http://www.eenews.net/eed/

Friday, January 22, 2010

by Mike Soraghan, E&E reporter, Senior reporter Darren Samuelsohn contributed.  Special thanks to Richard Charter

The idea of passing an energy bill without cap and trade is gaining currency on Capitol Hill as Democratic leaders look at scaling back their agenda. But it may run into trouble from liberal and coastal lawmakers who oppose more offshore drilling.

“Energy only” backers have portrayed such legislation as a path to a bipartisan achievement, particularly in the wake of the Massachusetts Senate election widely seen as a repudiation of the Democrats’ ambitious agenda.

But while liberal and coastal lawmakers might have been willing to allow more offshore drilling in exchange for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, they are less likely to give up that leverage if a cap-and-trade plan is jettisoned.

“There are provisions that are more difficult for us to accept if they’re not part of a comprehensive bill,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “In a broader package I am more understanding of some of the other regional concerns.”

Conversely, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is trying to put together a joint climate and energy bill has been telling Republicans that they cannot get the offshore drilling, nuclear and other pro-production measures they want without a cap.

“I can get every Republican for an energy independence bill, OK? But there are not 60 votes,” Graham said. “You’re not going to get the nuclear power provisions you want unless you do something on emission controls.”

The energy bill (S. 1462) passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June included a provision by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to open areas as close as 45 miles from Florida’s gulf coast to drilling.

The measure also includes a renewable electricity standard requiring utilities to provide 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021. Environmentalists have called for a 25 percent standard by 2025.

Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) still wants his committee’s bill to be paired with a cap-and-trade system. But Dorgan has pushed for that legislation to be passed on its own, without the cap-and-trade plans being written in other committees.

“It will move us in the direction of a lower-carbon future,” Dorgan said. He added that most areas of the outer continental shelf were opened to drilling a year ago. His bill would open one of the last places that is still off limits.

“Offshore drilling is a carrot,” Dorgan said. “It’s a carrot that’s already been consumed.”

But Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is likely to filibuster any effort to expand drilling off the shores of his home state. Without an emissions cap, liberal Democrats are even less likely to try to help override his objections.

“Enviros would revolt and could easily peel off enough liberal senators to keep them from getting 60 votes,” said a House Democratic leadership aide, “at least in the short term.”  Another House Democratic aide who described the energy-only bill as a likely compromise said it would still need the Florida senator’s support to pass. The aide said Dorgan and Nelson would have to work out some sort of compromise about how far off the coast the drilling would be.

And prospects would not be much better in the House. The House cap-and-trade bill did not include any offshore drilling. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is a longtime foe of offshore drilling and once derided the idea that it might lower gas prices as a “hoax.”    Pelosi relented in the face of Republican pressure and high gas prices in 2008 and allowed a longstanding moratorium on coastal drilling to expire, although the GOP and oil industry have criticized the Obama administration’s progress on approving leases.

Though it is being shepherded by Dorgan, supporters see offshore drilling as a way to bring Republicans on board to an energy bill. Energy companies say drilling is popular not only with the GOP but the general public as well.

“The American people overwhelmingly support these common-sense efforts, and leaders in Washington should too,” said Bruce Vincent, president of Swift Energy and chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Supporters also note that liberals and environmentalists would still be getting a renewable energy standard that would cut greenhouse emissions by power plants. But that won’t satisfy most climate activists. Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, said the RES in the Senate energy bill has too many loopholes.

Weiss looks at drilling as the political equivalent of dessert. Measures to reduce greenhouse gases amount to eating your vegetables, he said — not as pleasant, but better in the long run. He worries that any such bill will have too much sugar and not enough broccoli.
“We need a balanced energy menu with vegetables and protein, not just a pile of Cool Whip,” Weiss said.

 
Tues., Jan. 19, 2010
Contact:  Dan McLaughlin; 202-224-1679 / 202-309-1985
www.billnelson.senate.gov
 
 
 
Following is Sen. Bill Nelson’s response to a report today on oil drilling by Securing America’s Future Energy:
 
It should come as no surprise that a group that touts drilling off Florida should produce a study saying drilling there is okay.  Its report must be considered against a backdrop: it was produced by a group that helped craft and promote legislation that would allow oil drilling 45 miles off Florida’s coast.
 
And it’s probably no coincidence that the sponsor of the legislation today also touted the study in question while renewing a call for passage of his bill.
 
As for the report citing claims by former or retired military that armed forces training off Florida could co-exist with drilling, the Pentagon for years has said otherwise.  It remains the Defense Department’s policy that military exercises and training in the eastern Gulf are incompatible with oil drilling operations.
 
The bottom line remains the same: oil drilling and military training don’t mix; and, there isn’t enough oil off Florida’s coast to make a difference in our country’s energy independence; nor is there enough to risk the environment and tourism-driven economy of the nation’s fourth largest state.

 http://www.jaxobserver.com/2010/01/19/dorgan-military-officials-to-release-pro-drilling/

Provided by Richard Chartr From: News Service of Florida – Jan 19th, 2010

A leading congressional proponent of offshore drilling is expected to take part in the release next week of a new report promoting further oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, including waters close to Florida.  
North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan, who last year included a measure aimed at promoting drilling in federal waters 45 miles off Florida, is scheduled to speak in a Tuesday conference call detailing the potential benefit to “military readiness” stemming from more exploration.
Joining Dorgan on the call will be several retired, high-ranking Navy and Marine officers, and John Lehman, former Navy Secretary under President Reagan.
The call is being put together by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a non-profit pro-drilling organization urging national energy independence as a security and jobs-creating measure.
The show of military muscle – even of the retired variety – comes as the House’s effort to lift the state’s 20-year ban on oil-drilling within Florida waters drew further criticism from the commander of the Panhandle’s Eglin Air Force Base.
Col. Bruce McClintock, who leads the 5,400 personnel stationed at the base, this week told the House Military Affairs and Local Policy Committee that offshore drilling could prove an obstacle to flight testing and missile-firing exercises in the Gulf.
Military representatives in the past also have warned about potential interference to jet-flight training over the Gulf.
“We would be impacted,” Col. Arnie Bunch, vice-commander of Eglin Air Force Base’s Air Armament Center, told a state Senate committee last last year.
Dorgan, who recently announced he was not seeking re-election this fall, has clashed over drilling with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who has long used military needs in the Gulf as a weapon against expanded oil- and gas-exploration.
“The military has been very clear on this issue,” Dan McLaughlin, a Nelson spokesman, told the News Service of Florida on Friday. “But I don’t know how SAFE can present this as something that will help the military.”
Dorgan has been a prominent figure on oil drilling, with North Dakota a major energy producer and the senator serving as the second-highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He also chairs a budget subcommittee that shapes Energy Department spending.
Along the Florida Gulf, 30 cities, counties, local chambers and other organizations have approved resolutions denouncing drilling – with critics rooted in some of Florida’s most conservative-leaning voting districts.
Panama City Mayor Scott Clemons, a former Democratic state legislator, said that like many Panhandle locales, his city’s resolution against drilling stems chiefly from fear of its potential impact on military missions from nearby Tyndall Air Force Base and Naval Support Activity-Panama City.
“It’s really a double whammy here,” Clemons said.
The state House has been pushing to keep the oil-drilling push alive in the face of resistance in the Senate, where President Jeff Atwater ordered a committee to conduct a wide-ranging review of the issue’s environmental impact, threatening prospects for the measure emerging during the spring session.
Florida Energy Associates, the group of self-described independent oil producers behind the idea, last week told the News Service it planned to shed two-thirds of the 30 lobbyists it has hired to work the issue. The downsizing is cast as a cost-saver that could be reversed when there are signs of movement within the Senate, the organization has said.

Inside EPA’s Water Policy Report    January 19, 2010 compliments of Richard Charter

EPA’s ‘No Impact’ Finding For Gulf Drilling Could Spur NEPA Challenge

An EPA general permit for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could spur a legal challenge because of its failure to adequately consider the expanded drilling the permit will allow due to the passage of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) in 2006, according to environmentalist sources.

EPA Region IV in late December proposed reissuing a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) general permit for the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil and gas drilling, issuing a preliminary finding of no significant impact (FONSI) letter based on an environmental assessment (EA). /Relevant documents are available on InsideEPA.com./

But one environmental source says the agency should have performed a more extensive environmental analysis known as an environmental impact statement (EIS), noting that GOMESA opened some 8 million acres of previously protected offshore areas to drilling, which will have an effect on the Gulf’s overall water quality. The FONSI acknowledges but does not substantially address the impact of GOMESA on water quality.

Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), federal agencies are required to perform an EA to determine whether a federal undertaking would significantly affect the environment, and if the answer is yes, the agency is required to prepare an EIS. Alternatively, a federal agency may start with an EIS if the agency anticipates the undertaking may significantly impact the environment or if a project is environmentally controversial.

“NEPA comes into play when there’s some major or significant change, either in the permit or the discharge,” the source says. “I think the expansion of an existing permit into brand new areas without [an EIS]. . . is not going to pass muster with the courts.”

An oil and gas industry spokesman says industry also is concerned that the EA may not have been sufficient to stave off a legal challenge from the environmental community. But the source says the FONSI is correct in its overall finding that offshore drilling can be done in a safe and efficient manner and that there is no reason not to allow the permit to be renewed.

Industry thinks the lack of an EIS “is a valid concern, but we think that if someone in the environmental community is going to sue, they’re going to sue regardless” of whether an EA or EIS was performed, the spokesman says.

In the EA, the agency acknowledges that 8.3 million previously reserved acres in the Gulf of Mexico fall under the purview of the NPDES general permit as a result of GOMESA, including 5.8 million acres that were under moratorium. But the EA says further environmental analysis will occur when the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) develops a lease sale for those acres, noting that MMS will “most likely” conduct an EIS to consider the environmental impacts of drilling.

The environmental source, however, says that acknowledgment is insufficient to ensure that drilling operations are adequately protective of the environment, and highlights the shortcomings of the general water permit itself. For example, the source points to a controversy in the early 2000’s about elevated levels of mercury in Gulf waters that originated in drilling mud — pressurized fluid that is used to bore holes in the earth (/Water Policy Report/, Feb. 12, 2001).

There is also increased interest in determining whether produced water — water released from subterranean pockets or aquifers mixed with surface water used to force oil or gas out of its pocket — may be a source of radioactive contamination from elements like radium. The environmental source says this phenomenon has been well documented in surface mining but is relatively unknown in the offshore arena, spurring a new realm of concern about the environmental impacts of offshore drilling, the source says.

“You’re dealing with very large areas, and I don’t think you’re dealing with the level of detail necessary” to protect the environment, the source says. “These kinds of area-wide permits don’t catch a lot of pollution.”

Another environmental source says the FONSI sparks concerns that industry could be ramping up another effort to make an end-run at offshore drilling in areas that have been closed, either for ecological or political reasons. In the past, the source says, offshore drilling in Florida had been a political taboo because of the potential threat a discharge could pose to the large tourism industry associated with the state’s beaches. But in recent years, with the spiking price of oil, state politics have been more mixed. Whether the permit in itself is an indicator of such a move or not is unclear, but it is at least one less hurdle in the way of expanded energy extraction.

“It makes me wonder what the plan is here,” the source says. “It may signal that some in [industry] think they can make a run at offshore gas fields.”

The State of Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection says they are reviewing the permit and are withholding comment pending the completion of their review.

An EPA spokeswoman says the agency conducted two EIS studies on the Gulf, one between 1996 and 1998 and a supplemental EIS in 2004, and that the EA conducted as part of reissuing the NPDES general permit was meant to address any issues that have arisen since the 2004 EIS. In the agency’s view, the spokeswoman says the EA was sufficient to cover any water quality concerns that may have arisen as part of GOMESA or from any other concerns. — /John Heltman /

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marcellus-shale-natural-gas-drilling-radioactive-wastewater

Scientific American November 9, 2009

Wastewater from natural gas drilling in New York State is radioactive, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink
By Abrahm Lustgarten and ProPublica   
 WASTEWATER FOUNTAIN: Natural gas drilling in New York State could introduce unsafe levels of radiation into the drinking water.
FLICKR/JOSHME17

As New York gears up for a massive expansion of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, state officials have made a potentially troubling discovery about the wastewater created by the process: It’s radioactive. And they have yet to say how they’ll deal with it.

The information comes from New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which analyzed 13 samples of wastewater brought thousands of feet to the surface from drilling and found that they contain levels of radium 226, a derivative of uranium, as high as 267 times the limit safe for discharge into the environment and thousands of times the limit safe for people to drink.

The findings, if backed up with more tests, have several implications: The energy industry would likely face stiffer regulations and expenses, and have more trouble finding treatment plants to accept its waste-if any would at all. Companies would need to license their waste handlers and test their workers for radioactive exposure, and possibly ship waste across the country. And the state would have to sort out how its laws for radioactive waste might apply to drilling and how the waste could impact water supplies and the environment.

What is less clear is how the wastewater may affect the health of New Yorkers, since the danger depends on how much radiation people are exposed to and how they are exposed to it. Radium is known to cause bone, liver and breast cancers, and the EPA publishes exposure guidelines for it, but there is still disagreement over exactly how dangerous low-level doses can be to workers who handle it, or to the public.

The DEC has yet to address any of these questions. But New York’s Health Department raised concerns about the amount of radioactive materials in the wastewater in a confidential letter to the DEC’s oil and gas regulators in July.

“Handling and disposal of this wastewater could be a public health concern,” DOH officials said in the letter, which was obtained by ProPublica. “The issues raised are not trivial, but are also not insurmountable.”

The letter warned that the state may have difficulty disposing of the drilling waste, that thorough testing will be needed at water treatment plants, and that workers may need to be monitored for radiation as much as they might be at nuclear facilities.

Health Department officials declined to comment on the letter. The DEC sent an e-mail response to questions about the radioactivity stating that “concentrations are generally not a problem for water discharges, or in solid waste streams” in New York State. But the agency did not directly address the radioactivity levels, which were disclosed in the appendices of the agency’s environmental review of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, released September 30.

The review did not calculate how much radioactivity people may be exposed to, even though such calculations are routinely completed by scientists studying radiation exposure. Yet the review concluded that radiation levels were “very low” and that the wastewater “does not present a risk to workers.” DEC officials declined to explain how they reached this conclusion.
Although the review pointed to a possible need for radioactive licensing and disposal for certain materials, and it looked at other states with laws aimed at radioactive waste from drilling, the DEC said there is no precedent for examining how these radioactive materials might affect the environment when brought to the surface at the volumes and scale expected in New York. And it said that more study is needed before the DEC can lay out precise plans to deal with the waste.
In comments to ProPublica, the DEC emphasized that the environmental review proposes testing all wastewater for radioactivity before it is allowed to leave the well site, and said that the volumes of brine water, which contain most of the radioactivity detected, would be far less than the volumes of fluid from hydraulic fracturing that are removed from the well.

What scientists call naturally occurring radioactive materials-known by the acronym NORM-are common in oil and gas drilling waste, and especially in brine, the dirty water that has been soaking in the shale for centuries. Radium, a potent carcinogen, is among the most dangerous of these metals because it gives off radon gas, accumulates in plants and vegetables and takes 1,600 years to decay. Geologists say radioactivity levels can vary across the Marcellus, but the tests taken so far suggest the amount of radioactive material measured in New York is far higher than in many other places.

The state took its 13 samples-11 of which significantly exceeded legal limits-between October 2008 and April 2009. The DEC did not respond to questions about whether additional sampling has begun or whether the state would begin issuing drilling permits before the radioactivity issues are resolved. The DEC told ProPublica it did not know where the wastewater would be treated.

“It’s got to go somewhere,” said Theodore Adams, a radiation remediation and water treatment consultant with 30 years of experience with radioactive waste. “It’s not going to just go away.”

A Vague Threat

Determining the health threat that radioactive material poses to workers and to the public is complicated. Measuring human exposure-which is quantified in doses of millirems per year-from radiation is notoriously difficult, in part because it depends on variables like whether objects interfere with radiation, or how sustained exposure is over long periods of time.

Gas industry workers, for example, would almost certainly face an increased risk of cancer if they worked in a confined space where radon gas, a leading cause of lung cancer and a derivative of radium, can collect to dangerous levels. They would also be at risk if they somehow swallowed or breathed fumes from the radioactive wastewater, or handled the concentrated materials regularly for 20 years. But without these types of intensive or confined exposures, the materials may be less dangerous, making it difficult to discern effects on workers’ health, experts say.

People absorb radioactivity in their daily routines, complicating health assessments. Eighty percent of human radioactivity exposure comes from natural sources, according to the EPA. Everything from granite countertops to a pile of playground dirt can emit radioactivity that is higher than the EPA, which regulates based on a theory that zero exposure is best, may prefer.

“You start with the world where you and I are getting an exposure from the sun, from the soil we walk on, from the brick in our house that on average is about 400 millirems a year-which is dangerous,” said Tom Lenhart, a former member of the federal-state Interagency Steering Committee on Radiation Standards. “The EPA would never allow that kind of exposure. So you are starting from a baseline of dangerous exposure, and this is what makes regulating it a nightmare.”

The EPA estimates that Americans are exposed to about 300 to 360 millirems per year, including routine artificial exposures like getting an x-ray or flying in an airplane. Each multiple of this “background level” denotes a proportional increase in the chance of getting cancer.
The natural radioactivity of the Marcellus Shale has caused concern since the mid-1980s, when high levels of radon gas were found in the basements of homes in Marcellus, a town in upstate New York, where the shale reaches the surface. The question has long been, if the Marcellus can cause radioactive gas to seep into people’s basements, how much radioactivity might be infused into the water left over from drilling? Add to that the question of how much human exposure can be expected from the radiation detected at some Marcellus drilling sites.

In its environmental review, the state said it couldn’t answer those questions because exposure depends on so many variables and because the units of measurement for human exposure and concentrations in water are incompatible. There is “no simple or universally accepted equivalence between these units,” the DEC wrote in its environmental review.

But Rick Kessy, operations manager for Fortuna Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Talisman Energy and the largest gas producer in New York, says his company has assessed worker exposure at two of the company’s well sites in Pennsylvania, where it found no serious risk.

And a U.S. Department of Energy expert who specializes in such exposure conversions said an analysis in New York should be “very easy to do.”

“If they know the concentrations and they know the exposure pathways it should be straightforward to calculate that,” said Charley Yu, who runs the national computer dose modeling program at http://www.talisman-energy.com/ for the U.S. Department of Energy.

In fact, New York’s DEC used Yu’s government modeling program, called RESRAD, in a 1999 study to establish radioactivity exposure risks for oilfield brine spread on roads, a common disposal practice. Its brine samples in that case contained far less radium than the Marcellus water. It laid out a simple scenario, assuming a person walked on the road for two hours a day over 20 years and a fixed quantity of brine was spread there. That study found no threat to human health.

No such analysis was included in the state’s recent supplemental environmental impact statement.

Few Disposal Options

All this would be of substantially less concern if New York were like most of the other states that produce some radioactive waste during natural gas drilling. In those states, the waste is re-injected underground. But in New York, injection disposal wells are uncommon, and those that do exist aren’t licensed to receive radioactive waste or Marcellus Shale wastewater, according to the EPA. Instead, most drilling wastewater is treated by municipal or industrial water treatment plants and discharged back into public waterways.

The radium-laden wastewater would almost certainly need to be carefully treated by plants capable of filtering out the radioactive substances. Kessy, the Fortuna manager, which operates five of the wells with spiked readings in New York, said the levels are higher than he has seen elsewhere. Treatment plants in Pennsylvania are accepting Fortuna wastewater with much lower levels of radioactivity from the company’s wells there, Kessy said, but if plants can’t take the higher concentrations, it could be crippling.
“In the event that they were not able to comply due to high radioactivity, they would reject the water,” Kessy said. “And if we did not have a viable option for it, our operations would just shut down. There is no other option.”

It is not clear which treatment plants, if any in New York, are capable of handling such material.
DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said that “there are currently no facilities specifically designated for treating them.” He added that the state depends on the drilling companies to make sure there is a legal treatment option for the water, and then reviews those plans.

“The department has not received any permit submissions from the well operators that include details about treatment options for the brine containing NORM,” he said. “So we do not know what treatment options are being considered or how effective NORM removal will be.”

ProPublica contacted several plant managers in central New York who said they could not take the waste or were not familiar with state regulations.

“We are not set up to take radioactive substances,” said Patricia Pastella, commissioner of the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection, which operates the Metropolitan plant in Syracuse, N.Y. “It does present a problem with disposal.”

Filtering the water is just one of several problems. Plants that can filter out the radioactive materials are left with a concentrated sludge that has substantially higher radioactivity than the wastewater. Sludge can also collect inside the pipes at well sites, in waste pits and in holding tanks.

Federal laws don’t directly address naturally occurring radioactivity, and the oil and gas industry is exempt from federal laws dictating handling of toxic waste, leaving the burden on New York State. New York has laws governing radioactive materials, but the state’s drilling plans don’t specify when they would apply.

Experts who reviewed the concentrations of radioactive metals found in New York’s wastewater said the leftover sludge is likely to exceed the legal limits for hazardous waste and would need to be shipped to Idaho or Washington State, to some of the only landfills in the country permitted to accept it.
Fortuna’s Kessy said that’s an acceptable cost of doing business. “We’ll be willing, of course, to fund the necessary disposal means,” he said.

The same may be required of some of the equipment used in drilling, which can eventually emit much higher levels of radiation than the water itself. Louisiana, for example, began regulating radioactive materials after it found radioactive buildup in pipes dumped in scrap yards and in the steel used to build schoolyard bleachers.

But the levels in that state were just one eighth of those measured so far in New York.
“I don’t believe anyone has taken a look, seriously, at what the unintended consequences are to dealing with these kinds of materials,” said Theodore Adams, the radioactive waste disposal consultant. “It’s a unique animal-a unique disposal-and depending on where it is located and who is receiving it, it could have an impact.”

 ProPublica’s Sabrina Shankman contributed reporting to this article.    Abrahm Lustgarten is an investigative reporter for ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit  newsroom that produces journalism in the public interest.  Thanks to Richard Charter who provided this article.