The BEAT News – June 9, 2016

Inspector General called to investigate scientific fraud that wasted crucial years in slowing climate crisis while risking safety of workers, communities

Durham, NC – A watchdog group today charged that a high-ranking federal official connected to the fossil fuel industry committed scientific fraud and possibly criminal misconduct in a case with sweeping ramifications for global climate change and the safety of workers and neighbors of natural gas sites across much of the United States.  The group called for an expedited investigation due to the urgent climate and safety implications of the EPA’s failure to curb widespread methane emissions.

NC WARN, a 28 year-old climate and energy justice nonprofit, filed a 68-page complaint today with the Inspector General of the US Environmental Protection Agency based on written evidence and testimony provided by the engineer who invented the primary technology used to measure leakage and deliberate venting of natural gas.  The complaint says the device’s severe underreporting of emissions during two high-profile studies has ramifications for releases of methane at hundreds of thousands of tanks, drilling sites and other gas equipment around the world.

The complaint alleges that Dr. David Allen, then-head of EPA’s Science Advisory Board, has led an ongoing, three-year effort to cover up underreporting of the primary device, the Bacharach Hi-Flow Sampler, and a second device used to measure gas releases from equipment across the natural gas industry.  Allen is also on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he has been funded by the oil and gas industries for years.

The studies were published in 2013 and 2014 by the Environmental Defense Fund as concerns were rising about the climate impacts of methane emissions from hundreds of thousands of gas wells being drilled as the fracking gas boom raged in a number of US states.  While many other studies during the period increasingly showed alarming levels of methane emissions, the 2013 EDF study, led by Allen, showed far lower emissions, and it has been used persistently by the gas industry to argue that methane leakage is low and that EPA should back off efforts to begin reducing methane emissions.

Leading researchers now consider the natural gas industry to be the foremost greenhouse gas problem in the US, largely due to methane emissions. That’s because methane is 100 times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over the first ten years, and because methane levels in the atmosphere above the US have risen sharply since the fracking boom began, according to researchers from Cornell, Harvard, Stanford and elsewhere.

NC WARN director Jim Warren said today, “The EPA’s failure to order feasible reductions of methane leaks and venting has robbed humanity of crucial years to slow the climate crisis.  The cover-up by Allen’s team has allowed the industry to dig in for years of delay in cutting emissions – at the worst possible time.”

The underreporting flaw with the Bacharach device is well-documented.  It had been raised by an EPA researcher before the Allen 2013 study – and now even its manufacturer admits to the flaw, although hundreds of the devices are still being used in gas-producing countries.  But it was engineer Touché Howard, the inventor of the technology, who proved the flaw existed and showed that emissions could be underreported in the Allen studies by up to 100-fold.

In its complaint, NC WARN says that, despite Howard’s warning and years of experience as a leading expert and consultant on measuring methane emissions for various study teams, Allen moved ahead with promotion of the two studies that used the flawed data.  He also refused to discuss the problems with Howard while telling EDF, EPA and others that all was okay.  NC WARN says it appears other EPA officials and researchers declined to confront Allen due to his stature.

A group of state attorneys general has pressed EPA since 2012 to get a handle on just how much methane is leaking across the natural gas industry.  NC WARN said it will seek support for the investigation from those attorneys general, and from social justice, labor and environmental groups.

As with other federal agencies, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General is a watchdog over potential misconduct within the agency.  The OIG has investigative powers and can refer criminal matters to the Justice Department.  In 2014, the OIG criticized EPA for poor work on methane emissions.

Touché Howard and NC WARN emphasize that leakage and routine emissions at well sites and other gas facilities could be damaging local community health while creating explosion risks for workers.

Howard said today, “We simply don’t understand the level of emissions across this industry.  It’s almost certainly higher than studies have shown, and EPA’s reliance on inaccurate information has created a disincentive to take feasible steps that could greatly reduce the emissions.”

NC WARN found and approached engineer Howard during research for an ongoing battle to stop Duke Energy from making a rapid shift toward the burning of shale gas.

Cornell University’s Dr. Robert Howarth, a leading researcher of methane emissions, said today that engineer Howard’s concerns must be openly resolved:  “Touché Howard has done an impressive job of synthesizing information on the problems with the Bacharach instrument.  From the start, the paper by Allen and colleagues in 2013 seemed to have unusually low estimates for methane emissions from shale gas, certainly in comparison to most of the other recent literature.  Howard makes a convincing case that instrument failure explains at least part of the problem with the work of Allen and colleagues, and quite possibly with other studies upon which the US EPA has relied.”  

Cutting methane is crucial.  Rapid heating is underway over the past six months that could signal abrupt acceleration of global heating, other weather extremes and sea level rise that could spell worldwide chaos within just a few dozen years.  Prominent scientists believe there remains very little time to reverse that process.

Cornell’s Howarth argues that cutting gas-industry methane emissions is essential to slowing global warming quickly enough to avoid the tipping point toward runaway changes. In the complaint, NC WARN calls for EPA to institute a zero emissions policy for methane venting and leakage throughout the natural gas industry, noting that engineer Howard insists that great reductions are practical.

Jim Warren added today:  “Fracking for gas and oil must also be stopped for a host of reasons. We’re reaching out to communities, workers, advocates and elected officials to join the call for an investigation into EPA’s scientific fraud. The People of this nation must demand that regulators and politicians reject the pervasive pressure of corporate money, stop coddling the polluters – and do their jobs on behalf of the public.” 

See the NC WARN complaint to the EPA inspector general

Now in its 28^th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to induce Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest carbon polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes.
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Last Oil Company Pulls Out Of Arctic Offshore Drilling Efforts In Chukchi Sea

By Ryan Koronowski
Climate Progress
June 8, 2016

It’s often hard to find good news when it comes to the world’s oceans. Overfishing, coral bleaching,dead zones, acidification, pollution, oil spills, melting sea ice, sea level rise, the odd Cold War-era Russian rocket crashing into Baffin Bay with some leftover toxic fuel in the tank: There are as many marine bad news stories as there used to be fish in the overfished sea.

So on World Oceans Day a bit of positive news is a breath of fresh air — or gill-full of clean water.

Repsol, a Spanish oil company which owned a significant portion of the drilling leases for Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, abandoned 55 of them last week and plans to drop the remaining 38 next year.

“Repsol is in the process of relinquishing its Chukchi Sea acreage position offshore Alaska,” Repsol spokeswoman Jan Sieving said in a statement.

The Spanish company joins the rush of oil drillers — Shell, ConocoPhillips, Eni, and Iona Energy — departing the Arctic region after concluding that offshore drilling is not worth the expense or the risk. After Shell spent over $4 billion attempting to develop offshore Arctic oil and completing just one exploratory well, it said it was done in the Chukchi “for the foreseeable future.” This was two years after Shell’s Kulluk rig ran aground and had to get rescued by the Coast Guard heading south attempting to avoid paying more taxes in 2013.

Apart from one token Shell lease block that the company is retaining to keep the information it gained from its failed 2015 exploratory well, Repsol’s leases were the last blocks remaining in the Chukchi.

“Last month we figured out that Shell and a bunch of other companies had given up their leases,” said Mike Levine, Oceana’s Pacific senior counsel, told ThinkProgress. “After eight years, billions of dollars, and significant controversy, we’re back to a clean slate in the Chukchi sea.”

Those blocks cost Repsol $15 million in 2008, netting the company access to over half a million acres of ocean floor to explore for oil and gas deposits.

After a boom in the 80s and 90s when millions of acres were sold in the Arctic Ocean, all of the leases in the Chukchi Sea, with initial terms of 10 years, were relinquished by 2003. A few remained in the nearby Beaufort Sea, closer to shore and able to rely on slightly more coastal infrastructure and oil pipelines. Another boom took place from 2003 to 2008, where another 3 million acres were sold to oil and gas companies to again explore.

Once again, of the 487 leases obtained in the Chukchi sale, all companies (save Shell’s one remaining lease) relinquished their leases to explore for oil and gas, according to research from Oceana. The Beaufort leases have dropped from 240 to 71 — and many of those are close to the end of their terms, with no immediate plans for development. Repsol said their Beaufort leases are up for review and could be “relinquished periodically as the portfolio is high graded.”

“Both Repsol and Shell have said they’re taking a separate process to pursue exploration in the Beaufort,” Levine said. “It’s something of a mystery why companies are still holding onto them.”

It’s becoming clearer to many that drilling offshore in the Arctic is a terrible idea — there are icebergs and pack ice to worry about year-round, darkness and extremely low temperatures for large parts of the year. This means it costs billions to even find out if it’s possible to extract the oil, which is a problem when global oil prices have plummeted so low. Drilling in the Arctic also risks a spill that would be so difficult to clean up, in 2011 the Coast Guard said it had “nothing” prepared in case of a spill. NOAA is also still testing methods of how to respond to such a disaster.

Grassroots movements and opposition from Democratic presidential candidates may not have played a huge role in the boardroom discussions that led to these companies jettisoning their Arctic leases, but more discussion has led to more awareness, and a new drive to halt all new offshore drilling, period.

Even though offshore Arctic drilling is taking a nap in North America, the Eurasian Arctic is not getting off so lightly. Norway is still trying, unsuccessfully, to drill for offshore oil in the Arctic. Russia is proceeding with its efforts to augment its Siberian deposits with the oil locked under the seabeds off its long Arctic coast, even though it lost partners like Exxon after sanctions went into effect following Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Companies could easily lose their reluctance to pursue risky drilling projects if the price of oil rises high again. If that happens it would take national and international regulation to ease the threat of a horrible spill. “It’s time the Obama Administration listens to the Arctic communities, climate and environmental activists, and the oil companies and protects the Arctic Ocean from the threat of offshore drilling,” Dan Ritzman, Sierra Club’s director of Arctic Operations, said in a release.

Still, ocean advocates took a moment to breathe a sigh of relief.

“It was good news on the eve of World Oceans Day and gives us hope for a sustainable future in the Arctic,” said Oceana’s Levine.