The Nickel Report

Recent press reports indicate that a cyber-attack disabled the third-party platform used by oil and gas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners to exchange documents with other customers. Effects from the attack were largely confined because no other systems were impacted, including, most notably, industrial controls for critical infrastructure. However, the attack comes on the heels of a Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) alert warning of Russian attempts to use tactics including spearphishing, watering hole attacks, and credential gathering to target industrial control systems throughout critical infrastructure, as well as an indictment against Iranian nationals who used similar tactics to attack private, education, and government intuitions, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”). These incidents are raising questions about cybersecurity across the US pipeline network.

In April 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule governing the control and management of coal combustion residuals (CCR) in surface impoundments used to treat those residuals. In general, CCR consists of materials that result from the combustion of coal at coal-fired electric utility plants. As part of its rule, EPA required operators to submit initial closure plans for impoundments and post them on a publicly available website in November 2016. Under the rule, these initial closure plans must contain information related to the method of closure, and are subject to change as operators gather additional information.

The New Source Review (NSR) Program of the Clean Air Act (CAA) requires large new plants (in the parlance of the Act “major” “stationary sources”) to go through an extensive, time consuming and expensive review and permitting process prior to construction. Such sources are required through these permits, among other requirements, to install the best available control technologies (BACT) to reduce levels of specific regulated pollutants. The NSR program also applies to existing facilities if they are modified in substantial ways and if, as a result, emissions increase by significant amounts (these are known as “major modifications”).

The Trump Administration has pursued an ambitious goal to reduce federal regulation. The administration has slowed the promulgation of new rules, and in early 2017 a bevy of late-term Obama-era rules still subject to the Congressional Review Act were overturned by the GOP Congress.

On March 12, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order finding that delays by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) in reviewing Millennium Pipeline Company’s application for water quality certification constituted waiver of NYDEC’s authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA).

Read the full report on PipelineLaw.com.

Earlier this month, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology published a staff report entitled “Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media.” The report is the result of the Committee’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. energy markets.

See the full report on PipelineLaw.com.

As we have noted previously (An Opportunity for a New Federal-State Relationship Under the Regional Haze Program, July 17, 2017; A New Perspective on Regional Haze Regulation?, February 14, 2017), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently signaled a new openness to recognizing state prerogatives and flexibility in implementing the regional haze program under the Clean Air Act (CAA). That program addresses impairment of visibility in the skies over protected national parks and wilderness areas that is attributed to widespread haze resulting from emissions to the air from varied sources.

EP Association Updating International Environmental Standards Following Admission of New Member Financial Institutions from China, Japan, Korea, Sweden and Taiwan

Following its annual meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, the Equator Principles Association (EP Association) announced plans to update its globally recognized risk management framework to reflect significant changes to the manner in which environmental and social impacts and risk mitigation strategies are recognized and managed by financial institutions, corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and society.

In a surprising decision, a federal judge last week blocked California from requiring Monsanto to put Proposition 65 warning labels on its Roundup products, ruling there is “insufficient evidence” that glyphosate—the active ingredient in the popular weed killer—causes cancer.

On February 15, 2018, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) held its February 2018 open meeting. Among other things, the Commission acted on two major rulemakings and took significant action regarding transmission planning in PJM.