The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on applying its “blanket authorization” rules to a lot more gas pipeline projects than in the past. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the proposal and what the planned change would mean for pipeline owners and developers.
An emergency fuel waiver by the Environmental Protection Agency is allowing refineries and refined product terminals to supply gasoline with a higher Reid vapor pressure this summer than previously permitted. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the waiver may well increase gasoline supply and improve refinery and blender economics.
Data center development is booming across the country. But power and water supplies, fiber connectivity, and regulatory environments differ across states. Today’s RBN blog compares seven leading states for data centers on the key factors that help determine development outcomes.
Back in the early 2010s, U.S. crude oil and NGL exports were minimal and LNG exports were non-existent, but there were omens that the U.S. would soon regain its status as an energy production juggernaut. Now the U.S. is a critically important global supplier of oil, gas and NGLs, with exports crucial to managing supply and demand as infrastructure rushes to keep up and industry players simultaneously explore alternative energy possibilities. How all these moving parts interconnect was the focus of RBN’s 18th School of Energy last week and it’s the subject of today’s RBN blog, which — fair warning! — is a blatant advertorial for School of Energy Encore, our newly available online version of the recent, action-packed conference.
By now, just about everyone is aware of and has been impacted by efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — and methane especially — as a way of meeting global climate goals, but that doesn’t mean everyone is on the same page. The energy industry is a leading source of methane emissions in the U.S., but with nearly 1 million active wells across the country and not much common ground on the actual scope of methane emissions and how best to reduce them, finding a path forward without overburdening the sector and its customers is more than a little tricky. In today’s RBN blog, we preview our latest Drill Down Report on efforts to reduce methane emissions.
New, stiffer rules on well siting, drilling and production undoubtedly pose potential challenges to producers. After all, these changes typically impose further limits on what E&Ps can do on the acreage they control as well as new requirements. But like death and taxes, environmental regulation is a certainty that producers need to deal with and, if they’re lucky, they can find a way to work with new rules and minimize their impact on their businesses. That seems to be what’s happening in Colorado — home to the rebounding Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin and other production areas — which enacted a new oil and gas permitting law a couple of years ago and subsequently developed and implemented related regulations. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, most producers seem to have figured out how to manage the new regs.
For decades, gas-gathering pipelines located in rural areas largely escaped the federal scrutiny that was primarily focused on transmission pipelines. But all that has changed with final publication of the so-called Mega Rule, which applies federal pipeline safety regulations to hundreds of thousands of miles of gas-gathering pipelines — previously not subject to federal safety regulation — for the first time. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the history behind the three-part Mega Rule, what it’s designed to do, and the challenges pipeline operators will face to stay in compliance.
A simple problem can be solved with a simple solution, but more complex problems require a more nuanced approach, often using a combination of strategies. That’s the case with plans to mitigate methane emissions, which are not only potent and prevalent, but notoriously hard to quantify, with little common ground among industry, the government and the public about what steps should be taken next. In today’s RBN blog we look at the different approaches the U.S. is taking to regulate methane emissions and address other clean-energy priorities.
The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers a lot of incentives, mostly in the way of tax credits, to advance the Biden administration’s clean-energy initiatives and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There are inducements for everything from carbon capture and electric vehicles to renewable energy and hydrogen production, but very few penalties. One exception is included in the new law’s Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP), which features the federal government’s first-ever fee on the emissions of any GHG. In today’s RBN blog, we look at recent attempts to mitigate methane emissions, how the new methane charge will work, and how it could one day be replaced by new federal rules.
It’s well understood that methane is a significant greenhouse gas and that reducing methane emissions from oil and gas production is critical to hitting long-term emissions targets, but that’s about where most of the common ground ends. There are serious disagreements about the actual magnitude of methane emissions, the proper role of government regulation, and whether requirements to control those emissions would place an undue burden on the energy industry and lead to decreased supply. In today’s RBN blog, we look at how emissions estimates are made, why they can vary significantly, and how the disagreements about how to curb those emissions might be resolved.
