Articles Posted in Oil and Gas Law

Texas royalty owners should get to know the website, FracFocus. This website provides a list of chemicals and other ingredients in fluids used by oil and gas well operators for hydraulic fracturing of wells both in Texas and across the country. The intent of the website is to allow the public to access this information and to provide objective and accurate data about hydraulic fracturing. FracFocus is managed by the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

Twelve states currently require operators to report their data on FracFocus and eight more states are about to require reporting. The website currently has more than 45,000 records from more than 400 companies.

A new version of the website went online on June 1, 2013 that promises to be even easier to use according to witnesses who testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee during their first natural gas forum. Some of the changes in the new version of the website include the display of data in a format that is easier to aggregate and customize. In addition, the new website will allow a search by the name of a chemical, using the Chemical Abstracts Service number, and a date range.

In April 2013. representatives in the US House of Representatives announced that bipartisan legislation would be introduced in 2014 to take out corn based ethanol requirements in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard

The bill is called the Renewable Fuel Standard Reform Act. Those involved in the oil and gas industry know that the standards involving ethanol can effect the market by conferring an artificial advantage for the so called “renewable” fuels over oil and gas.

The current Renewable Fuel Standard requires 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the domestic fuel supply by 2022, and almost all of that is from corn-based ethanol. This requirement uses a massive percentage of America’s corn supply and diverts it to fuel. In 2011, 40% of the nation’s corn went to making ethanol, which is about five billion bushels of corn. Because so much of the corn crop is used for ethanol, there is less for food and for livestock feed. The end result is a substantial increase in the price of corn and everything that has corn as an ingredient, hurting consumers and many small businesses. In addition, ethanol in fuel wrecks havoc on everything from car engines, to lawnmowers to chainsaws. No one has bothered yet to assign a cost for these damages to consumers.

The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee has held at least five meetings in the last two years on the problem of federal oil and gas regulations overlapping with existing state regulations. The Committee’s chairman, Representative Doc Hastings, had a common sense solution to this confusion: “There is a simple solution to prevent duplication: Don’t duplicate the states. The ‘one size fits all’ regulatory structure being pursued by the Obama administration is a waste of time and energy.” This issue is particularly significant in light of the increase in hydraulic fracturing, a process that has become increasingly politicized at the national level.

That is exactly the message of three of the witnesses at the Committee’s latest meeting. These three witnesses, all state officials, agreed that states are in a unique position to understand the geological and environmental conditions and issues within their states. The states represented by these three witnesses were Utah, Texas, and Ohio.

Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Gregory Bell told the Committee: “From Utah’s perspective, increasingly national political considerations are unduly influencing land use decisions that are more effectively addressed locally.” He went on to assert that “political jockeying” in Washington within national policy debates hurts local communities, who are better placed to decide what is best for their land. He pointed to the sequester cuts to mineral lease royalty payments, which confuses what royalties are supposed to be- they should be dedicated revenues held in trust, not subject to federal spending rules.

Due to increasingly onerous regulations, oil and gas industry associations have filed suit in federal court over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) planned regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants and vehicles. The regulations come from a 2009 EPA finding that greenhouse gases pose a public health threat- the so-called “endangerment finding”.

Last year, a three judge panel at the District of Columbia’s Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the EPA regulations. That same court denied the energy industry Petitioners a rehearing in December, so the Petitioners recently asked the US Supreme Court to review the regulations at issue.

The Petitioners’ request explains that the regulations are hurting the economy, that there are clear legal issues that need to be adequately addressed, and that the need for review was particularly acute in light of two articulate dissenting opinions at the Court of Appeals, one by Judge Brett Kavanaugh and one by Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board, recently announced the creation of a new panel on hydraulic fracturing, generally referred to as “fracing”. The formation of the panel comes as the Obama administration is working to revise draft rules for fracing. With new technologies like fracing leading to historic amounts of oil and gas production for the US, this topic is hotter than ever.

The new panel, called the Hydraulic Fracturing Research Advisory Panel, will be made up of 31 experts (see the list of experts here).Among the 31 are several consultants, two government employees, and 21 academics and college professors. To compose the panel, the EPA asked for nominations of recognized scientists and engineers in the field of hydraulic fracturing, which resulted in 144 candidates. That group was whittled down to 31 through checks for financial and other conflicts of interest. There are at least three experts representing each of the following areas: Petroleum/Natural Gas Engineering; Petroleum/Natural Gas Well Drilling; Hydrology/Hydrogeology; Geology /Geophysics; Groundwater Chemistry/Geochemistry; Toxicology/Biology; Statistics; Civil Engineering; and Waste Water and Drinking Water Treatment. The Chair of the panel is Dr. David A. Dzombak, an environmental engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg.

This panel of experts will peer review the EPA’s 2014 draft report on the potential impact of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water. It will also provide scientific feedback on the EPA’s research methods. In particular, the panel is expected to provide information on emerging science and technology for the Science Advisory Board. The report itself is the product of a request by Congress that the EPA commenced in 2010. The draft study plan for the proposed report was submitted in March 2011.

Recently the IHS hosted CERAWeek in Houston, Texas (you can view the brochure here). CERA stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an organization founded in the early 1980s to consult on energy issues for both the government and private companies, and that hosts the annual event in Houston each year. This year’s event, the 32nd such conference, had about 2,200 participants from the energy industry coming from about 50 countries around the world, including 300 speakers.

This year’s CERAWeek’s conference was called “Drivers of Change: Geopolitics, Markets & the New Map of Energy.” It focused on the profound transformations in the industry and hoped to shed new light on the future of energy and focus on changes in the competitive landscape, the unconventional oil and gas revolution, and new fuels and technologies of the future. Daniel Yergin, the conference’s chairman, said, “All this is leading to a vigorous discussion of how the energy needs of a growing world economy will be met over the next 2 decades and what the mix will be. Will an energy transition unfold over years or over decades?”

In terms of the US, we are expected to average 7.3 million barrels per day of oil in 2013, up 900 million barrels since just last year. Our oil imports have been declining since they peaked in 2005, because of this growth in production. Tight oil development in the US and Canada has far outpaced any other region of the world, and the question will continue to be one of the pace of growth. Michael Stoppard, managing director of global gas for IHS, said there was a “redrawing” of the global gas map focusing on three supplies- unconventional gas, deepwater gas, and gas from tight oil. He noted that the world demand for gas would continue to grow in the next few years but that the US probably could not export significant light natural gas until 2015. He also predicted a rebalancing of gas prices from their “unsustainably low levels” of today.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology recently released a new study, entitled the Sloan Foundation Shale Gas Assessment Study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, predicting a reliable, although decreasing, supply of natural gas from the Barnett shale until 2030. Barnett shale is the country’s second most productive shale formation.

This new study is believed to be the most thorough yet on the topic of natural gas production in the Barnett shale, and it predicts a total recovery of over three times cumulative production to date. The study integrated engineering, geology, and economics to do scenario testing. The testers studied the actual data produced from 16,000 wells in the play until 2011. Most other studies of Barnett took a “top down” approach, relying on aggregate views of average production. This study, in contrast, took a “bottom up” approach by studying the production history of every well as well as those areas that remained to be drilled in the future, which they believe yielded a more accurate model. The researchers increased the accuracy of the study by identifying and assessing the production in ten different quality tiers and using that information to predict future production even more accurately. Their new method of estimating production for each well was integral and will contribute to future forecasting of production declines in shale natural gas wells. One of the investigators on the project, Svetlana Ikonnikova, an energy economist at the Bureau, said, “We have created a very dynamic and granular model that accounts for the key geologic, engineering and economic parameters, and this adds significant rigor to the forecasts.”

The study also demonstrated the correlation between gas prices and production. It noted that in the early years of drilling, the correlation is weak because it is not very expensive to drill in better quality rock areas, making it efficient even when the prices are low. In later years, when the natural gas is harder and more expensive to retrieve, price becomes the dominant factor.

Forecasts for the oil and gas markets for 2014 were released recently. They predict a somewhat loose market, along with more positive news for those involved in the North American oil and gas industry. These projections were published in the “Short-Term Energy Outlook”, a document produced by the US Energy Information Administration. The report says that a “loose market” will result from higher global consumption of oil being offset by the increased global supply of fossil fuels.

The Short-Term Energy Outlook predicts that global liquid fuel consumption will remain stable in 2013 but will pick up again and increase in 2014 due to economic recovery–increasing by about 400,000 million barrels per day. The report predicts that most of the increase in consumption will come from outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of the world’s developed countries. In the OECD countries, the report predicts a decline in consumption of 300,000 million barrels per day due to decreasing use of liquid fuels in Europe that is not offset by the modest rise in consumption in North America. In 2014, the OECD overall decline will slow to 100,000 million barrels per day. The increase in the US is expected to be 70,000 barrels per day in 2013 and 60,000 barrels per day in 2014. Most of that increase will be in fuel oil and liquid petroleum gas.

Perhaps the more interesting information in the report pertains to energy production. The members of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are expected to decrease crude oil supply in 2013 by 600,000 barrels per day due to a decline in production in Saudi Arabia. Other OPEC members, such as Iraq, Nigeria, and Angola, will increase production to pick up the slack over the next two years. But most growth in oil and gas production will come from non-OPEC members. The report projects that non-OPEC fuel production will grow by 1.4 million barrels per day in 2013 and 1.3 million barrels per day in 2014. The days of fuel shortages due to OPEC policies like in the 1970s are looking more and more like the distant past. Production in North America alone is expected to account for two thirds of that non-OPEC growth!

Oil and gas pipelines in Texas and throughout the country are needed to bring oil and gas to refiners and to markets, and result in cheaper fuel prices for consumers by lowering transportation costs. With the oil and gas industry flourishing, particularly in areas of the country like Texas, more pipelines are needed to transport increasing amounts of these raw materials. Without enough pipeline capacity, producers have to use trucks, barges, and trains to move oil, gas and condensate to refiners and to the market–all of which cost more than pipeline transport. There are numerous pipelines in the works right now. However, some of these pipelines are still subject to financing issues and face challenges with government approvals (such as with the high-profile Keystone pipeline project).

On the financing issue, the Association of Oil Pipelines (AOPL) has requested that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency that oversees interstate oil pipeline tariffs, step in to fix a dispute that AOPL claims may impair the financing of new pipelines. Financing of pipelines often relies on secured revenue accrued after the pipeline is completed. This is accomplished through contracts setting the rates ahead of time for the delivery of crude oil, gas, condensate, diesel, and other products. Andrew J. Black, President of AOPL, said earlier this month that “(t)hese committed rate agreements give confidence to shippers that the infrastructure they need to deliver their production to market will be there when they need it. They also give confidence to companies and investors ready to fund new pipeline projects that their investments will be repaid.”

The problem has arisen in an ongoing pipeline case being considered by FERC, which includes testimony threatening the mutually beneficial rate contracts agreed upon by energy suppliers and pipeline companies. The case involves the Seaway Pipeline, which goes from Cushing, Oklahoma, to Houston, Texas and is expected to carry 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day initially. AOPL filed a motion asking FERC to confirm its rate contracts and to rule that the contracts are not subject to review during the pipeline’s future rate proceedings. Instead, FERC staff recommended a new rate and rate structure, throwing out the old agreements which were the basis for financing this pipeline. AOPL responded that this action could not only deter new pipeline projects, it could also bring a halt to pipelines currently under construction.

In a significant win for reasonable and sensible energy regulation, the DC Circuit Court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2012 cellulosic biofuels projection. It is sad that this is what passes as a “win” for the energy industry however, since the Court simply acknowledged that the EPA’s requirements are based on fiction and require supplies of materials that are not even available currently!

The case being decided involved a challenge by the American Petroleum Institute (API) to the EPA’s regulation. The regulation in question was adopted under the renewable fuel standard program, which requires refiners to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuel with traditional fossil fuels by 2022. That goal has incremental targets leading up to it, and by 2012 refiners were required to blend 10.45 million biofuel ethanol gallons with their gasoline– an impossibility considering that the entire industry only produced 22,000 gallons of biofuel last year. API argued that these rules forced refiners to buy “credits” for the cellulosic biofuel since this product does not not, and may never, get produced in sufficient quantities to comply with the EPA regulations. API fairly asserted that the EPA should base the biofuel requirement on a realistic assessment of current production levels.

The decision, written by Judge Stephen Williams, stated, “We agree with API that because EPA’s methodology for making its cellulosic biofuel projection did not take neutral aim at accuracy, it was an unreasonable exercise of agency discretion.”