On February 28, 2016, U.S. EPA publicly announced its priority enforcement areas (EPA National Enforcement Initiatives or NEIs) for the next three years (fiscal years 2017-2019). The announcement provides keen insight into how EPA plans to allocate its enforcement resources in the coming years.
EPA describes the NEIs in the following manner:
"Every three
As part of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the EPA recently released rule proposal directed at the oil & gas industry. On August 27, 2015, U.S. EPA published its proposed rule for "single source permitting" for the oil & gas industry. The comment period will close October 26, 2015.
The proposed rule will
Municipalities across the country have attempted to place restrictions on the use of fracking associated with oil & gas drilling. Most cases involve outright bans on fracking or more rigorous permitting requirements. Ohio was no different. Other states, like Pennsylvania and New York, both allowed local regulation of fracking. Ohio was different
With the passage of Ohio’s budget bill (House Bill 59), the State has enacted tougher regulation of oil & gas related wastes. Beginning January 1, 2014, a person is prohibited from storing, recycling, treating, processing, or disposing of brine or other waste substances associated with oil & gas exploration and production without a permit or
Across the country more local governments are attempting to pass their own ordinances regulating or even prohibiting natural gas drilling in their jurisdictions. Under home rule principals, the typical rule of thumb is that local ordinances are preempted if the state has a comprehensive regulatory scheme for that area. However, various state courts have reached
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Through out the long and contentious election process the focus of the debate was getting America back to work. Much of the debate centered on tax policy and budget cuts. However, the President was accused of "over-regulation" which Mitt Romney argued cooled the economic recovery.
As part of the debate over regulation, environmental regulation was
Typically, environmental legislation may be passed in Ohio once every few years. In fact, most environmental regulatory reform is done in small doses during the budget bill process. In the last two weeks, Governor Kasich has signed into law three separate bills that including major environmental regulatory provisions.
On April 17th, EPA issued new rules designed to reduce air emissions from oil & gas operations, including wells drilling using hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"). The new federal standards (New Source Performance Standards -NSPS) are seen as the first significant new federal regulation governing fracking.
Some may wonder how gas wells generate air emissions. When
On April 13th, President Obama issued an Executive Order creating a federal inter-agency task to coordinate efforts on oversight of horizontal well drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. Method such as hydraulic fracturing (i.e. "fracking") have allowed access to massive new deposits of natural gas bring the price down for natural gas to
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Right now there is no other topic in Ohio that generates more news coverage than horizontal gas drilling (or "fracking"). It seems a day doesn’t go by without a new news story regarding fracking or related developments.
Ohio has seen oil & gas wells installed for well over a hundred years. However, until recently huge