Trump Administration tosses proposed rule adding gas processing plants to TRI

TULSA, Okla., July 20, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Trump Administration rolled out the Unified Agenda, a regulatory scorecard/roadmap of the status of an administration's agencies' regulatory actions. The Unified Agenda moved the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed rule on adding natural gas processing plants to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) from the active list to the inactive list, so minus court action challenging the agency, EPA is not moving forward on this rule. GPA Midstream Association has been advocating for EPA to withdraw the proposed rule for the past couple of years, making this a big win for the association. 

Upon finding out that GPA Midstream's efforts were successful, GPA Midstream President and CEO Mark Sutton said, "This proposed rule was duplicative, unnecessarily administratively burdensome, costly, and based on bad data. We are thrilled with EPA's decision to move this rule to the inactive list and grateful that they listened to our concerns.

"It is important to note that most, if not all, of the information that EPA was seeking is already publicly available in one form or another. This is a classic example of a 'sue and settle' case where activists petition the agency to do something and then sue the agency to ensure that it complies with their wishes. In other words, the activists try to drive and control the agency's agenda. I am pleased EPA was able to see how unreasonable this proposed rule was and also pleased that we were able to get some relief for our members."

View GPA Midstream's comments to EPA: https://gpaglobal.org/assets/gpa/pdf/comments/2017/GPA-Midstream-EPA-Comments-05-02-17.pdf

Founded in 1921, the GPA Midstream Association is a trade organization with nearly 100 corporate members of all sizes engaged in the gathering and processing of natural gas, commonly referred to as "midstream activities" in the energy sector. Natural gas is one of the world's primary energy sources and much of it must be purified, or "processed," to meet quality standards and regulations and to make useful everyday products for homes, factories and businesses. Gas processing includes the removal of impurities from the raw natural gas stream produced at the wellhead, as well as the extraction for sale of natural gas liquid products (NGLs) such as ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline. GPA Midstream members account for more than 90 percent of NGLs produced in the United States from natural gas processing. GPA Midstream members also operate hundreds of thousands of miles of domestic gas gathering pipelines, in addition to pipelines involved with storing, transporting and marketing natural gas and NGLs.

SOURCE GPA Midstream Association