Go West Young Man? Air Quality Developments Affecting Western Oil and Gas Exploration and Production

Federal air quality policies and regulatory developments that may pose challenges for the O&G sector in the West include the recently lowered 8-hour ozone national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) (and EPA's reevaluation of that standard, recently announced as being lowered to between 0.060 and 0.070 parts per million (ppm)); EPA's mandatory reporting rule for GHGs (including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrogen oxides (NO ) from the O&G sector); EPA's approach to defining an O&G major stationary source; and challenges to O&G activity on federal public lands due to air quality impacts. A number of regions with significant O&G activity attempted to avoid nonattainment designations for the previous ozone NAAQS of 0.08 ppm through use of Early Action Compacts, including the Denver metro area, the Wasatch Front area, including Salt Lake City, and the Four Corners area in the San Juan Basin (which includes parts of four states and two Indian reservations).