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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
January 2019

Vol. 24, No 1 Week of January 06, 2019

Commission holds venting/flaring hearing

Conservation groups look to AOGCC to prevent all venting, flaring; AOGA supports commission’s existing regulations, citing safety

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation held a different kind of hearing Dec. 18 - a hearing in response to a petition for a hearing.

The petition for a hearing on preventing all non-emergency venting and flaring came from Kate Troll, originally with 48 signatures; a supplement brought the number to some 300.

Troll told the commission that while climate change was the concern, they were not asking the commission to expand its mission but asking that it enforce statute 31.05.095 prohibiting waste of oil and gas and the commission’s regulations defining waste.

That section of Alaska statute says simply: “The waste of oil and gas in the state is prohibited.”

The commission regulates gas disposition under 20 AC 25.235, which specifies reporting by specific categories and limits releases of gas except for “de minimis” venting - with a report required if the incident exceeds one hour. Reporting under 20 AAC 25.205 for uncontrolled releases is not required for gas releases of less than 1,000 mscf (thousand standard cubic feet).

Kate Troll

According to a transcript of the hearing, Troll cited various industry statements and told the commissioners that at least some of the state’s major producers “are fully on-board with your mission to reduce methane emissions.”

She said, “there is reason to doubt that rigorous compliance is occurring,” and asked if the commission had met with industry to discuss the reduction of emissions or “devoted resources to enforcement of its waste gas regulations and will it do so in the future?”

Alaska Climate Action Network

Ceal Smith, on behalf of the Alaska Climate Action Network, said those signing the petition were appealing to the commission to do everything in its power “to fully enforce and strengthen the rules to reduce Alaska’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

Smith said they looked at data from the commission obtained by Lois Epstein of The Wilderness Society, and said it wasn’t obvious where industry was reporting venting of gas.

She asked several questions, including how the commission tracks methane releases.

Commissioner Cathy Foerster said she was hearing a lot of questions and suggested perhaps a hearing wasn’t the appropriate format, since commissioners do not answer questions from the bench.

Forester said it was very important that the public understand what AOGCC does and that it acts in a transparent manner. She suggested some concerns could be addressed by a meeting with the commission’s technical staff, who could answer questions and explain what the commission does.

Smith said the petitioners were specifically asking the commission “to enforce existing waste rules and strengthen those rules.”

She said they question whether “the waste rules are being enforced to the fullest extent based on the data” she presented.

The Wilderness Society

Lois Epstein, an Alaska licensed engineer with The Wilderness Society, said “the public would like to know what AOGCC is doing to analyze form 10-422, flaring and venting reports, to determine if there should be enforcement actions against certain operators for wasted gas resources,” and also asked if the commission had verified any of the reports to see if claims made by the operators were legitimate. She asked if there been any enforcement actions over the past 10 years for wasting of gas.

Epstein asked that the commission “upgrade the state’s regulatory standards addressing waste gas” and “consider pursuing one or more high profile enforcement actions against operators who are not meeting the state’s existing regulatory requirements.”

Forester said that some of what Epstein said sounded like information requests and said the hearing wasn’t the forum for a public records request, “so if you really want that data, make a public records request for it.”

Alaska Oil and Gas Association

Kara Moriarty, president and CEO of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, said AOGA opposes the petition and supports the commission’s current venting and flaring regulations.

The petition, Moriarty said, “seeks to prevent all non-emergency venting and flaring” which AOGA believes would be both impractical, “but more importantly it’s unsafe.”

She said “since 2005 there has been a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by industry in Alaska,” citing the most recent report from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Moriarty said operators “use all reasonable precautions to prevent the waste of oil and gas resources. However, the venting or flaring of some natural gas is practically an unavoidable consequence of oil and gas development.”

She also said the commission is not the only agency regulating flaring, venting and fugitive emissions - DEC, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bureau of Land Management, on federal land, also regulate flaring and venting.

Commission Chair Hollis French said the commission would take the matter under advisement and if anything about the hearing causes two of the three commissioners to agree “we can go forward.”

He suggested that one thing the commission could do is try to make its website more accessible.

Commissioner Dan Seamount asked that Epstein compare the questions she had with those of Smith and let the commission know if there were extra questions.






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