Congress

 

House

 

Lawmakers Demand Answers From Largest Oil Well Owner — “Top House lawmakers say the nation’s largest oil well owner could be ‘severely underestimating’ the cost to clean up its sites, elevating the risk of abandonment. In a Monday letter to Alabama-based Diversified Energy, Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and three colleagues said the company’s aging wells across Appalachia may also represent a heightened risk for methane pollution, a potent greenhouse gas. ‘As the largest owner and purchaser of oil and gas wells in the United States, Diversified Energy is responsible for remediating a substantial share of the country’s aging oil and gas wells, but we are concerned that your company may be vastly underestimating well cleanup costs,’ wrote the lawmakers. The letter was also signed by Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.); Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Kathy Castor (D-Fla.); and Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials Subcommittee ranking member Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.). Diversified owns and operates more than 70,000 wells in the eastern and southern United States. Many are older, low-production wells that the company buys in bulk to achieve economies of scale.” [E&E News, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Dems Probe Diversified Energy — “Four top Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee are looking into whether Diversified Energy, the largest owner of oil and gas wells across the country, is ‘vastly underestimating’ the price tag to clean up its aging wells and leaving leaking wells unplugged. ‘Such an underestimation would threaten Diversified Energy’s ability to cover environmental liabilities associated with cleaning up its oil and gas wells, which could create thousands of orphaned, methane-leaking wells and undermine efforts to respond to the worsening climate crisis,’ wrote the lawmakers, led by ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). They pointed to Bloomberg reporting in 2021 on the company’s marginal wells. The Democrats requested information by Jan. 3 on the Alabama-based company’s plans to plug old wells and its efforts to reduce methane emissions. The letter came the same day Diversified Energy began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.” [Politico, 12/19/23 (=)]

 

 

Department of the Interior (DOI)

 

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)

 

US Confirms Plan For Fewest Ever Oil & Gas Lease Sales As Focus Shifts To Offshore Wind — “The US government late Friday confirmed a dramatic phase-down of proposed oil and gas lease sales to a maximum of three in the Gulf of Mexico over five years through 2029, in a move it said will allow it to focus on offshore wind development there and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The plan ‘sets a course’ for the Department of Interior (DoI) to support President Joe Biden’s twin national goals of 30GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050, said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.” [Recharge, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

API Slams BOEM’s 5-Year Oil And Gas Lease Sale Program — “In what the American Petroleum Institute (API) slams as ‘a step in the wrong direction,’ the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has now published the final 2024–2029 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. As proposed on September 29, it includes the fewest oil and gas lease sales in history. As we noted then (see earlier story), the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) does not allow the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to issue a lease for offshore wind development unless the agency has offered at least 60 million acres for oil and gas leasing on the OCS in the previous year. The 2024 to 2029 oil and gas leasing program schedules three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico Program Area in 2025, 2027 and 2029. These three lease sales are the minimum number that will enable the Interior Department’s offshore wind energy program to continue issuing leases in a way that, it says, ‘will ensure continued progress towards the Administration’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.’” [Marine Log, 12/18/23 (-)]

 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)

 

After 50 Years, The Endangered Species Act Has An Almost Perfect Record — “In the 1960s and 1970s, the Kirtland’s warbler was in trouble. The population of small songbirds with lemon-yellow underbellies had dropped 50% in a decade, and in 1974 only 167 breeding pairs remained in the world, relegated to a tiny corner of northwest Michigan. ‘They were literally down to 14 townships where they bred, in the world,’ said Carol Bocetti, a professor at Pennsylvania Western University who helped lead conservation efforts for the warbler over several decades. ‘Which is, you know, horrible.’ Humans drove the warbler’s decline in two major ways. Clear-cutting of the jack pine forests the warbler needed had decimated its habitat, which was already one of the smallest of any bird in North America. Meanwhile, nesting warblers faced another scourge, as brown-headed cowbirds ‘parasitized’ their nests, kicking out the eggs and laying their own. The cowbird had evolved alongside the massive bison herds that used to roam the prairies, but when those bison disappeared, the nest parasite looked for new homes. The recently cleared jack-pine forests fit the bill.” [The Messenger, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

Saving Animals From Extinction Is A Climate Strategy, Too — “In the late 1960s, Americans became alarmed that their national bird was at risk of extinction, due to harms including pollution, habitat loss and poisoning from the toxic pesticide DDT. It was a wake-up call that entire species were in peril from modern human expansion. The result was that on Dec. 28, 1973, then-President Richard Nixon signed the US Endangered Species Act into law. It stipulated that if a plant or animal could be classified as endangered or threatened, officials would create and follow a science-based plan to save it, regardless of cost. Fifty years later, 99% of the species ever listed under the ESA are still around. A few have even recovered enough to be taken off the list — including the law’s raison d’etre, the bald eagle. Back when the law was signed, climate change was still a dark cloud on the horizon, the full extent of the coming storm understood by only a few. Yet the ESA has also been a bulwark for protecting some of the nation’s biggest carbon sinks: forests, grasslands and wetlands. That’s because legislators very much understood that protecting species is about protecting their biological environment.” [Bloomberg, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

 

Department of Agriculture (USDA)

 

AP | US Officials Propose Historic Conservation Measures For Old Growth Forests Amid Growing Threats — “The Biden administration is taking action to protect old-growth trees on federal land across the U.S. The proposal aims to enhance resiliency and protect existing old growth from threats, such as wildfires, insects and disease. The proposal to revise management plans for 128 national forests and grasslands is expected to be completed by early 2025.” [Fox News, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

 

Courts & Legal

 

'Pay-As-You-Trespass' Remedy Can't Stand, Tribe Argues — “Enbridge Energy Co. shouldn’t be allowed to pay essentially ‘fair rental value’ with a lower court’s three-year pass allowing the company to continue operating a controversial pipeline on reservation land despite federal law stating such forced conveyance is invalid, a native tribe in Wisconsin told the Seventh Circuit. The federal appellate court should instead reject the ‘paltry pay-as-you-trespass toll’ that a lower court had allowed Enbridge to pay, and require the company to immediately shut down its eroding Line 5 pipeline and to disgorge ‘the full extent’ of profits it has made since operating the line at least a decade past easement expiration, the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians argued in a brief filed Friday. The Western District of Wisconsin gave the Canadian pipeline company three years to reroute Line 5 and said it must pay approximately $5.1 million for trespassing, with Judge William M. Conley recognizing in the process that the remedy essentially amounted to a ‘forced easement’ of tribal land, the band said Friday. But the lower court’s purportedly equitable order violates federal law, which requires that all profits stemming from a conscious trespass be disgorged and that tribal consent be given before any land rights can be conveyed, the band argued. ‘No means no, and equity means equity,’ the tribe told the court.” [Law360, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Trial Set For North Dakota’s Pursuit Of Costs For Policing Dakota Access Pipeline Protests — “A court fight over whether the federal government should cover North Dakota’s $38 million in costs of responding to the lengthy protests of the Dakota Access oil pipeline years ago near its controversial river crossing will continue as a judge said the case is ‘ripe and ready for trial.’ The state filed the lawsuit in 2019, seeking $38 million. The lawsuit’s bench trial was scheduled earlier this month to begin Feb. 15, 2024, in Bismarck before U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor, estimated to last 12-13 days. Traynor on Wednesday denied the federal government’s motion for summary judgment to dismiss the case, and granted the state’s motion to find that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ‘failed to follow its mandatory permitting procedures’ for the protest activities on its land, among several rulings he made in his order.” [Associated Press, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

 

Outdoor Industry

 

Fishing Group Yanks Climate Lawsuit In Rare Win For The Oil Industry — “West Coast fishermen are — at least temporarily — dropping their climate lawsuit against oil and gas companies after a setback in federal court. Fishing groups first sued the fossil fuel industry in 2018 after algal blooms forced crab fisheries to close several years in a row. But Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found last month that the case could be considered a class action lawsuit — making it eligible to be heard in federal court, where it could be more likely to fail. In a two-page notice filed with the court last week, attorneys for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations said it had not filed a class action lawsuit and that ‘dismissal without prejudice is therefore appropriate.’ The groups are not ruling out a return to court.” [E&E News, 12/19/23 (=)]

 

 

States & Local

 

California

 

Could Culver City’s Landmark Deal To End Oil Production Be A Model For Other Cities? — “Culver City has struck a deal with one of California’s largest oil producers to end petroleum extraction and plug all wells within the city limits by the end of the decade — an agreement that environmentalists say could serve as a model for other municipalities. After two years of negotiations, Culver City and Sentinel Peak Resources reached a settlement agreement to ban oil drilling in the city’s portion of the Inglewood oil field. The agreement requires the company to seal its 38 Culver City wells by 2030, ensuring that taxpayers are not responsible for footing those costs. The announcement comes as environmental activists focus increasing attention on the health and financial risks of idle oil wells in Southern California, a region once dominated by oil derricks and pumpjacks. The agreement also means that Culver City will be among the first communities in the region to end fossil fuel production and cap its wells. ‘It’s a win for public health. It’s a win for our communities. And it’s an inspiration for others,’ said Meghan Sahli-Wells, an environmental advocate and former Culver City mayor. ‘There are 38 oil wells in Culver City. Those will be 38 fewer pockets of poison in our community.’” [Los Angeles Times, 12/16/23 (+)]

 

Colorado

 

Colorado Releases First 5 Wolves In Reintroduction Plan Approved By Voters To Chagrin Of Ranchers — “Somewhere on a remote mountainside in Colorado’s Rockies, a latch flipped on a crate and a wolf bounded out, heading toward the tree line. Then it stopped short. For a moment, the young female looked back at it’s audience of roughly 45 people who stared on in reverential silence. Then she disappeared into the forest. She was one of five gray wolves Wildlife officials released in a remote part of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains on Monday to kick off a voter-approved reintroduction program that was embraced in the state’s mostly Democratic urban corridor but staunchly opposed in conservative rural areas where ranchers worry about attacks on livestock.” [Associated Press, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Colorado Releases 5 Wolves On Western Slope, Fulfilling Voter-Approved Reintroduction Measure — “Five gray wolves captured by Colorado wildlife agents in Oregon were released into the wild on the Western Slope on Monday, fulfilling a voter-approved 2020 ballot initiative to reintroduce the animals in Colorado in the name of restoring ecological balance. Video footage released by Colorado Parks and Wildlife showed Gov. Jared Polis and Reid DeWalt, CPW’s assistant director for aquatic, terrestrial and natural resources, releasing two of the wolves from their crates on at an undisclosed location in Grand County. ‘Today, history was made in Colorado,’ Polis said in a written statement. ‘For the first time since the 1940s, the howl of wolves will officially return to western Colorado.’ ‘I am proud of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff for their hard work to make this happen,’ Polis added. ‘The shared efforts to reintroduce wolves are just getting started and wolves will rejoin a diverse ecosystem of Colorado wildlife.’” [Colorado Newsline, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

Colo. Wolf Release Can Start Amid Rancher Challenge — “A Colorado federal judge has turned down requests by rancher groups to put a preliminary stop to wildlife officials reintroducing gray wolves into the state as part of a voter-mandated program. U.S. District Judge Regina M. Rodriguez ruled Friday that despite claims by ranchers that wolf reintroduction could harm their businesses, the potential harm is mere speculation and not enough to warrant stopping the program. ‘While the petitioners who have lived and worked on the land for many years are understandably concerned about possible impacts of this reintroduction, neither these possible impacts nor their assertions under the Administrative Procedure Act are sufficient for this court to grant the extraordinary relief they seek,’ Judge Rodriguez wrote.” [Law360, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

New Hampshire

 

NH’s Critical Coastal Salt Marshes Get $2 Million Federal Boost — “It’s not a surprise that the New Hampshire project that won $2 million in funding in the latest federal conservation program involves saving our salt marshes from a host of threats. ‘The projects are heavy on watershed restoration – riverways, coastal waterways. It’s been decades now of folks all over the country recognizing the importance of working on watersheds … of protecting an entire watershed instead of just a piece of it, which is what we would have done in the past,’ said Shannon Estenoz, assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Estenoz was talking about $141 million in grants awarded to 74 projects through the latest round of what is called the America the Beautiful Challenge. While some didn’t deal with water – Vermont got $1 million to produce a long-term conservation plan – many did. Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example, received six-figure grants to improve ‘aquatic connectivity for imperiled species in the Appalachian Corridor,’ which often means removing dams on rivers and upgrading road culverts over streams, providing the extra benefit of resilience against erratic rainfall.” [The Concord Monitor, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

North Dakota

 

Landowner Attorneys Argue Survey Access Law Is Unconstitutional — “A state law that places few limitations on a survey crew’s access to private property should be declared unconstitutional, attorneys for landowners argued Monday before the North Dakota Supreme Court. But an attorney for the state cautioned that striking down the law could have consequences beyond pipeline construction. Brian Jorde of Domina Law in Nebraska and Derrick Braaten of Bismarck are representing landowners who refused to grant survey access to Summit Carbon Solutions, an Iowa-based company wanting to build a carbon capture pipeline through North Dakota and four other states. Summit Carbon Solutions, referred to in court documents as SCS Carbon Transport, sued multiple landowners who don’t want the hazardous liquid pipeline to run through their property. Summit prevailed in district court, arguing that it needs access to survey property to determine the best route for its pipeline that intends to ship greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol plants to underground storage sites in western North Dakota.” [North Dakota Monitor, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Texas

 

DOJ Resists Calls For Full 5th Circ. To Hear Texas Barrier Row — “The federal government on Friday opposed Texas’ bid for en banc rehearing after a split 5th Circuit panel ruled that the state must move the floating barrier it built in the Rio Grande to deter migrants, arguing Texas failed to show the preliminary injunction would cause any irreparable harm. The government argued that the 2-1 panel correctly upheld U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra’s preliminary injunction requiring Texas to stop construction of the barrier and move it to the riverbank while the government’s lawsuit against the Lone Star State plays out. ‘Apart from failing to satisfy the standard for rehearing, the case is a poor candidate for immediate further review both because it is interlocutory and because (as both the panel and the dissent observed) Texas proffered no evidence of concrete harm from the preliminary injunction,’ the government wrote.” [Law360, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Thousands Of Oil And Gas Wastewater Spills Threaten Property, Groundwater, Wildlife And Livestock Across Texas — “In the early 2000s, the city of Midland, Texas, detected contaminated well water on its T-Bar Ranch property, which it purchased as a source of drinking water back in 1965. The pollution was eventually traced to a spill of produced water, a byproduct of oil and gas drilling. The multi-million dollar clean-up effort continues two decades later. The city found elevated levels of chlorides and total dissolved solids in several wells at the ranch, signs of produced water, and eventually sued the oil and gas company Heritage Standard Corporation for leaking produced water at its storage tanks and waste ponds, causing it to leach into the groundwater. Oil and gas drilling, and particularly hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, rely upon large quantities of water, sand and proprietary chemicals, some of which are toxic, to free the oil and gas from geologic formations deep underground. Produced water is the liquid waste that comes back to the surface and contains both the drilling fluids and groundwater that can contain naturally occurring hazardous compounds from the earth, including arsenic and organic compounds such as benzene, a carcinogen.” [Inside Climate News, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

Washington

 

WA Sets Aside 2,000 Acres Of Forest For Conservation, Cancels Timber Sale Near Elwha River — “Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz announced Monday a proposal to conserve some 2,000 acres of state forest land. The proposal includes 69 acres within the Elwha River watershed that were part of a controversial timber sale, which is now canceled. ‘The community has raised significant concerns about the Elwha,’ Franz told The Seattle Times in an interview on Monday. ‘We have a salmon crisis. That is an area where we have seen unbelievable return of habitat. We’ve seen an unbelievable return of our salmon. … So let’s include it in this 2,000 acres which was all about ensuring that we had highly ecologically valuable forests.’ The Elwha River has flown freely since 2014 in what was the largest dam removal project ever undertaken, after decades of advocacy on behalf of the salmon and river by tribal nations and conservationists.” [The Seattle Times, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

Wyoming

 

BLM Announces Oil And Gas Lease Sale In Wyoming — “The Bureau of Land Management Wyoming State Office today announced an oil and gas lease sale scheduled for March 5, 2024, to offer 30 oil and gas parcels totaling 13,417 acres in Wyoming. The BLM completed scoping on these parcels in July 2023 and a public comment period in October 2023 on the parcels, potential deferrals, and the related environmental analysis. A 30-day public protest period to receive additional public input opened today and will close January 12, 2024.” [The Cheyenne Post, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Western Water

 

Take Me To The River — “The Biden administration is walking a tightrope in two long-running battles over water in the West, and neither of the politically perilous situations are likely to let up before the campaign ramps up in earnest. Along the Colorado River, states are trying to hash out a long-term deal to accommodate their needs with the river’s rapidly declining flows once their current agreement expires in 2026 — and it’s not going very well, as our Annie Snider and Camille Von Kaenel report after last week’s Colorado River users conference in Las Vegas. Each of the states has its own goals, but the newest tension point is pitting downstream states like Arizona, California and Nevada against their upstream counterparts like Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. That list includes three potential swing states and the home of many of Biden’s most deep-pocketed donors. At the same time, the U.S. needs to negotiate a new deal on Colorado River flows to Mexico, as Jennifer Yachnin reports. Further north, the Biden administration reached a settlement with environmental groups last week that could lay the groundwork for removing dams in the Pacific Northwest to benefit salmon conservation.” [Politico, 12/19/23 (=)]

 

Water Managers Across Drought-Stricken West Start Negotiations In Las Vegas — “Nature offered the Colorado River Basin states a reprieve last winter after a heavy snowpack and generous rainfall saved the region’s two largest reservoirs from collapse. But one good year won’t solve decades of drought in the West, and the deadline for a new set of rules to manage the Colorado River looms over seven states dependent on its flow. Top water officials for the seven Colorado River Basin states met last week during this year’s Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. With a few more years of stability secured for the river, state representatives resumed negotiating a new compromise for how they will share — and cut back on — water use after 2026. States will begin crafting their proposals by March of 2024 before finalizing a new agreement by the 2026 deadline. Negotiators acknowledged they have three options to decide how states will share the river’s waning water supply going forward: litigation, legislation or negotiation. Negotiations are the preferred option, state water commissioners agreed.” [Nevada Current, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

Colorado River Negotiations Flow Across The Border — “Western states dominate the spotlight in the ongoing battle over how to divide the water drawn from the shrinking Colorado River, but a second fight is quietly taking shape in the wings: The United States must also strike a new deal with Mexico. Mexico, like the American West, has felt the pain of a diminished river. The country has agreed to forgo nearly 6 percent of its flows in recent years as drought has decimated the waterway and threatened to drain its major reservoirs to unusable levels. That means less water for some of the 600,000 acres of farmland in Mexicali Valley, which receives the water via the Alamo Canal. Now, on the eve of presidential elections in both nations — and the potential of a new term for President Donald Trump and his protectionist worldview — Mexico and the United States will soon begin a new round of negotiations to determine potential cutbacks, along with environmental restoration projects and scientific research. ‘We share a very long border, and we share many natural resources,’ said Julian Escutia, the consul of Mexico in Las Vegas, during the Colorado River Water Users Association’s annual conference Friday. ‘We believe that cooperation is the only way to move forward.’” [E&E News, 12/18/23 (+)]

 

Conservationists Push To Halt Lake Powell Pipeline Review — “Environmental advocates are calling on the Biden administration to halt permitting reviews of a billion-dollar effort to pipe water from drought-ravaged Lake Powell to southwest Utah, asserting the project is ‘infeasible and dangerous to the water supply’ of the Colorado River. In a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Monday, a coalition of conservation groups urged the agency to terminate permitting for any portion of the Lake Powell pipeline, including any future environmental reviews. ‘The Lake Powell Pipeline is a paper dinosaur that needs to be shredded once and for all,’ Zach Frankel, executive director of the Utah Rivers Council said in a statement. ‘Forty-million residents need the federal government to step in and stop Utah from wasting anymore tax money on this irresponsible boondoggle.’ The 140-mile project would move 86,000 acre-feet of water from Lake Powell to Washington County, Utah, which is home to the growing community of St. George and Zion National Park.” [E&E News, 12/18/23 (=)]

 

 

 

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