In its latest rollback of environmental regulations, the Trump Administration set outs plan to cut regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change.
The rule from the Environmental Protection Agency eliminates federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines, and storage facilities. The EPA is also questioning whether it has the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant.
If implemented, the rule will lead to the emission of 370,000 short tons of methane into the atmosphere between 2019 and 2025. That is equivalent to the annual output of carbon dioxide from nine million cars.
Energy companies have opposed any change in the regulation. So have automobile manufacturers, electric utilities, and industrial concerns.
But EPA Administration Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for coal mining, said the plan “removes unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry”. He noted that methane emissions across the industry have fallen 15% while natural gas production has doubled since 1990 — apparently citing this as a reason to cut EPA rules, rather than as an outcome of the regulation.
Anne Idsal, the EPA’s senior official for air quality, dismissed any concern about climate change, declaring that the elimination of the regulation will have “minimal environmental benefits”.
Methane is second to carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, with a shorter period in the atmosphere but a bigger impact. Some scientists estimate that methane has 80 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.
Methane accounts for almost 10% of US greenhouse gas emissions. Most comes from the oil and gas industry, with other sources including cattle and agriculture.
The EPA estimates that the rollback of regulations will save oil and natural gas companies $17 million to $19 million a year — in an industry that makes between $100 billion and $150 billion annually.
The new rule will be put out for public comment and review, likely taking effect early next year.
The Administration tried in March 2017 to suspend the methane regulation, but a federal appeals court blocked the move.
Trump’s War on Environmental Regulation
The Trump Administration has tried to repeal or weaken 84 environmental rules, as it seeks to open millions of acres of public land and water to drilling — including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — and lifted an Obama-era moratorium on new coal mining leases on public land.
Earlier this month, the Interior Department completed its plan to weaken the Endangered Species Act, and the Administration proposed a freeze on anti-pollution and fuel-efficiency standards for cars, even though automakers favor the measure. Later this year the EPA will unveil its plan to retract clean-water regulations for streams and wetlands.
See Trump Administration Weakens Endangered Species Act
In 2017 the Administration announced its withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change by 2020, joining Russia, Turkey, and Iran as holdouts from the international effort to check global warming. It is eliminating the Clean Power Plan of the Obama Administration, which regulated carbon dioxide from electricity plants powered by fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the Administration has opened up previously-protected land to drilling. In December 2017, Trump cut two million acres from national parks in Utah, shrinking the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by about 50%.
The Administration sought to allow offshore oil and gas drilling in almost all US coastal waters, reversing an Obama Administration ban, and repealing safety regulations initiated after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. A federal judge stymied the effort by ruling the initial executive order unlawful.
