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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 withthe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that will ensure greaterscrutiny of air pollution from oil and gas drilling, including fracking, andopen the door for aggregation safeguards to finally be enforced.

“Fracking and otheroil and gas operations are taking a tremendous toll on clean air throughout theUnited States,” said Jeremy Nichols, Climate and Energy Program Director forWildEarth Guardians. “Aggregationis key to addressing this threat. This agreement ensures EPA lays the groundwork for enforcing this vitalsafeguard in order to protect public health and the environment.”

Under the Clean AirAct, connected sources of air pollution must be aggregated together whendetermining what constitutes a source for permitting purposes. Aggregation is a standard requirement that ensures connected sources of airpollution are not broken down into smaller sources, which would allow pollutersto avoid pollution control requirements.

Aggregationsafeguards are especially important for oil and gas operations, which oftenconsist of hundreds to thousands of connected polluting pieces of equipmentincluding 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 requiredto use up-to-date pollution controls on a more widespread scale.

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

The agreement, which was also signed by industry, commitsthe EPA to gathering information from oil and gas companies to determinewhether and to what extent aggregation should be enforced. The types of information that EPA maygather include system maps, gas flow diagrams, descriptions of gathering systems,and contractual information. Ultimately, the agreement will ensure greater scrutiny of oil and gasoperations, providing greater assurance that aggregation safeguards willactually enforced.

It is EPA’s failure to enforce aggregation safeguards thatled to today’s settlement. Theagreement resolves two appeals filed by WildEarth Guardians—one challenging apermit issued by EPA that allowed BP to operate the Florida River natural gasprocessing facility in southwestern Colorado and the other challenging an EPAdecision upholding a permit issued by the State of Colorado that allowedAnadarko to operate the Frederick natural gas compressor station north ofDenver. Both appeals challengedthe EPA’s failure to enforce aggregation requirements, pointing to the factthat both facilities processed natural gas from hundreds of connected oil andgas wells.

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

“The oil and gas industry is fracking with abandon, puttingour 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 weneed to more effectively enforce our clean air laws, both here in Regio 8 andbeyond.”

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