American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017 - 80

Burgum hosted a forum on prevention
and reporting of pipeline spills. One of
the goals that emerged from that, which
Dillé said NDPC shared, was streamlined
reporting to a single source, or "hot line."
Burgum observed that some spills had
to be reported to as many as four or five
agencies, and often their databases did
not communicate with each other, which
he said not only placed an undue regulatory
burden on industry, but also frustrated
efforts to prevent future spills by learning
from past incidents.
Reflecting that one-call systems were
effective for protecting utility and power
lines, Burgum held, "We should be doing
the same thing . . . for this industry."
DMR's Hicks discussed three other
regulatory initiatives he said the agency
likely would pursue in the coming year.
One is whether it should require that a
diagram showing all pipelines running
off a location be filed with well transfers.
He said field inspectors often found that
companies acquiring properties could not
identify the purpose or destinations of
all lines running from the lease.
A second initiative, Hicks continued,
is environmental assessments for site
reclamation when a property is abandoned
"to make sure land is returned to its
original condition."
"We won't require this in all cases,
but we think it is going to be necessary
to have that capability," he said.
Finally, Hicks said DMR was considering
requiring yearly pressure tests on injection

lines connected to off-site disposal wells.
"We don't want farmers or ranchers finding
leaks in injection lines, so we are proposing
that maybe we should have a yearly test to
confirm their integrity," he said.

always would be DOI's core mission,
"this administration also has a production
and revenue agenda. We are going to be
more responsibly focused on our energy
resources in a comprehensive way."

American Energy Dominance
Declaring that "the war on American
energy is over," DOI's DeVito, who serves
as counselor to the secretary for energy
policy, told NDPC that President Trump's
agenda to put the U.S. economy back on
track revolved around American energy
dominance.
"This president and administration are
not ashamed of our energy resources,"
he averred. "Energy wealth can drive
prosperity (while) allowing us to provide
for our own needs."
DeVito acknowledged that burdensome
regulations and bureaucratic foot-dragging
by previous administrations had caused
many in the energy sector to lose faith in
the federal government. But he promised
that would change under President Trump
and Secretary Ryan Zinke through changes
in both structure and culture.
Although many details have yet to be
worked out, DeVito said part of the structural change would come through shifting
more resources and authority from Washington to the Bureau of Land Management's field offices.
The culture change, he went on, will
be accomplished by placing DOI's energy
portfolio "front and center alongside conservation." While DeVito said conservation

Cooperative Compliance
David Glatt described the Environmental Health Section's global compliance
agreement with industry on limiting fugitive emissions from oil storage facilities
as a model for "industry trusting government and government trusting industry."
He said the initiative began with a
2015 compliance alert from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that was
confirmed by his section's own field inspections. "We were seeing about 20 percent compliance, 80 percent noncompliance," he attested. "That is not acceptable
by anybody's stretch of imagination."
Glatt said the EHS responded by sitting
down with industry representatives. "We
started getting phone calls back saying,
'You are right. There are things we can
do better,'" he recalled.
"Then it was incumbent on us to say,
'As state regulators, we don't know how
to fix this problem,'" Glatt went on. "That
is industry's task. We will give you flexibility and time. We won't say one size
has to fit all. You come back and tell us
what needs fixing."
Glatt called the innovation that transpired from that point amazing, citing
such things as the design of thief hatches
and tank batteries to capture more gas.
He said companies tightened their inspection routines and paid more attention
to the operation of flares.
"We started to see compliance rates
go up," Glatt reported. "Right now we
are standing at probably an 80 percent
compliance rate. That is a tremendous
turnaround."

Incoming NDPC Chairman Blu Hulsey (left) presents a service plaque to outgoing
Chairman Eric Dillé during the association's annual meeting in Grand Forks, N.D. Hulsey
serves as senior vice president for government and regulatory affairs for Continental
Resources in Oklahoma City, while Dillé is vice present of government relations for EOG
Resources in Houston.

80 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Need For Tax Reform
Stephen Moore showed NDPC a single
graph to illustrate why the Trump administration was committed to income
tax reform: the Congressional Budget
Office's projection that the national debt
will rise to 150 percent of gross domestic
product by 2047.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"Once you get to a debt ratio that high,
you start looking like Detroit, Puerto Rico
and Greece. You are in bankruptcy."
But, he said, the CBO's projection is
based on the U.S. economy continuing
to grow at the 1.8 percent annual rate it
averaged during the Obama administration.
"I say hell no," Moore responded. "We
have the capability to grow much faster
than that. The long-term growth rate of
the United States for the last hundred

American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2017

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