CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
EPA
Sides with BP on Alaska Air Pollution Rule
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 18, April 25, 2007
The Environmental Protection Agency has sided with BP on a controversial air
pollution rule for the oil company’s North Slope complex.
In an order issued last week, the EPA adopted looser air pollution limits for BP’s sprawling petroleum production and exploration operations.
As a result of the order, petroleum facilities will be allowed to emit additional tons of hydrocarbons each day, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a public interest group that has been bird-dogging the issue.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson rejected a petition filed by PEER and a former Alaska state environmental engineer, Bill MacClarence, demanding that EPA veto a permit issued by the state of Alaska in 2003 for facilities at the massive BP complex on the North Slope.
“The North Slope currently produces as much as a fifth of the nation’s oil supply, so the volume of pollution released is immense,” said Bill MacClarence, who had protested the permit both when he served as the supervisor of its air permit program for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and after he retired. “North Slope oil operations are already emitting as much nitrogen oxides as the entire Washington, DC metropolitan area and it is going to get a lot worse.”
At issue is a regulatory rule called “aggregation” which prevents polluters from avoiding air pollution permit limits by breaking their operations down into smaller units, each with its own pollution cap.
On January 12, 2007, EPA issued national guidance that forbade applying aggregation principles to reduce pollution at oil facilities that are physically separated even though operationally linked.
Oil and gas developments typically consist of many pieces of equipment, sometimes thousands in big developments, often connected by pipelines.
The January 2007 guidance means that oil companies can treat equipment clusters as separate facilities, each with its own pollution allowances.
MacClarence, a 20-year environmental engineer, had persuaded the State of Alaska to require aggregation in the BP permit, but under intense lobbying from the Alaska Oil & Gas Association, the state reversed its stand in July 2003.
Initially, EPA echoed those concerns but eventually also reversed its position.
In
the order, EPA Administrator Johnson denied that his agency “altered its
position on aggregation ...because of aggressive lobbying by the Alaska oil
and gas industry…” but admitted that “EPA did meet with the
applicant, at the applicant’s request, on two occasions to discuss aggregation…”
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