Practical magic

ROBERT BRELSFORD
DOWNSTREAM TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

There's something about the city of New Orleans for those of us fortunate enough to hail from there-whether by birth or via a lineage of now long-turned-to-dust ancestors-that tethers you to it as if by some invisible subterranean root shooting through the land and up into you, no matter where in the world you may be. Like the city itself, it's a mysterious thing, this binding, the nature of which can turn from enchantment to menace in less than the second it takes to blink one's eyes.

By the time of this reading, it will be Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Samhain, or whatever by tradition you may call it, and its writing comes fresh off the heels of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers' 2016 Environmental Conference held in New Orleans.

For this OGJ editor, the venue could not have been more apropos, simultaneously providing him an opportunity to return to his native land at the loveliest time of the year, but more importantly, presenting the perfect forum for refining and petrochemical operators to discuss the hazy landscape of regulatory challenges facing them in a place well-suited for the summoning of otherworldly intercession.

And, yes, ladies and gentlemen, despite however many demons you may feel you've already slain, the regulatory road ahead remains littered with a host of shapeless ghouls, their forms slowly gathering hither and dither in the indistinct but undeniably palpable ether that enshrouds the murky swamplands of government rulemaking.

While there literally are a thousand different takeaways from the AFPM conference one could offer up as tools to use in helping to divine the things to come, one stands out as paramount: vigilance.

Because let's face it. We're in the throes of a political and regulatory witching hour.

Witching hour

Just days away now from the US presidential election, we're faced with two candidates that have spent little time-if any, really-discussing issues and concerns relevant to this industry. One has no experience whatsoever in navigating the troubled waters of government machinations, while the other was and remains the loyal confidant to a former president under whose administration the US Environmental Protection Agency launched innumerable torpedoes on the hydrocarbons processing sector.

Perhaps more dire than this, however, is the reality that EPA now finds itself under attacks from a host of entities, defending itself from one accusation and lawsuit after another over flaws in its rulemaking and permitting processes so that these processes, or guidelines, no longer blanketly apply. To protect itself and its decisions, the agency increasingly operates now on a "case-by-case" basis, offering little certainty to operators of project outcomes. Worse yet, the scope of seemingly routine information requests from refiners and petrochemical operators is beginning to broaden to vaguely definable limits, to a point where data collected potentially could be used to justify future regulations on hydrocarbon processors, even where those needs for such regulations have merely been suggested or implied by data collected from regulated entities outside of the hydrocarbons sector.

Cast a spell?

Descended from a long line of women that-had they entered through the wrong port-in Colonial America likely would have been burned at the stakes for their "unnatural" abilities to tell of the past and future, this editor can say only that complacency will be the only monster truly capable of killing you.

As a refiner or petrochemical operator, you hardly need magic to combat the forces that would hamper you.

You simply need to remain vigilant. Not merely to proposed guidelines or regulations that would directly impact you, but to the logic and thought processes-as well as the scope of data requests-behind and part of rulemakings completely unrelated to you.

If you haven't already, put next year's AFPM Environmental Conference on your agenda. Talk to your peers. Make it a point to comment on proposed rulemakings, no matter the time it may take or the headaches it will cause.

As it tends always to be, your fate is in your own hands. But it never hurts to let your voice be heard as well.