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Alaska faces Clean Water Act challenges Environmental, tribal, fishing groups want hearing on relaxed limits on Cook Inlet pollution discharges Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Alaska environmental, tribal and commercial fishing groups are challenging the state’s endorsement of relaxed federal limits on polluting discharges from oil and gas facilities in Cook Inlet.
The challenge is the latest twist in a Clean Water Act tussle that’s been running for several years now.
In Cook Inlet, regulators and industry have reached, apparently, an understanding whereby old platforms and other facilities can continue operating through their last days while dumping millions of gallons of polluting “produced water” into the inlet.
This arrangement, however, is unsatisfactory to the environmental, tribal and commercial fishing groups, who say the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation lacks a legal basis for its decision “to justify dramatically increasing the pollutant load entering Cook Inlet from oil and gas activities.”
Hearing requested The five groups want an “adjudicatory hearing” on DEC’s certification that new, less stringent limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed for Cook Inlet produced water discharges comply with Section 401 of the Clean Water Act and Alaska’s water quality standards.
Produced water is water, included seawater injected to maintain reservoir pressure, that comes out of a wellbore along with crude oil and natural gas. In mature fields, such as those in Cook Inlet, wells can produce increasing and very large amounts of produced water relative to the volume of crude.
The groups requesting the adjudicatory hearing are Cook Inletkeeper, a Homer-based environmental nonprofit; the Native Village of Port Graham and the Native Village of Nanwalek, both federally recognized tribes; United Cook Inlet Drift Association, a commercial fishing group; and Cook Inlet Fisherman’s Fund, a commercial fishing nonprofit that raises money for legal actions. Trustees for Alaska, an Anchorage-based environmental law firm, filed the Nov. 21 hearing request on behalf of the five groups.
The groups are challenging an “antidegradation analysis” the DEC wrote in support of its Oct. 20 certification.
The groups contend the analysis is “legally invalid” and doesn’t support further degrading Cook Inlet water quality. Specifically, the DEC has failed to adopt proper implementation procedures to carry out its antidegradation policy, the groups say.
Keeping old equipment going Cook Inlet oil and gas industry discharges have been allowed for many years under a general permit.
Companies covered under the general permit include Chevron subsidiary Union Oil Co. of California, which operates most of the platforms in Cook Inlet; ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy; and ConocoPhillips.
Produced water discharges have exceeded 4.5 million gallons per day in years past.
For regulatory purposes, the water is of interest because of the potential contaminants it can carry, including mercury, copper, silver and hydrocarbons.
In its antidegradation analysis, the DEC said it “finds that authorization of these discharges in Cook Inlet requires the lowering of water quality and that this lowering of water quality is necessary to accommodate important economic development.”
Specific facilities affected by the new produced water limits include the Granite Point, East Foreland and Trading Bay production facilities, and platforms Anna, Baker, Bruce, Dillon, Granite Point and Tyonek.
The analysis discusses the importance of the oil and gas industry to Alaska, and the marginal situation with the Cook Inlet facilities.
Good ways to deal with produced water include reinjecting it back underground, or treating it prior to discharge, the DEC analysis says.
“Such methods are problematic given both the older platforms in Cook Inlet and the mature oil fields the platforms are working,” the analysis says. “Older platforms are generally too small to allow space for additional treatment facilities. As oil reserves are depleted, more produced water is generated to access smaller amounts of oil. The increasing volume of this produced water makes the design of additional treatment difficult. Cook Inlet fields have been producing for over 40 years.”
Package treatment plants are “too costly” and difficult to install on old, small platforms, the analysis says. And the limited life left in Cook Inlet fields “makes it impractical to require reinjection when considering the cost associated with drilling and maintaining the injection well site.”
Further, the analysis says, geologic formations at some sites can’t accept large volumes of produced water.
“Because a higher level of treatment carries with it the likelihood that facilities would no longer be economic to operate, the lowering of water quality is necessary in order for production from these facilities to continue,” the analysis says.
Mixing zones The alternative is ensuring the discharges comply with water quality standards outside of “mixing zones” established around the Cook Inlet facilities, the antidegradation analysis says.
The inlet is a 170-mile estuary known for its extreme, flushing tides.
The analysis cites studies involving Chevron and XTO, as well as government agencies, that “support the conclusion that discharges from the existing platforms and facilities have not adversely impacted Cook Inlet nor can increased metals or hydrocarbons in Cook Inlet be directly attributable to them.”
The relaxed limits for produced water discharges won’t hurt existing uses of Cook Inlet, such as aquaculture, commercial fishing and recreation, the analysis concludes.
But environmental, tribal and commercial fishing groups disagree.
The EPA and DEC have drawn Clean Water Act challenges not only at Cook Inlet but from other regions of the state including the Arctic.
The EPA initially tried to relax Cook Inlet discharge limits with the general permit issued in 2007, but challengers took the matter to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This led to the EPA reproposing the limits, and DEC issuing its Oct. 20 certification.
In the court challenge, Trustees for Alaska accused the EPA of “bending the rules to let the oil companies extract the last penny of profit from these aging facilities.” Trustees also said the EPA was relying on “vastly larger” mixing zones to “accommodate the growing torrents of pollution.”
On April 26, eight conservation and tribal groups from around the state sued DEC in Alaska Superior Court arguing the agency had issued “interim antidegradation implementation methods” without public input, and elevated economics over other considerations such as subsistence.
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