The Independent Petroleum Association of America expects the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to decide within 2 months whether to include exploration and production operations in the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program.
Last year, EPA deferred a decision whether to include producers in the TRI program, which requires firms to report on the chemicals they release into the environment. Those reports are made available to the public.
The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission has said it is unnecessary for EPA to include E&P in the TRI program, because the public already can obtain oil and gas TRI data in producing states and there have been few complaints about its availability or access.
No. 1 priority
Lew Ward, IPAA chairman, said TRI is a "No. 1 priority" for the association. He said industry discharges are made under state and federal permits, and E&P operations are usually in rural areas.
Ward said the association is continuing to push for an education program to correct the public's "very low opinion about who we are."
IPAA and the American Petroleum Institute would split the cost of the $25 million/year program (OGJ, Nov. 25, 1996, p. 29). An API task force is polling its membership to determine whether to proceed (OGJ, Feb. 3, 1997, Newsletter).
Now IPAA will do the same. Last week, its governors voted to form a task force to ensure that independents are willing to back the program and pay their half of the costs. Based on that response, IPAA will decide in May what approach to take.
Ward said, "Depending on the funding program independents and royalty owners decide to go with, it may require federal legislation."
IPAA has drafted a bill that would create a Domestic Oil & Gas Council-which would be run by industry associations-to collect as much as 0.1% of gross revenues from the first sales of oil and gas and use the funds to run the public education program.
A prototype program in Oklahoma uses a similar surcharge to fund a $4.7 million/year program. Withholding is mandatory, but producers can request refunds; last year, those refunds totaled only 2.9% of the collections.
Rest of agenda
IPAA's agenda for the current Congress calls for it to participate in the debate over electricity decontrol to ensure that natural gas does not lose market share in electric power generation and that "deregulation does not disrupt the contractual relationships between natural gas suppliers and electric generation markets."
In tax areas, IPAA once again will ask Congress for expensing of geological and geophysical costs. And it wants revisions in the percentage depletion schedule for independents, so that can be more useful at times of low crude prices.
IPAA will lobby for administrative expansion of the enhanced oil recovery tax credit, which it contends the Treasury Department is interpreting too narrowly.
Ward said IPAA is concerned about the Minerals Management Service's plan to change the formula for paying royalties on oil production from federal lands: "Independents want to be sure we pay on what we actually receive at the wellhead, no more and no less."
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