Pittsburgh, PA
FNREL Mineral and Energy Law Newsletter
Pennsylvania – Oil & Gas
(by Joe Reinhart, Sean McGovern, Matt Wood and Alex Graf)
On March 31, 2025, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) entered a settlement agreement with the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA), PA Independent Petroleum Producers (PIPP), and PA Grade Crude Oil Coalition (PGCC) (collectively, Petitioners) pertaining to the Control of VOC Emissions from Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Sources pursuant to 25 Pa. Code ch. 129.
The settlement arises out of a December 5, 2022, petition for review of the emergency-certified final-omitted Control of VOC Emissions from Conventional Oil and Natural Gas Sources by the Petitioners in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. PIOGA, PIPP and PGCC Petition (Dec. 5, 2022) (Petition). Petitioners challenged the rule on the grounds that (1) the regulation did not meet the requirements to be issued as a final omitted rulemaking; and (2) PADEP did not develop the regulation for conventional oil and gas wells separately and independently from those regulations developed for unconventional oil and gas wells, as required by Act 52 of 2016. The rule was adopted by the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) through an emergency certified final-omitted rulemaking approved by the Governor, without notice and comment, which adopted reasonable available control technology standards (RACT) to control volatile organic compound (VOC) and methane emissions from existing and future conventional oil and gas operations and unconventional oil and gas operations, respectively. PADEP contended that the emergency certified final-omitted rulemaking process was appropriate pursuant to the PA Commonwealth Documents Law because notice and comment from the public was unnecessary, impractical, and contrary to the public interest.
In resolution of the petition for review of the rule, the parties agreed to a settlement that stipulates that for the leak detection and repair (LDAR) monitoring threshold, a separate tank battery surface site is not aggregated with the well or wells that supply the tank battery. See PIOGA v. DEP Settlement Agreement FAQ (Mar. 31, 2025). Further, if the well that supplies the separate tank battery surface site is subject to LDAR on its own due to the barrel of oil equivalent produced per day, the separate tank battery surface site is not automatically also subject to LDAR. PADEP did not conduct a separate RACT analysis for a conventional oil and gas separate tank battery surface site. LDAR will be required at a separate tank battery site if: (1) the separate tank battery surface site receives more than 15 barrels of oil or the equivalent amount of natural gas per day, and (2) one or more of the wells supplying the separate tank battery surface site produced five or more barrels of oil or the equivalent amount of natural gas per day.
Additionally, the settlement explains how PADEP calculated the 2.7 tons per year trigger for controlling VOC emissions from a storage vessel and states that VOC recovery and control requirements are not impacted by the number of wells connected to a particular tank. The recovery requirement is not impacted by how much methane is emitted from a tank, it instead relates to the collection of VOC emissions. VOC recovery and control requirements are also not impacted by the number of wells connected to a particular tank. The settlement also requires that for 10 years, rulemakings under the Air Pollution Control Act, 35 Pa. Stat. §§ 4001–4106, concerning conventional oil and gas well operations shall be undertaken separately and independently from unconventional wells.
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