Hansen quoted on West Virginia's storage tank bill
Under the new bill, the number of tanks regulated by the act would shrink considerably, said Evan Hansen, president of West Virginia think tank Downstream Strategies. The bill exempts storage tanks that store oil or any other liquid associated with the oil or natural gas industry, and it also exempts tanks that hold less than 10,000 gallons.
The Aboveground Storage Tank Act, as it’s written now, applies to the nearly 50,000 registered above-ground storage tanks in West Virginia. With the exemptions outlined in this new bill, fewer than 1,000 would be subject to the act, Hansen said. The drop is severe partly because, according to Downstream Strategies, the oil and gas industry is associated with about three-quarters of the state’s above-ground storage tanks, so exempting the industry from the act greatly reduces the number of tanks that will be subject to the act.
That means that the bill, if it’s passed, could be considered a win for West Virginia’s oil and gas industry, which has been critical of the Storage Tank Act in the past. In August, James McKinney, president of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia, said the act could “cause lost jobs” and “close businesses for us.” And last month, West Virginia Oil and Gas Association Executive Director Corky DeMarco also said he thought the bill went too far.
