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globalmediacampaign · 4 years

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How Contura Energy built a letter of credit application on Amazon Managed Blockchain

This is a guest post from Sammy Jordan, Assistant Treasurer at Contura Energy, in partnership with Emile Baizel, Sr. Blockchain Architect at AWS. In their own words, “Contura Energy is a Tennessee-based coal supplier with affiliate mining operations across major coal basins in Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. We export metallurgical coal, a key raw material in steelmaking, to customers on five continents and approximately 25 countries.” Contura will produce around 12 million tons of metallurgical coal in 2020, and roughly 7–8 million tons are destined for the export market. Contura used letters of credit (LC) exceeding $250 million in 2019 to facilitate their global trade. LCs help mitigate country and customer risk; however, the current process requires many layers of communication between Contura and their third-party agents, such as freight carriers and third-party logistics, that prepare several key documents, such as the bill of lading and certificate of weight for adherence to the LC. Every step requires manual activity and the use of a courier, which is inefficient, costly, and subject to human error. The end result of the LC process is confirmation by Contura’s bank, which ensures payment if the documents are deemed clean. The following diagram illustrates a typical LC workflow, starting with Contura and their customer agreeing to the terms of a sales contract. Problems and risks with how letters of credit are processed Any discrepancies in the paperwork could lead to a delay in payment or a worst-case scenario where Contura loses the opportunity to deliver a vessel due to discrepant paperwork. Something as simple as a misspelled word can cause a bank to reject the document presentation. The presentation period doesn’t allow much time to correct errors with physically mailing documents back and forth to folks who may be in drastically different time zones and locations. Why Contura looked at Amazon Managed Blockchain to address these challenges Blockchain technology natively provides a shared, trusted, and verifiable ledger (the data store) for all parties involved in the LC process. Contura needed a blockchain network that supported private membership, which is why they chose to build this pilot on Hyperledger Fabric, with members including Contura Energy and one of their partner banks. Fabric has native support for attribute-based access control, which allows enforcing business rules within the LC application, such as ensuring that only the bank can approve the LC presentation, or that only Contura can update the LC to indicate having collected payment on it. Contura chose to run the blockchain network on Amazon Managed Blockchain for a few reasons: It’s a fully managed service that scales automatically as needed and removes a lot of the heavy lifting needed to operate a blockchain network. You can easily integrate Managed Blockchain with other AWS services. For example, the pilot used Amazon Textract to automate the document processing during intake, and also used Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to notify users of important events that occurred in the blockchain network. Managed Blockchain simplifies growing and administering the blockchain network. Network governance and inviting new members can be done via the AWS Management Console, and each member is billed separately based on their own usage. The remainder of this post explores in more technical detail the following key areas of the solution: Smart contract data and state Providing full transparency to all parties Creating an immutable and verifiable document store Automated and complete audit logs Automated discrepancy detection Smart contract data and state A smart contract is a business application that runs on the blockchain network. It contains business logic that reflects agreements made between parties. The smart contract is reviewed and agreed to by all parties involved (in this case, Contura and their bank) and deployed to the blockchain. A smart contract reads and writes its data to the blockchain ledger. The data includes business names and addresses, the content and required specifications of goods being shipped, required documents (such as bill of lading or certificate of analysis), and important dates such as the presentation date before which the LC presentation needs to be sent to the bank. The smart contract also contains current state information about the LC, such as where it is in the review process. The data and state information can be made available as read-only to certain participants, for example, providing Contura’s customers visibility into the current state of the LC without allowing them to make any updates. Business logic is embedded into the smart contract to enforce certain business rules. For example, after Contura’s advising bank has completed publishing the terms of the LC data, those terms are locked in the smart contract and are no longer editable. When this happens, the contract state is updated to reflect that the LC is now awaiting Contura to receive and publish required documents as they receive them from various third parties. Providing full transparency to all parties With a fully paper-based system, it’s very difficult for all participants to gain visibility into the progress of an LC. Contura’s customers typically don’t see the LC documents until the vessel has already left port, and in the event that a customer or their bank identifies a discrepant document, there is a lot of operational overhead for Contura and their bank to review and correct this discrepancy. Meanwhile, the vessel is already underway and the clock is ticking, which lends urgency to resolving discrepancies as quickly as possible. The pilot utilizes Hyperledger Fabric’s native support for attribute-based access control. This means that within the smart contract, you can enforce business rules based on the role and attributes of the user running the blockchain transaction. Contura’s customers, banks, and other third parties are given users with roles that have limited access. These roles are limited to read-only capabilities, which allows Contura’s customers to stay up to date on the progress of the LC, while being unable to modify any of the data. Users are created and managed within Amazon Cognito and then associated, using Amazon Cognito custom attributes, with a user in the Fabric Certificate Authority (CA). Users created in the CA are assigned a role (for example, customer), which defines their permissions when issuing blockchain transactions. By using Amazon Cognito, users can authenticate using familiar user name and password-based authentication, while enforcing authorization based on the blockchain roles defined in their CA user profile. Creating an immutable and verifiable document store When using blockchain to store documents, you have the following assurances: Documents are immutable and tamper evident Documents can’t be deleted Although it’s technically possible to store documents in blockchain, in practice this is an anti-pattern. You want to keep the size of the blockchain from growing too large because the size (disk storage) of a blockchain network impacts cost, transaction throughput, and the speed with which new members and peer nodes can join the network and synchronize to the latest block. To design for these requirements, the documents are instead saved on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), a SHA-256 hash of the document body is generated, and this hash is signed with the user’s blockchain credentials. These are the credentials generated when the user is created in the CA. The Amazon S3 URL of the document, its signed hash, and the signing user’s public key are saved in the blockchain ledger. A reader can verify the authenticity using these three pieces of data. They download the document from the URL and use the document content and the user’s public key to verify the signed hash. To prevent deletion of the documents, accidental or otherwise, the S3 bucket is enabled with S3 Object Lock with Compliance Mode. This ensures the documents remain immutable and can’t be deleted before a specified date. Technically, a document could still be deleted if the entire AWS account containing the S3 bucket was deleted. To guard against this, you can configure cross-account replication for the S3 bucket, which would copy every document into other members’ S3 buckets. The following code example shows how you generate the hash, sign it, and store this data on the blockchain: const contentURL = ; let content = ; // Buffer of the document contents const sign = crypto.createSign('RSA-SHA256'); sign.update(content); // The SHA256 hash of the document const publicKey = ; // This is generated from the Certificate Authority const privateKey = ; // This is generated from the Certificate Authority const signature = (sign.sign(privateKey, 'hex')); // The user signs the document // Save these three attributes on the blockchain const chaincodeArgs = { signature, publicKey, contentURL }; await putDocumentOnChaincode(chaincodeArgs); // This function uses the Fabric SDK to write to the blockchain Automated and complete audit logs Banks are required to provide audit logs for an LC when asked to do so as part of an audit. Typically, compiling a complete audit history for an LC requires manually collecting all of an LC’s documents and their many revisions, and identifying where various updates to the LC and the documents occurred, when, and by whom. When processing LCs on a blockchain, because the ledger is immutable, it provides a complete history of all activity, down to the attribute level. Some examples of blockchain activity include: Contura’s bank creates an LC Contura records the bill of lading date Contura approves a certificate of weight document Because the blockchain ledger is immutable and records cannot be deleted, it contains a complete history of all updates. Hyperledger Fabric provides a history service (getHistoryForKey) that lets you query for a key’s complete history. In the smart contract, each LC has its own unique key, so querying the history service for this key gives a complete history of all activity on that LC since its creation. To offload history querying from the blockchain, and to provide more querying flexibility, such as by date ranges or activity type, the historic activity data is streamed into an external data store such as Amazon DynamoDB. Blockchain events are used to capture blockchain activity as it occurs and write the activity data and blockchain transaction ID of that activity into DynamoDB. The source of truth remains the blockchain ledger. The transaction ID is included in DynamoDB so that anyone, such as an auditor, can refer back to the blockchain to verify the authenticity of the activity data. The following screenshot is an example audit log of an LC being submitted to the bank for approval. Automated discrepancy detection Automatically discovering discrepancies and raising alerts is a significant efficiency improvement for Contura. Each discrepancy can add days to the completion time of an LC, so identifying them as soon as possible is critical. The pilot includes a document ingestion pipeline built using Amazon Textract. When a document is received, such as a bill of lading or a certificate of weight, Textract parses the relevant content of that document. After the content is parsed, it’s validated against the terms of the LC for correctness and completeness. For example, it’s usually required that each document include the LC’s documentary credit number (think of this as a unique ID). This is one of the many things that is flagged by the automated discrepancy detector. When a discrepancy is found, Amazon SNS sends an email alert to Contura. The document ingestion and automated discrepancy detection happens when a document is received via email and also when it’s uploaded via the LC web application. The following diagram shows the document ingestion pipeline and how alerts are triggered when discrepancies are found. The AWS Lambda function processes the digitized document contents, compares them against the LC terms contained in the blockchain, and raises an alert via Amazon SNS when discrepancies are detected. Looking Ahead The blockchain pilot is already helping Contura more effectively process letters of credit with their bank, but this is just the beginning. Future plans include growing the network to include Contura’s customers, their customers’ banks, and third parties such as freight carriers and third-party logistics. About the Authors Sammy Jordan is the Assistant Treasurer at Contura Energy. He enjoys spending time with his family on a bike or in a boat. He also relishes in reading history, watching soccer, and investing in the stock market. Emile is a Senior Blockchain Architect at AWS. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, reading, trail running, and hiking with his wife and two year old daughter in the beautiful hills north of San Francisco. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/how-contura-energy-built-a-letter-of-credit-application-on-amazon-managed-blockchain/

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scienceblogtumbler · 4 years

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Federal court judge reinstates methane-waste rule; BLM rule-rescission-attempt fails

The below Jul. 16, 2020 press release is from the Center for Biological Diversity.

A federal judge late yesterday reinstated the Bureau of Land Management’s 2016 methane waste rule, aimed at protecting people and the climate from methane waste and pollution from oil and gas extraction on public lands. The ruling is the third defeat for the Trump administration’s efforts to suspend, delay or repeal the rule.

The rule requires oil and gas companies operating on public lands to take reasonable measures to prevent the waste of publicly owned fossil gas. It will go back into effect in 90 days. Such measures significantly reduce pollution from methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and are an important step to address the climate crisis.

Reviewing the bureau’s effort to undo the methane waste rule, the court found “the rulemaking process resulting in the Rescission was wholly inadequate. In its haste, BLM ignored its statutory mandate under the Mineral Leasing Act, repeatedly failed to justify numerous reversals in policy positions previously taken, and failed to consider scientific findings and institutions relied upon by both prior Republican and Democratic administrations.”

“The Trump administration has abused every opportunity — legal or otherwise — to maximize the oil and gas industry’s profits at the expense of taxpayers, public health, and the climate,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “We welcome the court’s forceful repudiation of the Trump administration’s reckless and unlawful conduct.”

In 2018 a broad coalition of conservation and citizens’ groups challenged the cancellation of most provisions of the rule after defeating prior Trump administration attempts to end these protections. In today’s ruling the court found the administration had downplayed the significance of the rule’s benefits to public health, local communities and the climate. The court also determined the bureau’s cost-benefit analysis ignored global climate costs.

“It’s despicable that the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to gut modest protections for our lungs and our climate to benefit a dirty, climate-destroying industry,” said Michael Saul, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re grateful that the courts continue to reject these unscientific, indefensible attempts to give fossil-fuel companies a license to pollute.”

The coalition’s lawsuit sought to reinstate the 2016 rule to reduce methane waste and pollution and address the longstanding problem of reduced production royalties caused when the fossil-fuel industry wastes publicly owned methane. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates lost royalties at nearly $23 million annually under the pre-2016 regime. The 2016 rule will help taxpayers reclaim about $800 million in royalties over the next decade.

A Delaware-sized methane “hot spot” in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin is the major contributor to San Juan County’s “F” grade on ozone from the American Lung Association. In Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin, recently the highest-producing oil basin in the world, gas flaring is now at an all-time high of 750 million cubic feet per day. That’s a 650 percent increase over less than a decade, and the highest emissions ever recorded from a U.S. oil and gas basin. These data show that voluntary methane waste measures aren’t working.

In addition to flaring and methane emissions, gas waste associated with oil and gas development results in smog pollution and releases other toxic pollutants, such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.

The 2016 rule was crafted over four years with input from the oil and gas industry. It accounted for nearly 300,000 public comments and earned approval from 75 percent of Westerners.

“This district court decision rejects the Trump administration’s reckless and unlawful attempts to roll back protections for air, public health, and communities threatened and harmed by fracking on public lands,” said Bruce Baizel, energy program director at Earthworks. “The decision further affirms the rightful role for considerations of climate impacts on future Bureau of Land Management considerations.”

“The bureau’s methane rule is a common-sense solution to protect our climate, reduce air pollution and save taxpayer money,” said Will Roush, executive director of Wilderness Workshop. “The court’s reinstatement of the rule is step forward for people across the west and especially those in communities disproportionately impacted by pollution from oil and gas development.”

“Today’s decision protects our forests, parks, wildlife refuges, and monuments from harmful greenhouse gasses caused by oil development,” said Los Padres ForestWatch Executive Director Jeff Kuyper. “From the Sespe to the Carrizo Plain and beyond, California’s public lands — and the communities that depend on them — can all breathe a lot easier.”

“Unabated methane releases from oil and gas operations on public lands will harm both wildlife and the ability of people to use and enjoy our natural treasures — all while fueling the fire of the climate crisis,” said Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “Rescinding the 2016 rule represented an illegal, unwarranted, and unwise step backwards in efforts to conserve and restore our public lands and reduce the harmful emissions. Today’s court decision represents a huge victory for sound science, public health, and the environment.”

“For over three years, this administration has attempted to get rid of BLM’s waste rule based on a myriad of inadequate justifications, trying to grant favors to their corporate friends at the expense of the public’s well-being,” said Darin Schroeder, attorney from Clean Air Task Force who co-represented National Wildlife Federation with the Western Environmental Law Center. “We are grateful that the rule of law has yet again prevailed.”

The Western Environmental Law Center represented the Center for Biological Diversity, Citizens for a Healthy Community, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, Earthworks, Los Padres ForestWatch, Montana Environmental Information Center, San Juan Citizens Alliance, WildEarth Guardians, Wilderness Workshop and Wyoming Outdoor Council in the case. The Western Environmental Law Center and Clean Air Task Force jointly represented the National Wildlife Federation.

Image above: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Published by Alan Kandel

source https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2020/08/02/federal-court-judge-reinstates-methane-waste-rule-blm-rule-rescission-attempt-fails/

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ramialkarmi · 7 years

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A Colorado appeals court sided with a group of teenagers who sued the oil industry for not protecting the environment

The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a group of teenagers on Thursday, reversing a lower court ruling and opining that the state must hold public health and environmental protection to a higher level of importance than the interests of its oil and gas industry, the Denver Post reported.

The case was brought when teenager Xiutezcatl Martinez, with the backing of a number of environmental protection and advocacy groups, filed suit against the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), claiming that the commission was abusing its power by placing oil interests above those of the community and the environment.

The commission was formed with a mandate saying it should promote the "responsible, balanced" development of oil and gas "in a manner consistent with protection of public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources."

Since the commission was formed, more than 50,000 oil wells have been drilled in the state, including "thousands" near cities and residential areas, according to oil company Ursa Resources Group.

Martinez filed the suit after the COGCC denied a new rule that he proposed in 2014. The rule would not let Colorado issue new permits for oil and gas drilling "unless the best available science demonstrates, and an independent third party organization confirms, that drilling can occur in a manner that does not cumulatively, with other actions, impair Colorado's atmosphere, water, wildlife, and land resources, does not adversely impact human health and does not contribute to climate change."

When the teens sued, the Denver District Court upheld the COGCC's determination, prompting Martinez and the groups backing him to challenge the decision in the state appeals court.

The appeals court focused on the mission statement of the COGCC, saying that it required more than balancing the interests of the oil industry and those of residents and the environment. The COGCC's mandate "was not intended to require that a balancing test be applied. … Rather, the clear language (of the agency's enabling legislation) … mandates that the development of oil and gas in Colorado be regulated subject to the protection of public health, safety, and welfare, including protection of the environment and wildlife resources," said the state appeals court ruling.

The appeals court's ruling does not mandate that Martinez's proposed rule be implemented, but that the COGCC unjustly rejected the proposal.

"We disagree with the majority and believe the District Court and the dissenting opinion have it right," said COGCC spokesman Todd Hartman. "We are evaluating whether to appeal this decision to the Colorado Supreme Court."

Environmental advocacy groups applauded the ruling. "This shifts health, safety and welfare concerns above development-as-usual permitting," said Bruce Baizel, the energy program director of Earthworks. "Now the state of Colorado, after removing communities' power to ban fracking and drilling themselves, might have to effectively ban fracking inside cities to protect residents' health."

SEE ALSO: Hundreds of companies are urging Trump to change his mind about climate change

DON'T MISS: The Trump administration is doing everything it can to keep a huge climate lawsuit from going to trial

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Arctic and Antarctic sea ice just hit record lows — here's what would happen if all the ice melted

#Tech Insider #Arab #Entrepreneurship #sillicon alley insider

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earthandwatergroupblog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Earth & Water Group

New Post has been published on http://www.earthandwatergroup.com/epa-enforcement/are-states-assuming-more-assertive-enforcement-role-in-trump-era/

Are States Assuming More Assertive Enforcement Role in Trump Era?

With Administrator Pruitt’s EPA in the earliest stages, some of the environmental enforcement action may be moving to the states. The proposed changes in New Mexico, as seen in the article below, are emblematic of conversations going on in legislatures and regulatory agencies across the country. As companies assess the enforcement landscape, and their own compliance readiness, it is increasingly important to look not just at EPA’s approach, but also that of emboldened states and an energized environmental NGO community. Here’s the article from New Mexico portending the future:

Bill would allow regulators to fine oil and gas companies for spills By Laura Paskus

In recent years, spills of crude oil, natural gas and drilling wastewater have increased even more rapidly than production has grown. Yet the state of New Mexico doesn’t fine or sanction oil and gas companies that pollute water.

A bill before the state legislature seeks to change that.

If passed, the bill wouldn’t create new rules or regulations. Instead, it would allow the state’s Oil Conservation Division (OCD) to impose penalties on polluting companies. Senate Bill 307 would increase fines not updated since the Legislature passed the Oil and Gas Act in 1935. It would also bring the state into compliance with an agreement established under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized New Mexico to manage its own underground injection control program. That allows New Mexico to issue permits for underground injections, examples of which include when operators inject liquids, gases and chemicals underground to boost oil production and when companies dispose of wastewater, including from hydraulic fracturing, underground.

But even as the bill heads into its first committee meeting on Tuesday, silence on the issue from state and federal regulators makes it tricky to know exactly what any of this means for the state agency, oil and gas companies and New Mexico’s communities.

Officials with both state and federal agencies—the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—did not answer questions for this story. As the Trump administration clamps down on EPA employees to answer even basic questions from the press, the administration of Gov. Susana Martinez continues to prevent state employees from publicly discussing the workings of their own agency.

NM’s authority

Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, the bill’s sponsor, said it makes no sense that OCD, which is part of the state’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, lacks the authority to make industry comply with state law.

“After over 80 years, it’s irresponsible to wait any longer to update the civil penalties for bad actors who break the law,” he said. “Until this point, the status quo rewards bad actors and that needs to end.”

To add to this, New Mexico could see increased federal control if the state doesn’t start enforcing the Oil and Gas Act per their authorities granted by EPA, said Bruce Baizel, energy program director with the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a part of the environmental nonprofit Earthworks.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA can authorize states to take over certain regulatory duties. That agreement between states and the federal government outlines what states must do to remain in charge of the program. “One of those requirements is that you have to be able to assess penalties against violators as a way to ensure compliance,” Baizel said. “If New Mexico doesn’t have that authority at a state level, then it reverts to the federal EPA to manage the program.”

Martinez’ bill, SB 307, would rectify the problem, said Baizel, and also increase transparency. Annually, OCD would have to report penalties against operators to the Legislature and make that information publicly available.

“That way, everybody would have a sense of who’s doing their best and who’s not, as far as operators go,” said Baizel. “That’s just basic good government.”

Given her record on oil and gas regulations in New Mexico, Gov. Susana Martinez is unlikely to sign the bill. Nor is the new presidential administration’s EPA likely to rein in companies that pollute water.

The Trump administration’s pick to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, is a longtime ally of the industry. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt even sent a letter to EPA in 2011 complaining that the agency was overestimating air pollution emissions from oil and gas operations in the state. Pruitt’s letter, as reported by the New York Times in 2014, was actually written by lawyers for Devon Energy Corporation, an oil and gas company. Pruitt’s staff copied the letter on state letterhead, then sent it to the EPA with his signature.

Devon has also supported Martinez, having donated more than $60,000 to her two gubernatorial campaigns. Other top oil and gas donors to Martinez included Mack Energy ($135,400), Me-Tex Oil and Gas ($82,500), Chase Oil ($80,200), Yates Petroleum ($66,400) and Heyco Energy Group ($35,725), according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which tracks campaign donations.

Case history

New Mexico’s inability to hold oil and gas companies accountable for spills and accidents traces back many years. But it came to a head when Marbob Energy Corporation sued OCD in 2009, saying the division lacked the authority to assess civil penalties and sanctions against companies. Concho Resources now owns Marbob Energy.

Between 2001 and the lawsuit in 2009, OCD had issued 431 compliance orders and assessed more than $2.4 million in penalties.

The court agreed with Marbob and ruled that OCD should report violations to the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General, which then could sue to collect penalties. From then on, lawsuits would need to be filed in the county where the violation occurred and the state would need to prove that the violation was “knowing” and “willful.”

When handing down their 2009 decision in the Marbob case, New Mexico Supreme Court justices wrote that while they were sympathetic to OCD’s need for greater enforcement authority, the division had to defer to the Legislature. Even though the statutes that created the commission might be dated and “perhaps inadequate to face the contemporary challenges,” they wrote, any changes in authority would have to come from the same legislative body that created the commission.

In 2013, a bill similar to Martinez’ SB 307 was introduced. Then-Attorney General Gary King supported it, saying that proving a pollution violation is knowing and willful—which is a criminal standard—“erects an unreasonably high barrier to civil enforcement.”

Today, the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico opposes SB 307 “very strongly,” said executive director Karin Foster. The bill would increase penalties substantially, from $1,000 to $10,000 for each day of violation. “We obviously oppose that,” said Foster.

And she pointed to the Marbob lawsuit as an important reason to oppose the bill.

“The New Mexico Supreme Court said that OCD basically doesn’t have the resources or the technical ability to do a case fairly, and the statute gives the [attorney general] the authority to go after operators, just like under the Environmental Improvement Act,” she said. “OCD has technical expertise when drilling the well, but when it comes to due process, putting a case together and meeting the knowing and willful standard, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office will review any cases OCD refers, according to spokesman James Hallinan.

Since losing the Marbob case in 2009, OCD has yet to refer a single violation to Attorney General Hector Balderas nor his predecessor, Gary King.

Getting a handle on spills

More than a decade ago, a state study showed the existence of about 7,000 cases of soil and water contamination from drilling pits and another 400 cases of groundwater contamination from between the mid-1980s and 2003.

Those numbers prompted Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration to enact a “pit rule” in 2008 that banned unlined waste pits and required “closed-loop” systems when operations were close to water resources or homes. With those systems, operators siphon waste into steel tanks and haul it away instead of burying it onsite.

Industry, including the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, opposed the new rule. During her 2010 campaign, Martinez promised she’d get rid of it. She also raised more than $1 million from the oil and gas industry, out of a $7.4 million total for her campaign.

Fewer than three years later, the New Mexico Oil Conservation Commission repealed the Richardson-era rule, replacing it with one less “cumbersome” to operators, especially small-scale oil and gas companies.

For her 2014 campaign, Martinez raised $8.5 million, of which more than $2 million came from the oil and gas industry.

That same year, companies reported more than 1,000 spills to OCD. Those included leaks and accidents involving wastewater, crude oil, methane and other materials. Nearly three-quarters of the reports came from Eddy and Lea counties in southeastern New Mexico, where tens of thousands of wells exist. The rest were reported from San Juan County.

And still, the number of oil, natural gas and produced water spills continued to increase in New Mexico.

According to a Legislative Finance Committee report, both the number and volume of spills “increased dramatically” in 2015—outstripping the bump in production. While production grew by 21 percent, the number of spills increased by 43 percent and the volume of spills increased by 61 percent.

EMNRD offered two possible explanations, according to the LFC report. First, new drilling and production technology caused a higher volume of oil and waste to be present at the surface than in previous years. And secondly, New Mexico’s aging infrastructure, including pipelines, storage tanks and production facilities, were more susceptible to leaks and other problems.

Staying quiet

NM Political Report reached out on numerous occasions to EMNRD Secretary Ken McQueen as well as the department’s communications director. The state agency ignored those requests for information, neglecting to even answer if the department supports SB 307. McQueen, who retired last year from WPX Energy, did mistakenly reply to one of this reporter’s emails, appearing to instruct an aide to say he was tied up at the Legislature.

Calls and emails to EPA officials in both the regional office in Dallas and the Washington D.C. office also yielded no information. One official responded that the agency “does not comment or speculate on pending state legislation.” Follow-up emails, clarifying that this reporter was not seeking comment on the legislation, only the consequences of New Mexico violating its primacy agreement, were not answered.

Since Feb. 2, NM Political Report has also requested comment from the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, which is currently directed by the immediate past Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department. In a departure from past practices, a spokesman for the trade association did not answer if it would support or oppose the bill nor explain how it might affect New Mexico companies.

#enforcement #EPA #New Mexico #oil and gas #Scott Pruitt

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saltycharacters · 1 year

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Oogh Lovin Baizel and the species concept! What does their diet consist of? Is there any way for them to avoid what happens to them over time? Do the hearts work like- if 1 stops it's ok bc there's others or if 1 stops they all stop?

SO glad you like my silly n weird ideas :""] Regarding the hearts question, it depends on how long they've grown at the time and which heart gives out, the front one / further back / etc - the reason they have so many hearts in the first place is to help pump blood throughout such a massive body. And the longer they get, the more work has to be put into that. So, if they're around 20-30 ish years old or less, they can probably survive a heart or two dying on them because the other hearts can pick up the slack (although the extra strain can promote further heart failure). But with each added foot, the amount of work/ importance each heart is deligated increases, and that makes it much harder to recover from a failure.

Essentially, at some point each heart has to mantain a body section alone and if that stops, then there's a domino effect that affects every heart preceding it since the blood exchange from section to section halted. If this happens though, there's a chance of survival if the hearts near the front/head are ok, as cutting off blood flow to the brain is definetly fatal. The other sections will die off but, as the hyperfauna weasels are literally predestined to have that happen at some point in their lives, it's not the end of the world. They even have systems that can function indipendently regardless of what happens to the body (cough cough. Waste disposal) so the biggest change just becomes limited movment.

For the question about preventing the fates of hyperfauna weasels, assuming that you mean as they are now and not by manually altering the entire species via selective breeding/ bioengineering, there IS. a theoretical way to manually stunt growth (also via bioengineering) but, it is VERY difficult to control the outcome over time, and without careful planning (like, what parts of the body are suppose to be stunted and what parts need to develop to survive? How to prevent this manual cell death from reaching something vital? At what age should they be stunted? At what age CAN they be stunted, before these alterations become harder to induce? etc) it can result in a load of problems that make their life over time a miserable one (or just kill them straight off).

Also, hyperfauna weasels are notorious for being difficult to work with medically/bio-manipulatively because 1] their skin is VERY thick, needles need to be long but strong enough to pierce them and NOT break on the way down (also few people can find their veins) 2] any effect needs time to travel throughout their entire body, which can take a WHILE (and depending on how long the effects are suppose to last, their former half could've already worn off while the latter is still feeling the effects [this makes anesthesia difficult bc it needs to be powerful enough to hit everywhere while not being so powerful that it causes heart failure]) 3] their cells are super stubborn/hard to change and it's difficult to intruduce new instructions to them, not to mention they're so hellbent on forever-growth that they're super hardy, multiply and die off quicker than any changes can be induced in them, and kill most foreign objects without prejudice.

All this to say they're a nightmare to manually bio-alter and your best bet would be to manipulate them at the embyonic stage, where they're most cellularly vulnerable / suseptable to change, and if all goes well you can artificially cease their growth after a point, but in terms of lore-reasons this hasn't happened yet. It's mostly because those who DO know about this species, at least by the time this kind of technology was available, just. don't really have the (cough. financial) motivation to do this. Bio-engineering companies are mostly about profit, and this kind of job would require bringing back a near extinct species (not impossible, just a chore) that needs a LOT of resources to mantain, monitoring over a LONG time to see if their alterations worked, and they'd end up with a lot of failed experiments that live almost forever before they get one that lives a reasonable, sustainable amount.

For the last question about their diet, they're omnivorous and can eat a lot of what normal weasels eat already :] although their portions have to be HUGE (even standing on all legs they can be over 5 ft tall, plus all that body length means a LOT of) so in a pinch they can eat most any kind of meat, plant-matter, even fungus.

#SORRY I DIDNT ANSWER THESE IN ORDER I JUST GOT EXCITED #long post #lore #baizel #hyperfauna weasels #some people suggested cutting off the parts that die off #and unfortunately apart from the fact its fucking hard as fuck to do that #thick skin + large body + sawing through bone + anesthesia being difficult to administer + at this point theyre feral and will attack #depending on how close the body section is to a still-pumping heart. the blood loss could kill them #and even if theres no blood that still has potential for infection while it heals and also. theres a gaping hole to their organs #even if it heals over they will not lobger have access to yknow. waste disposal #so as gross as this is they would probably die of. build up. after some time #sorry if little of this makes sense i just enjoy speculative biology even if im bending the rules quite a bit #needles tw

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