[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 107 (Friday, June 3, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 35763-35766]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-11967]


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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

[EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0204; FRL-9946-70-OAR]


Proposed Information Collection Request; Comment Request; 
Information Collection Effort for Oil and Gas Facilities

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to 
submit an information collection request (ICR), ``Information 
Collection Effort for Oil and Gas Facilities'' (EPA ICR No. 2548.01, 
OMB Control No. 2060-NEW) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 
for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act 
(PRA) (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.). Before doing so, the EPA is soliciting 
public comments on specific aspects of the proposed information 
collection as described below. This is a request for approval of a new 
collection of information. An Agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a 
person is not required to respond to, a collection of information 
unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before August 2, 2016.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, referencing Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-
2016-0204, online using http://www.regulations.gov (our preferred 
method), or by mail to: EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC), Environmental 
Protection Agency, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW., 
Washington, DC 20460.
    EPA's policy is that all comments received will be included in the 
public docket without change including any personal information 
provided, unless the comment includes profanity, threats, information 
claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other 
information whose disclosure is restricted by statute.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ms. Brenda Shine, Sector Policies and 
Programs Division, Refining and Chemicals Group (E143-01), Office of 
Air Quality Planning and Standards, Environmental Protection Agency, 
Research Triangle Park, NC 27711; telephone number: (919) 541-3608; fax 
number: (919) 541-0246; email address: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supporting documents which explain in detail 
the information that the EPA will be collecting are available in the 
public docket for this notice. The docket can be viewed online at 
http://www.regulations.gov or in person at the EPA Docket Center (EPA/
DC, EPA WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave. NW., 
Washington, DC. The telephone number for the Docket Center is 202-566-
1742. The telephone number for the public reading room is 202-566-1744. 
For additional information about EPA's public docket, visit http://www.epa.gov/dockets.
    Pursuant to section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA, the EPA is soliciting 
comments and information to enable it to: (i) Evaluate whether the 
proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper 
performance of the functions of the Agency, including whether the 
information will have practical utility; (ii) evaluate the accuracy of 
the Agency's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of 
information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions 
used; (iii) enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the 
information to be collected; and (iv) minimize the burden of the 
collection of information on those who are to respond, including 
through the use of appropriate automated electronic, mechanical, or 
other technological collection techniques or other forms of information 
technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses. The 
EPA will consider the comments received and may amend the ICR as 
appropriate. The final ICR package will then be submitted to OMB for 
review and approval. At that time, the EPA will issue another Federal 
Register notice to announce the submission of the ICR to OMB and the 
opportunity to submit additional comments to OMB.
    Abstract: Collectively, oil and gas facilities are the largest 
industrial emitters of methane in the U.S. In January 2015, as part of 
the Obama Administration's commitment to addressing climate change, the 
EPA outlined a number of steps it plans to take to address methane and 
smog-forming volatile organic compound

[[Page 35764]]

(VOC) emissions from the oil and gas industry. Concurrently with this 
action, the EPA has promulgated new source performance standards (NSPS) 
for the oil and gas industry to achieve both methane reductions and 
additional reductions in VOCs (40 CFR part 60, subpart OOOOa). The EPA 
has also committed to require standards of performance for existing oil 
and gas sources. Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), as amended, 
provides a cooperative federalism approach to establishing standards of 
performance for existing sources. Under this approach, the EPA 
establishes guidelines that identify the emission performance states 
must require their sources to achieve, and states then submit plans for 
EPA review and approval, which establish standards of performance that 
achieve that emissions performance.
    While a great deal of information is available on the oil and gas 
industry and has to date provided a strong technical foundation to 
support the Agency's recent actions, the EPA is now seeking more 
specific information that would be of critical use in addressing CAA 
section 111(d). Taking into account the large number of sources that a 
national regulation development effort would need to consider, and the 
potential for taking a different approach to addressing co-located 
existing sources than was taken with new and modified sources, the EPA 
requires information that will enable the development of effective 
standards for this entire industry under CAA section 111(d). For new 
sources, the CAA requires that standards apply to each new affected 
facility upon startup. Conversely, without information allowing for 
development of a pathway for phasing in standards, existing source 
standards will likely apply to all regulated units at approximately the 
same time. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of 
equipment across the country in all kinds of different situations and 
configurations. To determine how to efficiently and effectively address 
emissions from this volume of sources in a timely, but administrable 
manner, we need more comprehensive information that will improve our 
understanding of what emission controls are being used (and perhaps 
shared) in the field, how those are configured, the difficulty of 
replacing or upgrading controls, how much time will be needed to 
retrofit, what the likely costs of retrofitting are, whether 
electricity or generating capacity is available, and how often sites 
are staffed or visited. Such information will, for example, allow us to 
ascertain if there are effective ways for affected facilities at well 
sites, or other co-located facilities, to share emission controls, how 
to balance the level of emission reductions with administering a 
program of this size, and potential phase in opportunities. Additional 
information will also support the Agency's effort to explore proposing 
standards for new and modified units not currently covered by NSPS 
OOOOa. Specifically, before proposing standards the EPA must assure 
that it has adequate information to determine ``the best system of 
emission reduction which (taking into account the cost of achieving 
such reduction and any nonair quality health and environmental impact 
and energy requirement) the Administrator determines has been 
adequately demonstrated,'' (BSER) as well as the ``degree of emission 
limitation achievable through the application of'' such system. 
Currently, the EPA collects information on the greenhouse gas (GHG) 
emissions from oil and gas facilities under 40 CFR part 98, subpart W, 
of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP). However, the GHGRP 
does not collect information on design, performance, and costs of 
emission controls. Such information is necessary to evaluate the scope, 
design, and potential impact of future standards of performance for 
existing oil and gas facility sources. There are also differences in 
the definition of ``facility'' in the GHGRP for oil and gas production 
facilities as compared to the way we have defined facility under our 
regulations. As previously stated, ``the EPA's definition of `facility' 
for purposes of 40 CFR part 98 in no way impacts the `facility' 
definition for similar sources under existing CAA programs.'' 80 FR 
64262, 64271. Additionally, certain states have moved forward with 
their own rules and have developed information needed for their own 
purposes, but this information is not sufficient for a national 
rulemaking. Thus, it is necessary to collect specific information from 
oil and gas production facilities both for existing sources and sources 
not covered by the standards of performance for new and modified 
sources to understand the number of affected facilities and to estimate 
the facility-level impacts of potentially implementing existing source 
standards of various designs.
    There will be two parts to the information collection. Part 1, 
referred to as the operator survey, is specifically designed to obtain 
information from onshore oil and gas production facilities to better 
understand the number and types of equipment at production facilities. 
Part 1 seeks to collect facility-level information (e.g., facility 
name, location, contact information, and number of wells, tanks, and 
compressors) using the definition of facility commonly employed when 
permitting new and existing sources (i.e., all buildings, equipment, 
structures, and other stationary equipment that are located on one or 
more contiguous or adjacent properties and that are under common 
ownership or control). Part 1 will be sent to all known operators of 
oil and gas production wells and will allow the Agency to obtain the 
information necessary to identify and categorize all potentially 
affected oil and gas production facilities. The operators will complete 
the Part 1 survey, including providing equipment counts for all 
production facilities that they operate with the exception of 
facilities selected to complete Part 2. Part 1 is not expected to 
contain any CBI. This operator survey may be submitted either 
electronically or through hard copy responses. The submission requires 
the owner or operator to certify that the information being provided is 
accurate and complete.
    Part 2, referred to as the detailed facility survey, will be sent 
to selected oil and gas facilities across the different industry 
segments. Specifically, these industry segments include onshore 
production, gathering and boosting, processing, compression/
transmission, pipeline, natural gas storage, and liquefied natural gas 
(LNG) storage and import/export facilities. This ICR will not collect 
information from offshore production facilities or from local natural 
gas distribution facilities. Due to the large number of potentially 
affected facilities, Part 2 uses a statistical sampling method 
considering each industry segment (and groupings of facilities in the 
production segment) to be separate sampling populations. Thus, a 
statistically significant number of facilities within each industry 
segment (or ``population'') will be required to complete the Part 2 
detailed facility survey.
    Developing an appropriate sampling size for the onshore production 
industry is complicated by the number of factors that could impact the 
types of processes or equipment present at the site and the magnitude 
of emissions from these sources. Therefore, the Agency considered 
further stratification of the production industry segment into separate 
populations based on differences in the type of well (oil or natural 
gas, vertical or horizontal

[[Page 35765]]

drilling, or further distinctions based on gas-to-oil ratio), the type 
of formation, and the production basin. At this time, the Agency has 
limited information on means to characterize individual facilities or 
wells by formation type or well drilling type (vertical versus 
horizontal wells). However, the Agency does have estimates of the 
number of wells in a given basin and has estimates of the gas-to-oil 
ratio (GOR), from which we designate well type for nearly all wells. 
Therefore, the Agency considered two options for establishing different 
populations within the production segment: Option 1, which is based on 
the well type using GOR ranges, and Option 2, which is based on 
regional groupings of basins.
    Option 1, which considers populations based on well types, defines 
the following five populations based on GOR:

1. Heavy Oil (GOR <= 300 standard cubic feet per barrel, scf/bbl)
2. Light Oil (300 < GOR <= 100,000 scf/bbl)
3. Wet Gas (100,000 < GOR <= 1,000,000 scf/bbl)
4. Dry Gas (GOR > 1,000,000 scf/bbl)
5. Coal Bed Methane

    Most of these well type categories have historical significance, 
such as the GOR of 300 scf/bbl included in the applicability of the Oil 
and Gas NSPS requirements for well completions (40 CFR part 60, subpart 
OOOOa) and the GOR of 100,000 scf/bbl delineation between oil and gas 
wells used in the U.S. Emissions Inventory for GHG Sources and Sinks. 
The delineation between ``wet'' and ``dry'' gas wells was developed for 
this ICR to gain information on ``wet'' gas wells because these gas 
wells have been found to have higher VOC content and, as such, are of 
particular interest in this information collection effort.
    Option 2, which considers regional groupings of basins, defines the 
following five populations based on basins (geological provinces) 
defined by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists:

1. East: Basins 100 to 190
2. South: Basins 200 to 290 and Basin 400
3. Midwest: Basins 300 to 395
4. West Texas: Basins 405 to 440
5. West: Basins 445 to 895

    Option 1 (populations based on well type) will ensure that a 
statistically significant number of each well type is sampled. This is 
important because there are fewer wet gas wells and coal bed methane 
gas wells than heavy oil, light oil, or dry gas wells. However, because 
of the differences in the number of wells within each population, 
analyses using the data must use these classifications (or weighting 
factors) to develop nationwide assessments. The regional populations 
are more similar to each other in terms of the number of wells in each 
region, but weighting factors would still be required to perform 
nationwide assessments separate from these defined regions.
    Based on a desire to have no more than a 10-percent error (i.e., +/
-10 percent) in the estimate of an average value at a 95-percent 
confidence interval and 90-percent power to differentiate an effect 
size of 0.2, the target number of samples required for large 
populations was determined to be 385 (additional detail regarding the 
determination of the target sample size using the statistical sampling 
approach is provided in Part B of the Supporting Statement for this 
ICR, which is included in Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0204 at http://www.regulations.gov). Consequently, because the number of production 
facilities in each population is relatively large compared to the 
target sample size, the overall costs of the two survey options for 
production facilities are nearly identical. We are specifically 
requesting comment on these two options for developing population 
categories within the production industry. We recognize that other 
alternatives may be viable, such as defining the entire production 
industry as one population and developing sampling requirements based 
on the accuracy and precision needed to characterize any subcategory of 
the production population that represents, for example, 20 percent of 
the total production wells. In this example, 1,925 (5 x 385) samples 
from the production population would be required. All respondents would 
have equal weight, so analyses could be conducted without having to 
consider weighting factors, but analyses for categories of wells with 
less than 20 percent of the population would have less accuracy and 
precision. As there are many potential factors to consider for the 
production population, we also request comment on other potential 
methods to define populations of production wells in order to 
adequately characterize the various potentially important differences 
in production facilities.
    Part 2 will collect detailed unit-specific information on emission 
sources at the facility and any emission control devices or management 
practices used to reduce emissions. Most of the information requested 
under Part 2 is expected to be available from company records and would 
not require additional measurements to be performed. However, selected 
data elements must be completed based on actual component equipment 
counts (specifically, pneumatic device counts and equipment leak 
component counts) or measurement data (specifically, separator/storage 
vessel flash analyses). If this information is not directly available 
for a facility, the respondent will be required to collect and report 
this information (count equipment components and/or sample and analyze 
tank feed streams) as part of this information collection. Part 2 is 
expected to include information that oil and gas facilities consider to 
be confidential and the survey must be completed and submitted 
electronically via the EPA's Electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool 
(e-GGRT).
    The data collected throughout this process will be used to 
determine the number of potentially affected emission sources and the 
types and prevalence of emission controls or emission reduction 
measures used for these sources at existing oil and gas facilities, 
among other purposes. This information may also be used to fill data 
gaps, to evaluate the emission and cost impacts of various regulatory 
options, and to establish appropriate standards of performance for oil 
and gas facilities.
    If OMB approves this ICR, respondents will be required to respond 
under the authority of section 114 of the CAA. The EPA anticipates 
issuing the CAA section 114 letters by October 30, 2016. These letters 
would require the owner/operator of an oil and gas facility to complete 
the Part 1 survey within 30 days of receipt of the survey, and would 
require facilities to complete the Part 2 survey with 120 days of 
receipt.
    The Agency has reviewed the draft surveys applying the 
confidentiality determination methods established for data reporting 
under the GHGRP as a model, as well as the policy notice entitled 
``Disclosure of Emission Data Claimed as Confidential Under Sections 
110 and 114(c) of the Clean Air Act (56 FR 7042, February 21, 1991.) 
The EPA has developed proposed determinations of the data elements in 
the surveys that may be considered CBI. These proposed determinations 
are included in the information being supplied for public review and 
comment in Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0204 at http://www.regulations.gov. Confidentiality designations will be made 
according to the provisions set forth in title 40, Code of Regulations 
part 2, subpart B--Confidentiality of Business Information. Any 
information subsequently determined to constitute a trade secret will 
be protected under 18 U.S.C. 1905.

[[Page 35766]]

    Form Numbers: Production Operator Survey (Part 1); Detailed 
Facility Survey (Part 2).
    Respondents/affected entities: Respondents affected by this action 
are owners/operators of oil and natural gas facilities. Part 1 of this 
ICR is specifically requesting information for facilities in the 
onshore petroleum and natural gas production industry segment. Part 2 
of this ICR is specifically requesting information for facilities in 
the following industry segments: Onshore petroleum and natural gas 
production, onshore petroleum and natural gas gathering and boosting, 
onshore natural gas processing, onshore natural gas transmission 
compression, onshore natural gas transmission pipelines, underground 
natural gas storage, LNG storage and LNG import and export equipment. 
The ICR is not requesting information for the offshore petroleum and 
natural gas production industry segment or from the natural gas (local) 
distribution industry segment.
    Respondent's obligation to respond: The information collection in 
Parts 1 and 2 is being conducted by the EPA's Office of Air and 
Radiation pursuant to section 114 of the CAA, to assist the 
Administrator of the EPA in developing emissions standards for oil and 
natural gas facilities pursuant to the CAA.
    Estimated number of respondents: The estimated number of 
respondents for Part 1 is 22,500 operators representing approximately 
698,800 facilities (total). The estimated number of respondents for 
Part 2 is 3,385.
    Frequency of response: This is a one-time survey.
    Total estimated burden: The estimated industry burden is 116,438 
hours for Part 1 and 111,485 hours for Part 2. Therefore, the 
cumulative industry burden for all parts of this ICR is estimated to be 
227,923 hours. The estimated cumulative Agency burden to administer 
this ICR (all parts) is 17,947 hours. Burden is defined at 5 CFR 
1320.03(b).
    Total estimated cost: The estimated costs for the oil and natural 
gas industry is $16,476,182 for Part 1 and $23,673,312 for Part 2. The 
resulting total industry costs for all parts of this ICR is estimated 
to be $40,149,494, which includes $11,302,500 in operating and 
maintenance (O&M) costs to cover mailing hard copies of Part 1 
responses and contracting services for storage vessel feed material 
flashing analyses as part of Part 2 responses. The estimated cumulative 
Agency costs to administer this ICR (all parts) is $960,793, which 
includes $144,618 in O&M costs to send certified CAA section 114 
letters to all respondents selected for Part 1 and Part 2 surveys with 
electronic return receipt.
    Changes in Estimates: This is a new ICR, so this section does not 
apply.

    Dated: May 12, 2016.
Peter Tsirigotis,
Director, Sector Policies and Programs Division, Office of Air Quality 
Planning and Standards.
[FR Doc. 2016-11967 Filed 6-2-16; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 6560-50-P