Final Revisions to SPCC Rules

After almost a year of reconsideration on November 13, 2009, EPA finalized the SPCC regulations which were originally promulgated December 5, 2008, during the Bush Administration and were to be come effective on February 3, 2009.   However, with the change in administrations, these rules were subjected to the new administration’s regulatory review process, and their effective date was delayed while the Obama EPA considered objections that had been made to some of the new provisions of the regulations which principally affected oil production facilities.

 

The effective date for the November 18, 2009 rule is January 14, 2010, and the date by which these new SPCC requirements must be implemented is November 10, 2010. Relative to the SPCC requirements for onshore oil storage facilities most changes in the November 2009 final rules were to make wording and regulatory references less complicated. Substantively, the changes effected by the November 13, 2009 rules are: 

• Hot mixed asphalt (HMA) and HMA containers, pesticide application equipment and related mix containers, and heating oil containers at single-family residences, including those located at farms are exempted from the regulations;
• The definition of "facility" is amended  to clarify the existing flexibility associated with describing a facility's boundaries;
• There are amended facility diagram requirements to provide additional flexibility;
• A new definition of "loading/unloading rack" is provided  to clarify the oil transfer equipment subject to the provisions for facility tank car and tank truck loading/unloading racks, as well as amended provisions for this equipment;
• Amended general secondary containment requirements to provide more clarity;
• Exemption of non-transportation-related tank trucks from the sized secondary containment requirements;
• Amended security requirements;
• Amended integrity testing requirements to allow greater flexibility in the use of industry standards;
• Amended integrity testing requirements for containers that store animal fats and vegetable oils (AFVOs) and meet certain criteria;
• Amended definition of "production facility";
• Clarification that drilling and workover activities are not subject to the provisions at §112.9;
• Exemption for certain intra-facility gathering lines at oil production facilities from the SPCC requirements;
• More prescriptive requirements for a flowline/intra-facility gathering line maintenance program for all production facilities and an alternative compliance option for flowlines and intra-facility gathering lines for contingency planning in lieu of all secondary containment;
• Alternative compliance option for flow-through process vessels at oil production facilities to comply with the general secondary containment requirements and additional oil spill prevention measures in lieu of the sized secondary containment requirements;
• Definition of "produced water container" and alternative compliance measures for these containers which require general secondary containment, a process or procedure certified by a professional engineer (PE) designed to remove free-phase oil on the surface of the produced water in these containers and compliance with additional oil spill prevention measures in lieu of sized secondary containment requirements;
• Clarification of the definition of "permanently closed" as it applies to an oil production facility; and

A few provisions finalized in the December 2008 rule which are beneficial to the regulated community to whom they apply , become effective on January 14, 2010, with technical corrections:

• Exemption for underground oil storage tanks that supply emergency diesel generators at nuclear power generation facilities.
• Designation of a subset of "Tier I" qualified facilities with a set of streamlined SPCC rule requirements for which the owner or operator has the option to complete a self-certified SPCC Plan template in lieu of a full SPCC Plan.
• Compliance date for new oil production facilities changes to November 10, 2010, to align with the current compliance date.

The following provisions which were included in the December 2008 final rule were REMOVED  from the November 13, 2009 final rule.removed and are no longer part of the regulatory program. 

• Exclusions for oil production facilities and farms from loading/unloading rack requirements were removed. .
• Alternative qualified facility eligibility criteria for an oil production facility were removed.
• Exemption for certain produced water containers were removed.

Basic Applicability of SPCC Rules

 

The following sets forth the types of sources subject to the SPCC rule; the coverage has not changed substantially from the 2002 version of the SPCC rule:

 

The SPCC rule applies to owners or operators of non-transportation-related facilities that:

• Drill, produce, store, process, refine, transfer, distribute, use, or consume oil or oil products; and
• Could reasonably be expected to discharge oil to U.S. navigable waters or adjoining shorelines.

Facilities are subject to the rule if they meet at least one of the following capacity thresholds:

• Aboveground oil storage capacity greater than 1,320 U.S. gallons, or completely buried oil storage capacity greater than 42,000 U.S. gallons.

The following are exempt from the rule:

• Containers with a storage capacity less than 55 U.S. gallons of oil;
• Permanently closed containers;
• Motive power containers;
• Wastewater treatment facilities;
• Hot-mix asphalt and hot-mix asphalt containers;
• Residential heating oil containers at single family residences;
• Pesticide application equipment and related mix containers;
• Completely buried storage tanks subject to all the technical requirements of the underground storage tank regulations;
• Intra-facility gathering lines subject to U.S. Department of Transportation’s pipeline regulations; and

Underground oil storage tanks at nuclear power generation facilities.

 

This article was authored by Barbara D. Little, Jackson Kelly PLLC. For more information on the author see here.