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Arctic offshore NPDES permits out EPA publishes draft wastewater general permits for exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas; previous permit expired in June Alan Bailey Petroleum News
The Environmental Protection Agency has published for public review draft wastewater general permits for oil and gas exploration activities in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The permits come under the National Pollutant Discharge System, or NPDES, and are designed to protect the marine environment and public health by placing limits on the types of waste that companies can discharge into the sea during offshore operations.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has also issued draft certifications for the permits.
By remaining within the discharge limits set within a general permit, a company can avoid having to separately apply for an individual permit for an offshore drilling operation, for example. However, the general permits only apply to exploration activities — development and production activities associated with offshore oil and gas fields would require separate permitting.
Previous Arctic permit Previously EPA issued a general Arctic NPDES permit that applied to both the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. That permit expired in June 2011 but, until new permits are issued, EPA has extended the operation of the old permit to cover companies that have notified the agency of intents to conduct offshore exploratory activities.
And rather than re-issuing the old permit, EPA decided to prepare separate permits for the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. The Chukchi Sea permit excludes a 25-mile buffer zone along the coast and, therefore, only includes federal waters on the outer continental shelf, rather than state waters. The Department of the Interior has excluded the coastal buffer zone from outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing. The Beaufort Sea permit covers the federal outer continental shelf and some state waters.
Unlike the old Arctic permit, neither of the two new permits covers the Hope and Norton basins, offshore northwest and western Alaska.
New stipulations In addition to the stipulations in the old permit, the new permits propose the elimination of the discharge of non-aqueous drilling fluids and associated drill cuttings, and the elimination of the discharge of fluids from well testing. Other changes include an expanded scope of environmental monitoring at each drilling site; the screening of some waste streams for toxicity; and a limitation of drilling activity to five wells per lease block (rather than per drilling site), other than with agency authorization.
Agency authorization will also now be required for the discharge of water-based drilling fluids and associated cuttings in the Beaufort Sea when bowhead whaling is in progress. And also in the Beaufort Sea, an alternatives analysis and agency authorization will be required for the discharge of water-based drilling fluids, drilling cuttings, sanitary waste and domestic waste to stable sea ice.
EPA requires public comments on the draft permits by March 30, with public hearings scheduled in Anchorage and Barrow in mid-March.
Transition to state The State of Alaska is in the process of taking over administration of the NPDES program in Alaska and had been scheduled to take over wastewater permitting of oil and gas activities in 2011. However, the transition to the state of this component of the permitting program was deferred by a year and is now due to be completed at the end of October 2012. After October EPA will continue to administer the new general permits, where they apply to the federal outer continental shelf; the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation will take over administration of the permits in state waters of the Beaufort Sea.
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