WildEarth Guardians

Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Settlement Turns up Pressure on Air Pollution from Fracking, Other Oil and Gas Operations

EPA Commits to Pilot Program for Enforcing Clean Air Act, Safeguarding Public Health
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 573-4898 x 1303

Denver—WildEarth Guardians today announced a settlement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will ensure greater scrutiny of air pollution from oil and gas drilling, including fracking, and open the door for aggregation safeguards to finally be enforced.

“Fracking and other oil and gas operations are taking a tremendous toll on clean air throughout the United States,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director for WildEarth Guardians.  “Aggregation is key to addressing this threat.  This agreement ensures EPA lays the groundwork for enforcing this vital safeguard in order to protect public health and the environment.”

Under the Clean Air Act, connected sources of air pollution must be aggregated together when determining what constitutes a source for permitting purposes.  Aggregation is a standard requirement that ensures connected sources of air pollution are not broken down into smaller sources, which would allow polluters to avoid pollution control requirements.

Aggregation safeguards are especially important for oil and gas operations, which often consist of hundreds to thousands of connected polluting pieces of equipment including drill rigs, compressor engines, and leaking pipelines and tanks.  Individually, these sources are small, but cumulatively, they are large sources of pollution.  If aggregated, oil and gas operations would be required to use up-to-date pollution controls on a more widespread scale.

Today’s settlement does not mandate aggregation, but rather commits EPA Region 8 to undertake a pilot program for the next two years during which it will more closely scrutinize oil and gas operations to determine whether aggregation should be enforced.  The program would apply only in the context of EPA-issued permits for oil and gas operations within Region 8, which almost entirely includes facilities on tribal lands. 

The agreement, which was also signed by industry, commits the EPA to gathering information from oil and gas companies to determine whether and to what extent aggregation should be enforced.  The types of information that EPA may gather include system maps, gas flow diagrams, descriptions of gathering systems, and contractual information.  Ultimately, the agreement will ensure greater scrutiny of oil and gas operations, providing greater assurance that aggregation safeguards will actually enforced.

It is EPA’s failure to enforce aggregation safeguards that led to today’s settlement.  The agreement resolves two appeals filed by WildEarth Guardians—one challenging a permit issued by EPA that allowed BP to operate the Florida River natural gas processing facility in southwestern Colorado and the other challenging an EPA decision upholding a permit issued by the State of Colorado that allowed Anadarko to operate the Frederick natural gas compressor station north of Denver.  Both appeals challenged the EPA’s failure to enforce aggregation requirements, pointing to the fact that both facilities processed natural gas from hundreds of connected oil and gas wells.

WildEarth Guardians agreed to drop its appeals while the EPA agreed to undertake its pilot program. 

“The oil and gas industry is fracking with abandon, putting our clean air at risk,” said Nichols.  “Although this agreement doesn’t solve our mounting pollution problems, it takes a big step forward by providing the disclosure and transparency we need to more effectively enforce our clean air laws, both here in Regio 8 and beyond.”

Notice of the agreement is slated to be published in tomorrow’s Federal Register, followed by a 30-day public comment period over the settlement.  An advance notice can be downloaded here, http://www.ofr.gov/(X(1)S(2vehrkumvatjjwgag2awih1y))/OFRUpload/OFRData/2011-29644_PI.pdf.