Bed?

Congress has been severely vexed by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s rush to dismantle and relocate the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to his home state, and he has refused to provide details about cost and rationale. With suspicion swirling that it is simply a power grab to get career staff out of the way, hobble the agency, and consolidate control of the budget process, legislators have been particularly keen to know his motivation.

The recent news about the location of the new office in Grand Junction, Colorado, has certainly helped answer that question.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency responsible for multiple-use management of nearly 250 million acres of public land and 700 million acres of underground minerals, the largest land manager in the country, will share a building with Chevron and oil and gas lobbying organizations.
Par for the course
While this has shocked observers, it is par for the course during the Trump administration—a symbolic capstone to the administration’s blatant efforts to hand industry the keys to public lands.

That may be true, but it sure doesn’t make it ok.

The last time the Interior Department got this openly (and literally) cozy with industry was in the years leading up to the Minerals Management Service (MMS) scandal of 2008, when authorities discovered that regulators were doing drugs, exchanging favors, and having sex with their industry counterparts. There were literally no boundaries between industry and the agency—during the ensuing investigation one of the agency executives said “Obviously, we’re all oil industry.”

The ethical lapses of government staff in this instance were flagrant, and the dismissive attitude toward ethics rules was disturbingly similar to what we’re seeing among Interior Department’s political leadership today, so it’s not surprising that we might see similar tendencies.
Complete capture by industry
The phenomenon in which industry has direct access to regulators who promote industry interests over those of the public is known as “regulatory capture.” It is frequently characterized by a revolving door of personnel and often bribery in the form of gifts and favors. It is also really, really hard to fix. Even though the MMS was broken up and reorganized during the Obama administration—which separated the environmental enforcement branch, the offshore oil and gas leasing branch, and the revenue collection branch into separate organizations—the revolving door remains.

I saw this firsthand. When the Trump administration reassigned me in retaliation for blowing the whistle on their climate change neglect, they sent me to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR), one of the three agencies created from the ashes of the MMS. While there I learned two things: a) I know nothing about auditing and b) many staff members have long industry resumes. I have deep admiration for the ONRR executives I worked with, but there is no denying the industry presence in the workforce.

Once regulatory capture infects an agency, it is nearly impossible to eradicate because an agency is understandably tempted to hire people who know the industry from the inside. At the very least, it remains subject to “cultural capture,” in which the agency comes to think like the industry it is charged with regulating.

So now BLM, the onshore equivalent of the MMS, is drifting ever closer to the warm embrace of the industry that wants unfettered access to public lands, our lands. Even if they somehow manage to avoid regulatory capture—and many observers say it’s far too late for that—there is no question that sharing a building will turbo-charge the existing cultural capture. It’s telling that Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, who took political credit for the relocation, has received more oil money for his 2020 campaign than any other US Senator.

Ironically, and laughably, BLM spokesman Chris Tollefson said the move will be effective because it will pull the agency away from all the special interests in Washington, DC—presumably referring to Congress and the other federal agencies that historically partner with BLM. This is just as nonsensical as their assertion that the move will improve operations among BLM offices—none of which are a direct flight from Grand Junction, Colorado, where the new HQ will be located.
A move right out of the Disinformation Playbook
If you think this is an aberration and not part of the administration’s playbook, look no further than the Union of Concerned Scientists excellent Disinformation Playbook and scroll down to play #5, The Fix: Manipulate government officials or processes to inappropriately influence policy. This headquarters relocation is right out of the playbook—and we can expect to see industry pulling the BLM strings more vigorously in the near future.

Secretary Bernhardt has failed to offer compelling justification for the chaotic relocation, and his attempts have been transparently feeble (is it really more effective to have the Congressional affairs staff in Reno, Nevada?). Tellingly, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has praised such relocations as a great tool for getting career staff to quit. That said, the new address for the BLM says all we need to know about the administration’s primary motivation.

Bernhardt is not doing this for the good of the agency, or the public interest. He’s doing it for his industry sponsors. They are delighted that he is delivering the agency into their hands while Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell prevents Congressional oversight by sitting on his. Rather than quietly watch the concept of public service get turned on its head, Representative Raul Grijalva and the House Natural Resources Committee that he chairs are asking hard questions.

It’s time that Secretary Bernhardt takes responsibility for his actions and provides straightforward answers.

Joel Clement is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the public face of the UCS Science Protection Project, through which federal scientists may confidentially report political interference in government science. Mr. Clement served in the US Department of the Interior (DOI) before becoming a whistleblower in 2017. He now works to expose political interference in science from the Trump administration and Congress.

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17
September

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Dangerous oil and gas industry exemption slipped into highway bill

A landmark five-year, $287 billion highway bill moving in the Senate contains a poison pill provision that must be eliminated. The measure — which would be the largest highway legislation in history — is noteworthy for its inclusion of the first climate title in a surface transportation bill. The climate provisions are an important step toward addressing the urgent need to reduce transportation emissions and invest in infrastructure engineered to be more resilient to the increasingly severe effects of climate change.

Unfortunately, buried in this 510-page bill is an unrelated toxic provision that would establish a sweeping environmental exemption for thousands of natural gas, oil and wastewater pipelines — known as “gathering lines” — compressors and pumps on federal or Indian lands.

The provision would exclude such facilities from environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). If this provision becomes law, these pipelines could be built without public input or sound environmental review meant to analyze their potential impacts.

In the past, gathering lines often were located in sparsely populated areas and were only inches in diameter, in contrast to big transmission pipelines (e.g., the Keystone pipeline) that carry oil or natural gas across the country and are several feet in diameter. But gathering lines are getting larger — much larger. Producers today are employing gathering lines up to 36 inches in diameter with maximum operating pressures that rival transmission lines.

And the number of gathering lines across the country has grown as well, with hundreds of thousands of miles in the ground today. There are more than 6,000 miles of gathering lines in the state of Texas alone. Yet the vast majority of gathering lines are poorly regulated. As Pasadena, Texas Fire Chief Lanny Armstrong stated: “No matter the size, pressure or operator, all of these pipelines carry hazardous materials that can pose serious risks to people and the environment.”

In September 2018, a natural gas gathering line exploded outside a home in Midland, Texas, killing a 3-year-old girl and badly burning her sister and parents. In 2015, a gathering line carrying natural gas exploded in south Texas — “melting portions of a roadway and power lines.” In 2010, a work crew hit a gathering line in a remote area of the Texas panhandle, killing two workers. And in 2013, a rupture and fire in east Texas caused the evacuation of a dozen homes.

As the impacts of climate change continue to worsen, unregulated gathering lines face an increasing risk of failure because of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has issued multiple advisory bulletins to operators, warning about extreme weather events and their consequences.

As long as we keep producing oil and gas, there is a critical need to reduce methane emissions from production fields caused by flaring, venting and leaking. But without careful environmental review under NEPA, the public has no way to know whether a proposed pipeline project will be the most effective approach to reduce methane emissions or whether environmental, health and safety risks have been thoroughly analyzed and understood. In addition, the public will not have an opportunity to provide input. Gathering lines and field compressors present significant environmental, health and safety risks. When on federal or Indian land — some of our most treasured natural resources — they should not be excluded from NEPA review.

Congress should stop this fossil fuel industry giveaway hidden in an unrelated surface transportation bill. Letting it proceed risks irreparable harm to communities and to our environment.

This article originally appeared in The Hill. Amy Mall is a senior policy analyst in the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Prior to joining NRDC in 2001, she worked in the private sector and in county, state and federal government, including the White House National Economic Council and the U.S. Senate. Follow on Twitter @NRDC.

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23
April

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Alaskans Emphatically Tell the Army Corps “No Pebble Mine”

More than 900 people gathered to oppose the Pebble Mine yesterday in Anchorage, Alaska. Hundreds rallied outside the Dena’ina convention center where inside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held the last of several public hearings on its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Pebble Mine—a gold and copper mine proposed at the headwaters of the world’s greatest wild salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.

“Salmon Forever, Pebble Never” was just one of many anti-Pebble chants heard at the rally, which energized around 500 people outside the convention center demonstrating to protect Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine—and the Corps’ reckless rush to permit it.

Inside, indigenous subsistence users, commercial fishermen, sportsmen, scientists, conservationists, business owners, bear-lovers, and concerned citizens testified against both the behemoth Pebble Mine and the Corps’ woefully inadequate draft EIS.

People spoke from the heart, beseeching the Corps to prioritize their communities, culture, lives, and livelihoods over the profits of a foreign mining company.

“Our people have been saying ‘no Pebble Mine’ for over a decade,” said Second Chief for Curyung Tribal Council and Director of Natural Resources for Bristol Bay Native Association Gayla Hoseth. “We are sick and tired of the greed and the lies. Yet we are here again to comment on an inadequate draft EIS based on Pebble’s incomplete application to build a mine in our pristine environment, because we want to protect this last wild salmon run on earth as it exists today, for this generation and for future generations.”

Many commenters echoed that sentiment, noting our obligation to protect Bristol Bay for future generations.

“I’m a fifth-generation commercial fisherman,” said Emily Taylor, a 15-year-old who fishes in the Naknek-Kvichak district every summer. “And the permit I now hold once belonged to my great, great grandmother.” She wants to pass the fishing tradition onto her grandchildren but fears the Pebble Mine will destroy their heritage. “Do you think they’ll ask me about this day? What I did to stop it? I don’t want that to become my reality,” she said, adding that her people had been fighting to stop Pebble her entire life.

Numerous commenters focused on the inadequacies of the draft EIS.

Daniel Schindler, Ph.D. and Professor of Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, described the draft DEIS as junk: “The reality is, if you put garbage into [an EIS] process, you get garbage out of a process. And what we’re looking at here with the Draft EIS is one that distinctly underestimates risks to fish, to water, and to people. It is junk. The draft EIS should be thrown out.”

Other scientists described the draft EIS in similarly negative terms, going so far as to use descriptors such as “lies,” “fantasy,” “fiction,” and “slipshod.”

The Army Corps of Engineers did not allow everyone to testify publicly and closed public comment at 8 pm sharp. The clock ran out on dozens of people still waiting to speak—including two small children who skipped dinner to wait hours for their turn. Instead of listening to everyone who showed up to speak, the Corps directed the public to provide written comments online.

This is just another—albeit egregious—example of how the Corps is unnecessarily fast-tracking the permitting process at the expense of interested stakeholders. The process is broken and the fix is in.

The Corps is accepting public comment until May 30th. Make your voice heard today.

I attended the hearing and gave the following testimony:

My name is Taryn Kiekow Heimer and I am here on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council and our more than 3 million members and activists.

In the last 5 years alone, tailings dams have failed across Brazil, Canada, the United States, and Mexico, killing hundreds of people and leaving a dead zone of polluted water.

Mining companies and regulators alike promised it would never happen. We’re now hearing the same empty promises from Pebble.

The law requires the Army Corps to do more than simply take Pebble at its word.

But the DEIS fails to do so—just like all those failed tailings dams across the world.

First, the DEIS fails to meet the basic requirements of NEPA and the Clean Water Act by fast-tracking the permitting process; by underestimating the long-term risks to people, water, wildlife and fish; by discounting Pebble’s unprecedented water treatment plan; and by ignoring impacts associated with fully developing the Pebble Mine, including the mining district in Bristol Bay that Pebble would ignite.
Second, the DEIS fails the people of Bristol Bay—who overwhelmingly oppose the Pebble Mine. It’s ignored numerous requests to pause the permitting process and extend the public comment period. People in Bristol Bay provided heart-felt testimony asking the Corps to prioritize their communities, culture, lives and livelihoods over the Pebble Mine. How can the Corps make a positive public interest determination when the public overwhelming rejects the mine?
Third, the DEIS fails to ask the biggest question of all: whether Pebble’s mine plan is even feasible. Pebble hasn’t submitted an economic feasibility study like all other mining companies have done before permitting. When the Corps asked for this information in an RFI, Pebble said it couldn’t disclose it without running afoul of Canadian Securities regulations prohibiting investor fraud and misrepresentation. Richard Borden, a 23-year veteran from Rio Tinto with experience in permitting more than 50 mines, did the math and found not only that Pebble, as proposed, is economically infeasible but that is has a net present value of negative $3 billion. Why is this project even going through permitting? A project that isn’t feasible by definition does not meet the LEDPA standard.
Finally, the DEIS fails to address what concerns people the most—a catastrophic dam failure.

Think of what a Pebble Mine disaster would do to Bristol Bay—what it would do to the communities who rely on subsistence fishing, the $1.5 billion annual commercial fishery that supports 14,000 jobs, and the people, businesses, and wildlife that rely on the prolific salmon runs.

We cannot afford to fail in Bristol Bay. I urge you to do the right thing. Listen to the people who would be impacted most, revise this DEIS, and ultimately deny Pebble’s permit application.

Thank you.
Taryn Keikow Heimer is Deputy Director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s (NRDC) Marine Mammal Protection Project.

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11
April

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Tribes Challenge Final Permit For Toxic Open‐Pit Copper Mine On Sacred Land

TUSCON, AZ (April 10, 2019) — The Tohono O’odham Nation, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Hopi Tribe filed a complaint in U.S. District Court today challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to issue Rosemont Copper Company a permit to commence construction of a massive open-pit copper mine on the eastern flank of the Santa Rita Mountains in the Cienega Creek watershed. The Tribes are represented by Earthjustice, an environmental legal organization.

The creek and its tributaries have supported the tribes and their ancestors since time immemorial. Cienega Creek and its upstream tributaries, including Davidson Canyon, Barrel Canyon and Empire Gulch, contain some of the highest quality streams and wetland ecosystems in Arizona.

Rosemont plans to excavate a mile-wide by half-mile deep open pit mine in Barrel Canyon, discharging an estimated 1.9 billion tons of waste rock onto adjacent public lands. These activities would destroy 18 miles of streams that are protected by the Clean Water Act. None of these activities can occur without a permit from the Corps.

Male jaguar photographed by motion-detection wildlife cameras in the Santa Rita Mountains on August 31, 2015 as part of a Citizen Science jaguar monitoring project conducted by the University of Arizona, in coordination with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This is the same jaguar that has been repeatedly photographed in the Santa Rita Mountains.

“One of the primary reasons that the Pascua Yaqui Tribe opposes this mine is its impacts upon our water.” said Chairman Robert Valencia of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe. “The Pascua Yaqui Tribe knows that water is precious in the desert and precious to all the plants and animals that depend upon it. The few short-term jobs that this mine will create are not worth the destruction that we will have to live with forever.”

For over eight years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Pima County, and an overwhelming majority of the public joined the Tribes in opposing the permit for the mine, citing unacceptable adverse impacts on the ecosystems and severe and irreparable harm to tribal cultural resources.

“As a result of the Hopi people’s long history in the Southwest, we understand the importance of water,” said Vice Chairman Clark W. Tenakhongva of the Hopi Tribe. “Culturally any body of water is something precious and sacred and it would be culturally irresponsible for us to support any activity that would jeopardize a resource so essential to all living beings and something on which we all depend.”

Due to the unacceptable adverse impacts of the mine on aquatic and cultural resources, the Corps’ Los Angeles District Office refused to grant a permit for the mine in 2016. The Corps’ South Pacific Division, however, reversed course and granted Rosemont the permit earlier last month.

“The Corps’ South Pacific Division has provided no reasoned basis for reversing course and abruptly granting Rosemont a 404 permit,” said Earthjustice attorney Stu Gillespie. “EPA and the Corps’ District Office concluded that the proposed permit would violate the Clean Water Act and cause unacceptable harm to the public interest. The Corps cannot sweep these concerns under the rug in its rush to permit this devastating project.”

Rosemont plans to begin excavating and removing ancestral villages and burial sites in the near future. Its plans include the use of backhoe trenches, mechanical stripping, and shovel stripping to remove all cultural artifacts from the mine site, including human remains, funerary objects, sacred items, and objects of cultural patrimony.

“The proposed mine would forever destroy our ancestor’s burial sites, and structures they inhabited in the Santa Rita Mountains,” said Austin Nunez, chairman of the St. Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation. “The mine would also erode evidence of our ancestors’ prior occupation in that area and destroy the plant life and watershed in the area. The long term environmental consequences that will come from the Rosemont Mine project development far outweigh the short-term financial gains sought by the company and its shareholders.”

The complaint states that in issuing the permit, the Corps violated the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Tribes are represented by Stuart C. Gillespie and Caitlin Miller, attorneys for Earthjustice.

Read the legal document.

About the Pascua Yaqui Tribe: The Pascua Yaqui Tribe is a federally recognized tribe of approximately 22,000 enrolled members with a reservation southwest of Tucson, Arizona.

About the Hopi Tribe: The Hopi Tribe is a federally recognized Indian tribe located in northeastern Arizona with approximately 14,475 members. The Hopi reservation occupies part of Coconino and Navajo counties, encompasses more than 1.5 million acres, and comprises twelve villages situated on three mesas.

About the Tohono O’odham Nation: The Tohono O’odham Nation is a federally recognized tribe of approximately 35,000 enrolled members, with more than 2.8 million acres of reservation lands in Southern and Central Arizona.

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28
March

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Taking the “Public” Out of Public Lands

It’s not enough that 90 percent of public lands are open to oil and gas exploitation. The fossil fuel industry wants more from the Trump administration. They just got it.

In the latest insult to America’s public lands, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently issued a directive that guts environmental review and public scrutiny to speed oil and gas development. This effort, part of President Trump’s push to ramp up fracking and drilling across America, is intended to remove any “burdens” to the fossil fuel industry.

In the process, Trump and Zinke are taking the public out of public lands, ceding control of millions of acres to industry while keeping the title in the hands of Americans, who have less and less say over how these lands are managed.

Here’s what the latest directive will do:

Eliminate public input, environmental review and disclosure of harms from oil and gas projects before lands are leased,
Slash the time the public has to raise objections and concerns to just 10 days, reduced from 30 days,
End designation of “master leasing plans,” which aim to steer fracking and drilling away from communities, cultural artifacts, endangered species, recreational and other sensitive lands,
And discourage public land managers from taking any land off the auction block, even if those lands contain sensitive resources and wildlife habitat.

Trump and Zinke are essentially privatizing America’s public lands ― ensuring energy extraction is the top priority and letting the fossil fuel industry call the shots.

Private oil and gas companies already control more than 27 million acres of public land. They also tell the Bureau of Land Management (usually anonymously) which public lands they want put up for auction. This new directive makes clear that, under Trump, the BLM’s job is to give these wealthy private interests what they want.

An analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity shows there’s been no meaningful environmental review, disclosure of harms or public engagement regarding nearly 200,000 acres of public lands in six Western states scheduled to be auctioned off during the first half of 2018.

From Utah’s petroglyph-dotted canyons to Colorado mountain meadows to Wyoming’s sagebrush country, there appears to be no limit to the fossil fuel industry’s appetite for extraction and the Trump administration’s willingness to bend over backwards for these polluting companies.

To Trump and Zinke, this is eliminating “burdens” for industry. To the owners of America’s public lands ― all Americans and generations to come ― it’s about harming wildlife, clean air and water, natural wonders and the places they love. By nearly a 3-to-1 margin, westerners say protecting public lands and preserving access to the outdoors should be the Trump administration’s priority.

But under this latest directive, the public will be largely shut out. People will learn about a fracking pad at their favorite campsite when they see the trucks roll in.

Zinke dismisses the need to determine the environmental, economic and social impacts of fracking and drilling, saying that’s already considered in broader agency land and resource management plans.

But that’s not true.

Management plans can cover millions of acres and are completed before companies decide where they want to lease. BLM defends these plans by promising that analyses of specific areas to be leased will come later and will publicly disclose environmental harms from development. Now, that later will never come.

That means no review showing how drilling and fracking will worsen air quality, including increases in smog that leads to asthma attacks in children.

It means no information about how much fresh water will be polluted or depleted from drinking water supplies, including rivers, lakes, reservoirs and underground aquifers.

And it means no disclosure about what will happen to the polluted water created by fracking. Fracking operations often re-inject this chemical-laden water back underground, which can contaminate aquifers.

There won’t even be an analysis of possible alternatives to reduce harms from drilling or fracking.

The public will be left in the dark and silenced while their public lands continue to be plundered.

Trump and Zinke may want to brush aside these “burdens,” but the law says otherwise. This is another hasty, illegal Trump administration decision to benefit corporations, at the expense of the public, that should be overturned in court.

Randi Spivak is the public lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a national, nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

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11
January

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The Interior Department Is Using Faulty Logic to Justify New Oil Projects

The Beaufort Sea along Alaska’s north coast is bitter cold, packed with marine life, and underlain with millions of gallons of oil. Since the 1980s, oil companies have targeted a shallow area five miles from shore—between Prudhoe Bay, once North America’s most productive oil field, and the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest wildlife refuge in the country—to build an oil and gas production facility, the first in Alaska’s federal waters. But they were stymied by technical problems, ever-expanding budget estimates, and regulatory concerns.

Now, as the Trump administration pursues oil and gas development with fervor, drilling there might finally happen. In October, after Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Company acquired a lease to the land, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, signed off on a plan to develop the site, known as the Liberty Energy Project. If Hilcorp decides to go forward with the project, the company will build a nine-acre gravel island six miles offshore to base their operations and bury a seven-mile pipeline under the seafloor to connect the extracted oil and natural gas to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

To gain approval for major energy projects like this one, U.S. law requires that BOEM take stock of how the project would affect the environment. The resulting document, known as an environmental impact statement, details the risks that proposed infrastructure and a potential oil spill might pose to the region’s caribou herds, breeding shorebirds, polar bears, and passing bowhead whales, as well as the project’s impact on water and air quality, including climate change.

However, if you look carefully at the section on the environmental consequences of greenhouse gas emissions for the Liberty Project (on page 4-52), the agency draws a surprising conclusion: That extracting 120 million barrels of oil from beneath the Arctic Ocean over the project’s 15-to-20-year lifetime would reduce global carbon emissions, and by no small amount. According to the agency, developing Liberty would save more than 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—or the equivalent carbon pollution emitted by 5.3 million cars over a year. In other words, the report determines that transporting and dumping gravel in the ocean to construct an artificial island, drilling into the seafloor to capture buried oil, and extracting some 70,000 barrels of the stuff each day at peak production is better for Earth’s climate than doing nothing at all.

Endicott Island is a 45-acre manmade gravel island, constructed in 1987, used as an offshore drilling platform off Prudhoe Bay in state waters in the Beaufort Sea. If Hilcorp Energy goes forward with the Liberty Energy Project, the company would construct a similar, but smaller, nine-acre gravel island to drill for oil beneath the seafloor in federal waters. Photo: James P. Blair/National Geographic Image Collection

“That’s just a crazy, crazy analysis,” says Jeremy Lieb, an attorney at Earthjustice, a non-profit legal firm that focuses on environmental issues. Last month, the Center for Biological Diversity and a host of other conservation groups represented by Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the Department of Interior, which oversees BOEM, on the grounds that the agency’s environmental analysis of the Liberty Project distorts the damages associated with drilling and ignores basic economic principles. “It appears to be a convenient way for agencies to rationalize that any individual project will have essentially no effect on global greenhouse gas emissions,” Lieb says.

The use of a model that undersells carbon emissions appears to be a directive coming from inside the Department of Interior. When Audubonasked Frances Mann, a BOEM biologist who worked on the environmental impact statement for the Liberty Project, about the climate analysis, she said, “we used the models that we were required to use.”

The BOEM report reasons that in place of oil coming out of the Arctic, nearly the same amount of oil would be produced elsewhere in the world from places with “comparatively weaker environmental protection standards” and “increased emissions from transportation,” according to the federal document.

A Spectacled Eider lifts off from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the Trump administration is aggressively pushing plans to drill for oil and gas. In a recently released environmental impact statement for that project, the Interior Department used debunked models for calculating the climate impact of the project, an effort one economist described as an intentional obfuscation. Photo: Peter Mather/National Geographic Image Collection

This assumes that any oil not extracted in the Arctic would be replaced with foreign oil that uses dirtier methods and costs more to transport, ultimately emitting more carbon. That logic requires some economic gymnastics, says Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University who specializes in energy and climate policy. “I just don’t find it credible,” he says. It’s more likely that Arctic oil would be replaced by oil from fracked wells in the United States, like those common in North Dakota and Texas, rather than overseas oil, Metcalf says. What’s more, producing oil in the Arctic is no pristine operation—it emits more carbon than oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a 2015 report released by the Carnegie Foundation, because of the difficulties of extracting oil in such harsh conditions.

The analysis makes another error, says Peter Erickson, a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, an international research and policy non-profit organization. Basic economic models show that when more oil is produced in the United States, more oil is bought and combusted internationally. That’s because when there’s more oil on the market, prices drop—simple supply-and-demand economics. The Liberty Project analysis, and others, don’t fully take this effect into account, he says; they ignore the fact that the extraction of fossil fuels actually increases global carbon emissions.

“The underlying assumption is very common,” Erickson says. For years, including before Trump took office, government reports failed to account for the likely increase in consumption. Erickson first flagged the error in the analysis of the Keystone XL Pipeline, writing in a 2014 Nature Climate Change report that the State Department underestimated the project’s overall emissions—the difference between releasing up to 27 million tons of carbon dioxide annually and up to 110 million tons. “There was this sort of giant blind spot,” Erickson says.

BOEM also miscalculated carbon emissions in its draft analysis of Arctic and Atlantic offshore oil drilling in 2016, he says. After that, though, the agency seemed to learn from its mistakes. In November 2016, a BOEM report found that halting new drilling projects over five years would lower foreign oil consumption by billions of barrels. This could decrease global carbon emissions by up to 2.3 billion tons, Erickson estimates, more carbon than the entire U.S. transportation sector emits in a year.

If Hilcorp goes forward with the Liberty Project, it will bury a seven-mile pipeline under the seafloor to carry extracted oil and gas to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, shown here. It takes around 12 days for oil and gas to move from Prudhoe Bay through more than 800 miles of above-ground pipe built in Alaska’s wilderness to the endpoint at Valdez Marine Terminal. Photo: Dermot Tatlow/Panos Pictures/Redux

This argument has held up in court. In 2017, a federal judge struck down another flawed emissions analysis conducted by the Bureau of Land Management on a coal project in Colorado. “She said very specifically [that] it’s irrational to say increase in supply is not going to increase consumption,” Erickson says.

Yet despite increased recognition of the problem, the Liberty Project environmental impact statement relies on debunked reasoning to conclude that developing the site would result in lower carbon emissions. This is an intentional move on the part of the Interior Department, Erickson says. “It’s not a misguided model; it’s a purposeful misuse of the model,” he says. “It’s enabling their decision and their allowance to expand the fossil fuel supply.”

Federal agencies continue to use the same flawed model in analyses of other new energy projects. A draft report detailing how drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would impact the environment, released December 20 by the Bureau of Land Management, also failed to account for the global increase in emissions from development. “It appears as if [the Bureau of Land Management] is purposefully obfuscating the question of the global oil market and CO2 emissions implications,” Erickson told Audubon over email.

This comes at a time when the world needs to reduce carbon emissions to avoid a climate catastrophe, according to a recent United Nations report—and yet emissions continue to accelerate. Halting fossil fuel expansion is the only way to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way, Erickson says. “The climate problem is a fossil fuel problem. There’s no debate around that.”

This story was originally published on Audubon.org. Audubon is a nonprofit dedicated to saving birds and the places they need today and tomorrow. For more stories from Audubon magazine or to learn about Audubon’s conservation work, visit the Audubon website.

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27
November

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Senate Committee Pushes McNamee FERC Nomination Forward, Driven by Millions in Fossil Fuel Money

Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee voted on Tuesday to push the controversial nomination of Bernard McNamee for Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to the full Senate, on a mostly party-line vote.

McNamee currently leads the Office of Policy at the Department of Energy, where he helped to roll out Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s failed attempt to bail out the coal and nuclear industries. His resume reads like a who’s who in the fossil fuel industry and the far-right political crowd.

McNamee has deep ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Koch-funded organization that has provided a pipeline of Trump nominees, including the former nominee to the Council For Environmental Quality that even Republicans agreed was unqualified for the job. It was there that McNamee spearheaded “Life: Powered,” a project launched by the group in 2015 “to combat the Obama-era Clean Power Plan,” according to TPPF’s 2017 annual report. He also served as a senior advisor and counsel to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). This past Earth Day, he authored a love letter to fossil fuels that implored Americans to remember how “the responsible use of America’s abundant resources of natural gas, oil and coal have dramatically improved the human condition.”

Joe Manchin joined Republicans in voting for McNamee, 13-10, even in spite of a recent video that shows McNamee criticizing renewable energy and expressing strong support for the sole use of fossil fuels – as well as describing environmental advocacy as “tyranny.” This vote serves to underscore a continuing problem in Washington: that a nominee who, on the record, has showed significant bias toward the fossil fuel industry, is lauded and promoted by Senators to lead the very agency where he is expected to remain impartial.

The 13 Senators who voted in the Committee to move McNamee’s nomination forward have taken a combined total of nearly $10 million from the fossil fuel industry – bought and paid for by an industry that accelerates the climate crisis and only cares about protecting their profits. It is evident that fossil fuel money is both crippling our democracy and destroying our climate, influencing the structural branches of government that regulate our nation’s infrastructure and energy supply.

The key numbers breakdown:

Combined fossil fuel contributions to Senators voting for McNamee: nearly $10,000,000
Average lifetime dirty energy money per Senator voting for McNamee: $755,219
Average lifetime dirty energy money per Senator voting against McNamee: $88,682

That works out to more than 8 times the dirty energy money taken by those voting in favor of McNamee’s nomination than the average of those voting against the clearly fossil-biased pick. Today’s vote moving McNamee’s nomination forward shows that the industry’s grip on Washington politics is still suffocating our democracy. McNamee will go before the Senate next month for a full vote on his nomination, where we will have one more chance to push against the industry’s influence and prevent McNamee from becoming the next Commissioner of FERC.

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31
October

EPA Clouds Transparency for Environmental Impact Statements

The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to stop the combination of letter and numeral grades for evaluating Environmental Impact Statements prepared by the federal agencies. The two-factor grading system graded both the quality of the analysis and the actual level of environmental impact. This change will dim the transparency of the federal agencies’ work. This new policy will make it much harder for the public or press to judge early-on the seriousness of environmental impacts of the project and the quality of the agencies’ analysis of that impact. There’s a simple analogy: What if we got rid of grades in schools?

Teacher Ben:
“Well class, as you requested, we will no longer grade your final examinations. However, we will continue to put comments in the margins of your exams where we think more work is needed. We will not send a letter grades to your parents but will send them a copy of your final essay with our comments in the margins.”
Who does this help? Bueller?

Since 1984 EPA have evaluated environmental impact statements of federal agencies for both the adequacy of the NEPA documentation and the actual level of environmental impacts. They also make specific comments to the environmental analysis. They will continue with specific comments but no longer have a clear summary grade.

The EPA website lists the grading options (reprinted before the material is deleted from the EPA website):
EPA has developed a set of criteria for rating a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). EPA rates the draft EIS on an alpha-numeric system and includes the designated rating in EPA’s comment letter. In general, the rating is based on the lead agency’s preferred alternative. The rating system provides a basis upon which EPA makes recommendations to the lead agency for improving the draft EIS. The alphabetical categories listed below signify EPA’s evaluation of the environmental impacts of the proposal:
LO (Lack of Objections)
EC (Environmental Concerns)
EO (Environmental Objections)
EU (Environmentally Unsatisfactory)
The numerical categories listed below signify an evaluation of the adequacy of the draft EIS:
1 (Adequate)
2 (Insufficient Information)
3 (Inadequate)
The rating of the draft EIS consists of one of the category combinations shown below:
LO
EC-1, EC-2
EO-1, EO-2, EO-3
EU-1, EU-2, EU-3, or 3
https://www.epa.gov/nepa/environmental-impact-statement-rating-system-criteria
(October 26, 2018)
The combined letter-numerical system was simple, edifying and useful to the press and public.

On October 22, however, EPA announced it would end the grading policy. Before announcing this abrupt change of this Reagan Administration policy, EPA did not talk to environmental advocates, project sponsors, states, tribes or other affected groups. EPA did get input from—using my analogy—the students—the federal agencies, who thought dropping the grading system was a swell idea. Better to hide inadequately prepared environmental reviews as well as the seriousness of the likely environmental impacts? Agencies argued that grading was inconsistent among EPA Regions but that issue exists in almost all grading that are not true-false or multiple choice.

The National Environmental Policy Act is a foundational environmental statute meant to give the public a chance to comment and understand what the federal government is doing an action that may significantly impact the environment or their community. Making this material accessible is very important. The Trump administration and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, evidently think differently. Now, affected communities will not have a heads-up from environmental experts at EPA on the seriousness of the environmental threat unless they trudge through the high technical comments of the EPA and the often-technical language in the environmental review.

EPA is still required by Section 309 of the Clean Air Act to evaluate and send comments on the EISs to the agency responsible. Under law, EPA must still forward projects that would have an unsatisfactory environmental impact to the Council of Environmental Quality but the memo announcing this new policy noted that such a referral would be “rare.” The original plan, outlined in President Trump’s Infrastructure Plan, was to repeal the Clean Air Act provision thereby eliminating both the EPA review and consequently the referral to CEQ for projects that had an unsatisfactory environmental impacts. Removing the grading system is their Option B.

Scott Slesinger is Legislative Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

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1
October

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An Environmental Audit of Trump’s NAFTA Deal

The NAFTA deal between the U.S. and Mexico would encourage further outsourcing of pollution and jobs, offer special handouts to notorious corporate polluters, lock in fossil fuel dependency, and extend Trump’s polluting legacy for years after he has left office. It not only fails to mention climate change – it would prolong NAFTA’s contribution to the climate crisis. Despite progress on a few fronts, the deal fails to adequately protect wildlife, clean air and water, or the health of communities that NAFTA has exposed to toxic pollution.

During the NAFTA negotiations, leading U.S. environmental groups outlined minimum changes that must be made to NAFTA to halt the deal’s environmental damage. See here for these minimum environmental criteria.

A review of the text of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal reveals that it falls far short of these baseline criteria and would pose significant threats to our air, water, and climate. In short, the deal:

Supports further outsourcing of toxic pollution and jobs: The deal’s lack of binding environmental standards would allow more corporations to evade U.S. environmental policies by shifting jobs and toxic pollution to Mexico, where environmental policies are weaker. For example, the lack of any binding lead pollution standards means that corporations would still enjoy NAFTA’s incentives to dump their lead waste in Mexico, which has contributed to job loss in the U.S. and toxic lead poisoning in border communities.
Denies climate change: The deal fails to even mention climate change. This denialism leaves intact NAFTA’s incentives for corporations to dodge the hard-fought clean energy policies of U.S. states by moving to Mexico, eliminating jobs and perpetuating climate pollution. This climate loophole only reinforces the U.S.’s status as the world’s largest outsourcer of climate pollution.
Rolls back the environmental standards of past trade deals: The deal takes a significant step backwards from the environmental protections included in the last four U.S. trade deals by failing to reinforce a standard set of seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) that protect everything from wetlands to sea turtles. The deal includes standard enforcement language for only one of the seven MEAs, while using weak language for two MEAs and failing to even mention four of these essential environmental agreements.
Includes weak environmental terms: The environment chapter is primarily filled with non-binding terms that mirror the weak words of the polluter-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership. For example, the text “recognizes that air pollution is a serious threat to public health,” but then fails to include a single binding rule to reduce the air pollution that NAFTA has exacerbated. Much of the language appears designed to greenwash the deal, not to rectify NAFTA’s threats to wildlife, ecosystems, or clean air and water.
Copies a failed enforcement system: Even the strongest language will only be effective if enforced. The deal essentially replicates the same failed environmental enforcement mechanism from past U.S. trade agreements. Not once has the U.S. used this mechanism in past trade deals to bring a case against a U.S. trade partner for environmental abuses, despite widely documented violations.
Offers a dangerous handout to Chevron and ExxonMobil: The deal makes progress in curtailing the overreaching corporate rights in NAFTA’s “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system…but then uniquely offers those egregious rights to notorious corporate polluters. This special handout is available to all U.S. oil and gas corporations that have, or may at some point have, government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities in Mexico. That means, for example, that Chevron and ExxonMobil – the two largest corporate climate polluters in history and repeat users of ISDS – would be allowed to challenge environmental protections in Mexico by relying on the same broad corporate rights that they have used to successfully challenge public interest policies from Ecuador to Canada.
Encourages fracking: The deal preserves a NAFTA rule that effectively bars the U.S. government from determining whether gas exports to Mexico are in the public interest. This automatic gas export guarantee facilitates increased fracking in the U.S., expansion of cross-border gas pipelines, and growing dependency on climate-polluting gas in Mexico.
Offers corporate polluters a new way to weaken environmental policies: The deal’s “good regulatory practices” rules could give corporate polluters a new way to delay, weaken, or halt new environmental regulations. The rules offer corporations extra opportunities to challenge proposed regulations before they are finalized, and to ask that existing regulations be repealed. These deregulatory rules could make it harder to reverse the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks once Trump leaves office, which could extend his polluting legacy for years.

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