Company: REI
Filing Date: 2025-03-05
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-010585
Chunk: 39

Company: RING ENERGY, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-05
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 39
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 by the applicable governing state agency. As an example, the RRC adopted rules in 2014 requiring companies seeking permits for disposal wells to provide seismic activity data in permit applications. The rules also allow the RRC to modify, suspend, or terminate permits if a disposal well is determined to be causing seismic activity. Determinations by the RRC under these rules may adversely affect our operations.

If new laws or regulations that significantly restrict hydraulic fracturing are adopted at the local, state, or federal level, our fracturing activities could become subject to additional permit and financial assurance requirements, more stringent construction requirements, increased reporting or plugging and abandoning requirements or operational restrictions and associated permitting delays and potential increases in costs. These delays or additional costs could adversely affect the determination of whether a well is commercially viable and could cause us to incur substantial compliance costs. Restrictions on hydraulic fracturing could also reduce the amount of oil and natural gas that we are ultimately able to produce in commercial quantities.

Climate Change

Continuing political and social attention to the issue of global climate change has resulted in both existing and pending international agreements and national, regional, or local legislation and regulatory measures to limit or reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases (“GHGs”), such as cap and trade regimes, carbon taxes, restrictive permitting, increased fuel efficiency standards, and incentives or mandates for renewable energy. The EPA has adopted and implemented regulations under existing provisions of the CAA that, among other things, establish Prevention of Significant 

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Deterioration (“PSD”) construction and Title V operating permit reviews for GHG emissions from certain large stationary sources that already are major sources of criteria pollutants under the CAA. Facilities required to obtain PSD permits for their GHG emissions also will be required to meet “best available control technology” standards that typically are GHG emissions. If we are required to meet "best available control technology," our operations could be adversely affected and our ability to obtain air permits for new or modified facilities that exceed GHG emission thresholds could be restricted or delayed. In addition, the EPA has adopted rules requiring the reporting of GHG emissions from oil and natural gas production and processing facilities on an annual basis, as well as reporting GHG emissions from gathering and boosting systems, oil well completions and workovers using hydraulic fracturing.

In addition, in November 2016, the BLM issued final rules to reduce methane emissions from venting, flaring, and leaks during oil and natural gas operations on federal lands that are substantially similar to the CAA’s New Source Performance Standards