Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
07/20/12
AT EPA
The White House recently weakened the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed standard for fine particulates emissions under 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM 2.5), the Washington Post reported this week. The newspaper said that a Freedom of Information Act request yielded documents that said EPA originally sought to set a limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air from its current standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter. However, the Post reported that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget later directed EPA to alter the limit to between 12 and 13 micrograms per cubit meter, which EPA did in the proposal it unveiled last month. Some environmental groups later criticized the Obama Administration for interfering with a science-based decision. PM 2.5 contributes to soot.
IN THE INDUSTRY
The D.C.-based private equity firm the Carlyle Group is interested in acquiring more energy ventures, a company official said this week on the program “Platts Energy Week.” “We’re very opportunistic, so if other opportunities come along, we’ll look at them,” David Marchick, Carlyle’s managing director for external affairs, said on the program. “We’re a very big investor in the energy sector, both in traditional energy and renewables…and we’ll continue to look at every opportunity that comes along.” However, Marchick added that there are no specific plans to acquire new ventures as of now. Carlyle announced earlier this month that it finalized a deal with Sunoco Inc. to revamp a 140-year-old oil refinery in Philadelphia, which was scheduled to close next month. Carlyle hopes to turn the refinery into a state of the art facility that processes U.S.-produced crude from places like the Bakken play in North Dakota under a joint venture called Philadelphia Energy Solutions. The refinery is the oldest and largest on the East Coast, processing roughly 330,000 barrels of oil daily from West Africa and the North Sea into different petroleum products. Carlyle said it plans to cut back on the imports in order to make the project more profitable, which Marchick said the firm hopes to do within the next five years. The company purchased and sold a similar refinery in Europe several years ago.
ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
The Crown Estate, which manages the United Kingdom’s continental shelf for the British monarchy, announced this week that it has granted, for the first time, an option to store CO2 emissions offshore to a carbon capture project. The Estate said in a statement that it agreed to lease an area of the depleted North Sea gas field Goldeneye to Royal Dutch Shell and the utility Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) for their Peterhead natural gas CCS project in Scotland. While the value of the agreement was not released publically, local media reports said the it is first of its kind and came after 18 months of negotiations. The deal allows for the £1.5 billion ($2.35 billion) 385 MW retrofit project to move forward in the development process. The award is the first granted under a new program recently started by the Crown Estate to award lease agreements for offshore storage sites for CCS projects. According to local press reports, at least seven requests have been submitted to the Crown Estate.
Residents of the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan are divided in their acceptance of carbon capture and storage as a technology to help mitigate climate, the pro-CCS group IPAC-CO2 Research Inc. said this week. The group this week released the results of a survey it conducted with more than 1,000 Saskatchewan residents earlier this summer examining their opinions tied to climate change and CCS. The group said that the people questioned are fairly evenly split on the potential for CCS. Of those surveyed, roughly one-third said that CCS could be very or fairly effective in mitigating climate change, while 39 percent said they think it would not be very or at all effective, according to IPAC-CO2. “The remaining 29 percent are unsure, which is a notable increase from the 2011 research where 20 percent of those surveyed did not have an opinion whether or not CCS would be effective in fighting climate change,” the group said in a release. More than two-thirds of those surveyed said that they are concerned about climate change, Communications Director Joe Ralko said. Saskatchewan is currently a leader in CCS development and is home to IEAGHG’s Weyburn-Midale CO2 monitoring and storage project and SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CCS retrofit project, which is currently under construction.
