HR 2298 Introduced – Chemical Safety

As I reported earlier Rep. Peters (D,MI) introduced HR 2298, the Petroleum Coke Transparency and Public Health Study Act. This bill would require a federal government “study on the public health and environmental impacts of the production, transportation, storage, and use of petroleum coke”.

Petroleum Coke

According to Wikipedia petroleum coke (or petcoke) is a solid byproduct of the oil refining process that can be used as either a fuel (in lieu of coal) or as an electrical anode in the production of aluminum or steel. Since petcoke is nearly pure carbon, when it is burned as a fuel it produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, roughly comparable to the amounts produced by various grades of coal.

There is currently a large supply of petcoke accumulating in Detroit, MI. It is being produced by the Marathon refinery from its processing of bitumen from the Alberta oil sands. Since the EPA is not currently allowing the burning of petcoke in coal fired power plants (according to Wikipedia), a large supply is accumulating in the Detroit area pending shipment to China and South America for use a fuel there.

In March 2000 the American Petroleum Institute submitted a test plan for petcoke to the EPA under the High Production Volume Challenge where industry has tests conducted on health and environmental effects of HPV chemicals. In December of that year the API responded to public comments on its test plan, justifying the additional testing that it planned on completing over and above what was considered necessary by the EPA and public commenters. The results of those tests were published in 2009.

90-day Study

Section 3 of this bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Administrator of the EPA, to “transmit to Congress the results of a study regarding the public health and environmental impacts of the production, transportation, storage, and use of petroleum coke” within 90 days of the passage of this bill. The only kind of scientific study that can be conducted within that time frame is a literature review.

Section 4 of the bill would require the Secretary to establish a web site where “the results of all federally conducted research related to the public health and environmental impacts of the production, transportation, storage, and use of petroleum coke” would be posted.

Moving Forward

It seems obvious that this bill, introduced by 5 Democratic members of the Michigan congressional delegation, was designed as a face saving measure to allow them to respond to the unsightly accumulation large piles in Detroit of this byproduct of the petroleum refinery process.

This bill has zero chance of being considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee given the Chairman’s vociferous support for the Keystone XL pipeline which is directly challenged in the Congressional Findings {§2(2)} portion of this bill. This is a good example of a piece of legislation that was designed for the local press and not the floor of Congress.