Posted on March 1, 2013 by Molly Cagle
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning a rulemaking to expand its Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program in March 2013. Will the oil and gas extraction sector be included in the program’s expansion?
As part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), the TRI program gathers and makes public information about chemical and waste management activities at a wide variety of facilities. EPA touts TRI reporting as one mechanism to reduce the release of chemicals into the environment. It claims that the information gathered helps companies keep up with competitors’ efforts to reduce and recycle waste, and that the public dissemination of information can lead to citizen and EPA enforcement.
EPA considered including the oil and gas extraction sector in TRI in 1997, but decided against it due to technical issues in determining whether individual wells spread out over large geographic areas would be considered a “facility” under EPCRA. A petition filed by environmental groups claims these technical issues are resolved and points to the basin-level definition of facility in EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting rule as an example of how oil and gas production operations can be aggregated. Meanwhile, the GHG reporting rule is still under administrative reconsideration and the definition of facility under that rule is a key point of contention between EPA and industry.
As recently as last week, EPA’s Inspector General “recommend[ed] that EPA develop and implement a comprehensive strategy for improving air emissions data for the oil and gas production sector.” If oil and gas production is included in TRI, how will it affect the sector? Will it be a way to get at chemical ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing that are otherwise protected from disclosure as trade secrets? Will the aggregation of data for TRI purposes spill over into air and waste permitting decisions? At a minimum, TRI would require industry to gather more information on chemicals, wastes and emissions and make it publicly available. Thus, industry should prepare for the corresponding public attention and regulation that may accompany TRI expansion.
Tags: EPCRA, oil and gas, Toxic Release Inventory
Emissions | Environmental Protection Agency | Natural Resources | Toxic Substances