Federal Implementation Plan for Oil and Natural Gas Well Production Facilities, Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation), North Dakota (Renewal)

This ICR covers information collection requirements in the final Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) for Oil and Natural Gas Well Production Facilities; Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation), North Dakota (40 CFR Part 49, Subpart K, §§ 49.4161 through 49.4168), herein referred to as the FBIR FIP. The information collected will be used by the EPA and delegated tribal agencies to determine the compliance status of sources subject to the rule. On March 22, 2013 (78 FR 17858), the EPA promulgated a final FIP for oil and natural gas well production sources operating on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (FBIR) which addressed volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from well completions, recompletions, and production and storage operations. The standards in the FBIR FIP apply to any person who owns or operates an existing (constructed or modified on or after August 12, 2007), new, or modified oil and natural gas production facility that is located on the FBIR and producing from the Bakken Pool with one or more oil and natural gas wells, any one of which a well completion or recompletion operation is/was initiated on or after August 12, 2007. The potential respondents are owners or operators of oil and natural gas production facilities found throughout the FBIR. For the purposes of the FBIR FIP, an oil and natural gas production facility consists of all the air pollution emitting units and activities located on or integrally connected to one or more oil and natural gas wells that are necessary for production operations and storage operations. An oil and natural gas well is a single well that extracts subsurface reservoir fluids containing a mixture of oil, natural gas, and water. A well completion means the process that allows for the flowback of oil and natural gas from newly drilled wells to expel drilling and reservoir fluids and tests the reservoir flow characteristics, which may vent produced hydrocarbons to the atmosphere via an open pit or tank. A well completion operation means any oil and natural gas well completion with hydraulic fracturing occurring at an oil and natural gas production facility. The completion date is considered the date that construction at an oil and natural gas production facility has commenced. The recompletion date is considered the date that a modification has occurred at an oil and natural gas production facility. In general, owners or operators are required to maintain records of all oil and natural gas well completions and recompletions, required monitoring, and rule compliance. The FBIR FIP also requires annual reports containing information for each oil and natural gas production facility, including a summary of all required records identifying each oil and natural gas well completion or recompletion conducted during the reporting period, and a summary of all instances where construction or operation was not performed in compliance with the requirements of the FBIR FIP during the reporting period. These reports and records are essential in determining compliance and are required of all sources subject to the FBIR FIP. We estimate that 10 operators and 1,062 oil and natural gas production facilities will be subject to this FIP over the next three years. The oil and natural gas production facilities subject to this rule will incur approximately 44,461 hours in annual monitoring, reporting, and recordkeeping burden (averaged over the next three years), incurring an estimated $9.8 million in burden. This includes an annual average of 44,461 labor hours per year at a total labor cost of $2.2 million per year, average annualized capital costs of $3.2 million per year, and average annual operating and maintenance costs of $4.4 million per year over the 3-year period for this ICR.

The latest form for Federal Implementation Plan for Oil and Natural Gas Well Production Facilities, Fort Berthold Indian Reservation (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation), North Dakota (Renewal) expires 2021-01-31 and can be found here.