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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
May 2020

Vol. 25, No.22 Week of May 31, 2020

Fairbanks air quality extension denied

EPA proposes rule rejecting state request to defer attainment date by a further five years; now requires a new plan by end of year

Alan Bailey

for Petroleum News

The Environmental Protection Agency has published a proposed rule rejecting the State of Alaska’s request to extend by a further five years the required date for attainment of acceptable air quality standards in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. In 2017 EPA had ruled that the state had to prepare a plan for attaining the required air quality by Dec. 31, 2019. However, EPA has determined that the air quality had not improved sufficiently by that date.

EPA says that it has been in close contact with the state and that the state does not oppose this proposed new action. Essentially, the state had not met criteria specified in the Clean Air Act for the approval of a five-year extension, EPA said. Those criteria include imposing controls on emissions sources and demonstrating that those controls would enable clean air attainment within the extension period.

According to the proposed rule, the state has said that, because of sub-Arctic conditions in the region and high energy costs for the community, attainment of the required standards is not feasible until 2029. EPA says that it will now require the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to develop by Dec. 31, 2020, a new plan for air quality improvement. EPA says that the state is already working on developing this new plan.

A long-standing problem

Air quality in the Fairbank region during the winter has been a long-standing problem, primarily because of the widespread use of wood burning stoves to heat houses. Pollution can also result from the use of oil fired equipment and vehicle exhaust. In addition, winter thermal inversions tend to trap cold air, holding pollutants close to ground level, thus causing people to inhale polluted air.

Following EPA’s 2017 directive, DEC started requiring building owners selling, leasing or conveyancing their properties within the impacted area to replace their wood-fired heating equipment with EPA-certified wood or pellet stoves - modern stoves can burn wood much more efficiently that older models. DEC also introduced measures designed to reduce the burning of wet wood, given that the burning of this type of material results in increased smoke. In a DEC plan subsequently approved by the EPA, DEC also banned the use of wood burning heaters during periods of anticipated high air pollution.

A new state plan

In November 2019 DEC published a new air quality plan for Fairbanks North Slope Borough, as part of the state implementation plan, or SIP, for achieving required air quality standards in Alaska. The plan includes measures such as more stringent criteria for curtailing the use of wood stoves during periods of high air pollution; a requirement to use low sulfur diesel in oil-fueled heaters, starting in 2022; and a deadline for the removal of coal-fired and uncertified heaters from buildings. However, the agencies involved in the planning realized that attainment of the required air quality standards by the end of 2019 was impractical. The state had already filed its request for a five-year extension to the deadline, the request that EPA is now rejecting.

Interior Energy Project

A primary purpose of the Interior Energy Project, a multi-year project sponsored by the Alaska Industrial

Development and Export Authority, is to help address the Fairbanks air pollution problem by encouraging residents and businesses to use natural gas for heating buildings. The project is pursuing a significant increase in the supply of affordable natural gas to consumers in the Fairbanks region. At this stage, the project has resulted in the formation of a consolidated gas utility, Interior Gas Utility, for the region. IGU has implemented a major new liquefied natural gas storage facility in Fairbanks and is building additional storage at North Pole. The expansion of storage capabilities will enable IGU to serve more customers. The plan also involves expanding LNG production capabilities at the Titan LNG plant near Point Mackenzie on the Cook Inlet - that plan is currently on hold pending a better understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future Fairbanks gas demand.






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