Reconsideration of Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 60</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358; FRL-12031-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AW35</RIN> <SUBJECT>Reconsideration of Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing amendments to the New Source Performance Standards and Emission Guidelines for Existing Sources for the Crude Oil and Natural Gas Source Category in response to petitions for reconsideration. Specifically, this action proposes discrete technical changes to two different aspects of the rules. First, this action proposes discrete technical changes to the temporary flaring provisions for associated gas in certain situations. Second, this action proposes discrete technical changes to the vent gas net heating value (NHV) continuous monitoring requirements and alternative performance test (sampling demonstration) option for flares and enclosed combustion devices. In a letter dated May 6, 2024, the EPA notified petitioners and the public that the Agency granted reconsideration on these two aspects of the March 8, 2024 (89 FR 16820) final rule. These amendments neither propose changes to any other aspect of the final rule, nor propose to alter the substance of any emission standards within the final rule. Also, in this action, the EPA proposes to make formatting changes to the regulatory text to meet the required formatting standards of the Office of the Federal Register. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments.</E> Comments must be received on or before March 3, 2025. <E T="03">Public Hearing.</E> If anyone contacts us requesting a public hearing on or before January 20, 2025, we will hold a virtual public hearing. Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> for information on requesting and registering for a public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand/Courier Delivery:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operation are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Frank Benjamin-Eze, Sector Policies and Programs Division (E143-05), Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 109 T.W. Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12055 RTP, North Carolina 27711; telephone number: (919) 541-3753; and email address: <E T="03">benjamineze.frank@epa.gov.</E> Additional questions may be directed to the following email address: <E T="03">O&GMethaneRule@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Participation in virtual public hearing.</E> To request a virtual public hearing, contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> If requested, the virtual public hearing will be held via virtual platform. The EPA will announce the date of the hearing and further details on the virtual public hearing at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-operations.</E> The hearing will convene at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) and will conclude at 4:00 p.m. ET. The EPA may close a session 15 minutes after the last pre-registered speaker has testified if there are not additional speakers. The EPA will begin pre-registering speakers for the hearing no later than 1 business day after a request has been received. To register to speak at the virtual hearing, please use the online registration form available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-operations</E> or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov.</E> The last day to pre-register to speak at the hearing will be January 27, 2025. Prior to the hearing, the EPA will post a general agenda that will list pre-registered speakers at: <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-operations.</E> The EPA will make every effort to follow the schedule as closely as possible on the day of the hearing; however, please plan for the hearings to run either ahead of schedule or behind schedule. Each commenter will have 4 minutes to provide oral testimony. The EPA encourages commenters to submit a copy of their oral testimony as written comments to the rulemaking docket. The EPA may ask clarifying questions during the oral presentations but will not respond to the presentations at that time. Written statements and supporting information submitted during the comment period will be considered with the same weight as oral testimony and supporting information presented at the public hearing. Please note that any updates made to any aspect of the hearing will be posted online at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/controlling-air-pollution-oil-and-natural-gas-operations.</E> While the EPA expects the hearing to go forward as set forth above, please monitor these websites or contact the public hearing team at (888) 372-8699 or by email at <E T="03">SPPDpublichearing@epa.gov</E> to determine if there are any updates. The EPA does not intend to publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates. If you require the services of a translator or a special accommodation such as audio description, please pre-register for the hearing with the public hearing team and describe your needs by January 22, 2025. The EPA may not be able to arrange accommodations without advance notice. <E T="03">Docket.</E> The EPA has established a docket for this rulemaking under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358. All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> index. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only as pdf versions that can only be accessed on the EPA computers in the docket office reading room. Certain data bases and physical items cannot be downloaded from the docket but may be requested by contacting the docket office at (202) 566-1744. The docket office has up to 10 business days to respond to these requests. With the exception of such material, publicly available docket materials are available electronically in <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . <E T="03">Written Comments.</E> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0358, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to the EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. This type of information should be submitted as discussed in the <E T="03">Submitting CBI</E> section of this document. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, <E T="03">etc.</E> ) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the Web, cloud, or other file sharing system). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. The <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website allows you to submit your comment anonymously, which means the EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment. If you send an email comment directly to the EPA without going through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. If you submit an electronic comment, the EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and wi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 143k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━