Kentucky Division of Oil & Gas

UIC Class II – Public Hearing 09/23/15

Unofficial transcript – video in application package

Good Evening I’d like to welcome everyone to the Division of Oil and Gas’ public hearing on our Class 

II underground injection control primacy application. I’m Kim Collings, Director of the Kentucky 

Division of Oil and Gas. With me is Marvin Combs, Assistant Director of the Division. This is being 

video recorded, will be made part of the application for our taking over primary responsibility for the 

injection control program. We had sign in sheets in the front when you came in and copies of the 

application ask you to sign in and take a copy if needed. Tonight we’re going to take any oral or written 

or both comments that any one may have on the application. I will let the record reflect that I did today 

receive written comments from Andrew McNeill executive director of the Kentucky Oil and Gas 

Association, who is here tonight. So Andrew if you have anything you would like to add, go right ahead. 

Thank you Kim, thank you Marvin for putting out this public notice for this public meeting related to the 

Divisions application for primacy over Class II underground injection wells. To my right a have Rudy 

Vogt of Cumberland Valley Resources, who is president of the board for the Kentucky Oil & Gas 

Association. As you mentioned I’m Andrew Mc Neill, the Executive Director of KOGA. KOGA is the 

industry association for Kentucky’s oil and gas producers. We’ve been an association since 1931 have 

over 240 member companies. We represent an industry that’s a $1.1 billion industry in the state’s 

economy. In 2013 the oil and gas industry supported over 3,200 jobs in direct and downstream industry 

sectors. The average annual wage for oil and gas jobs in 2013 is between $50,000 and $60,000. Last 

year Kentucky’s oil and gas industry contributed over $40 million in tax revenues to state and local 

governments.

In 2013, 34 Kentucky counties reported natural gas production and last year 63 counties reported oil 

production.

I’ve been in this position for 2 years, and in that tenure, it has been communicated to me by my board of 

directors, my membership that the Association is supportive of and has identified as a priority the state’s 

application for primacy over this program. KOGA is supportive of IOGCC’s and the Ground Water 

Protection Counsel’s program “State’s First” and we believe this fits very well with that philosophy in 

terms of the state being the best level of government to regulate the oil and gas industry, in Kentucky 

and across the country.

Just in way of comments, again as you noted, we submitted written comments today. This will be a 

higher level overview of that but, on the majority of the application, we feel the Division has done an 

excellent job of explaining both the rationale and requirements of the various issues that you all are 

considering as you move forward with assuming primacy over this program and we also believe that in 

terms of the supporting documentation in the appendices you submitted that it’s a very thorough and 

accurate collection of documents that supports the Divisions application. 

We did have some comments that we would like to provide and some questions we think that when 

posed could possibly grant the Division an opportunity to consider and when considering strengthening 

their application. Going forward and largely I think they fall into the category of insuring the Division 

has a sufficient level of resources to manage the program going forward. I’m going to skip over a couple 

of these recommendations. Because I think the written comments clearly state that we feel like the 

existing staff levels have a certain and sufficient level responsibilities placed upon them so that we 

would hate to see some additional strings put on them. But your comments, excuse me your proposal 
does address that and you certainly due expect additional some staff to come on within a sufficient 

period of time to address that. I think that I would say that our primary concern is the nature of the 

reoccurring resources to support this program As I understand it from the application the first 2 years are 

more or less covered if you will, from a resource standpoint through a combination of State General 

Fund appropriation or agency funds and a grant that has been applied for or perhaps actually already 

received from US EPA to administer this program. And so, I think the Division did an excellent job of 

laying out the capacity to manage the program going forward over the next 2 years. The application is 

silent on what the expectations are in terms of how you might move forward after that period time. I 

believe the industry and I certainly think KOGA is prepare to be a partner and be supportive of whatever 

strategies the division intends to move forward with to ensure that there are sufficient level of resources 

in place to support this program. It would be beneficial from a standpoint of identifying any potential 

permitting fees you may anticipate in the future or general fund requirements from the Kentucky 

General Assembly that you might require. Going forward to the extent that the Association and the 

Industry could have a better understanding of that through this application and this process. It’s one of 

those situations that it’s the earlier the better because as you know budget cycles tend to begin soon and 

the year prior to the budget session and a better understanding of that I think positions KOGA and the 

industry to support your efforts. But as I stated earlier all of our comments all of our input is intended to 

strengthen an already strong application. And, we certainly appreciate the efforts that have been made 

by this office to move forward, to have this meeting, to have a very transparent process Assuming 

authority over this program. We believe that programs like this are important for the future of the 

industry within the state. And applaud the efforts that you made.

Kim Collings: Thank you, and I thank KOGA for their, the time that they took to review the application 

thoroughly and have made some valid comments and we’ll be going over those and issuing a response 

soon.

Kim: Do you have anything you’d like to add? 

Rudy Vogt: I’d like to make a comment as an owner of a small independent producer and operator of 51 

Class II injection wells currently. I feel strongly that we would like, my oil company would like to 

support divisions acceptance of control over the Class II wells I think it is important from an ongoing 

business situation for small operators. I’ll just leave it at that.

Kim: thank you. I appreciate that. Having no other people in the audience we will draw this public 

hearing to a close. I will ask that if anyone would like to submit written comments we have those by 

October 10th, then we will file an answer and send this down to the EPA Region 4 in Atlanta. That 

should be it. Thanks You very much.