Trump EPA proposes easing methane limits

EPA forces VW to correct gas mileage on 98,000 vehicles

WASHINGTON, Sept 1, (Agencies): The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed revoking Obama-era regulations on climate-changing methane leaks from many oil facilities, a move that environmental groups said was meant to renounce the agency’s overall legal authority to regulate the gas in the fight against global warming.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the proposed rule followed President Donald Trump’s directions to remove “unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry.”

The step would be the latest in a series easing the previous administration’s emissions controls on the oil, gas and coal industries, including a 2016 rule regulating oil-industry methane leaks as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

Methane is a component of natural gas that’s frequently wasted through leaks or intentional releases during drilling operations. The gas is considered a more potent contributor to climate change than carbon dioxide, although it occurs in smaller volumes.

Under Trump, both the Interior Department and the EPA have proposed a series of rules – some blocked by courts – to loosen regulations of methane emissions.

Environmental advocates and former EPA officials had said they expected the new methane plan to go further than previous proposals, with a goal of exempting companies from requirements to detect and stop methane leaks at existing oil and gas sites.

Plan targets sea lions:

More than 1,100 sea lions could be killed annually along a stretch of the Columbia River on the Oregon-Washington border to boost faltering populations of salmon and steelhead, federal officials has said.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said it’s taking public comments through Oct 29 on the plan requested by Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Native American tribes.

The agency says billions of dollars on habitat restoration, fish passage at dams and other efforts have been spent in the three states in the last several decades to save 13 species of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead protected under the Endangered Species Act.

But sea lions have learned that fish bunch up at dams and are easy to catch, an opportunity not available when the Columbia was free-flowing.

“The changes in the system have

“Essentially, this is the umpteenth iteration of the EPA’s exercise to define away its Clean Air Act authority ... to address air pollution and greenhouse gases,” said Joseph Goffman, an EPA air official under President Barack Obama.

The oil and gas industry is the nation’s primary source of methane emissions, according to the EPA, accounting for nearly onethird in 2016.

Helverson

Impact

While environmental groups pointed to the long-term impact, the oil industry said the direct immediate effect on methane emissions would be negligible. Controls on other, regulated pollutants would also capture methane in the pipeline, said Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute.

The Obama-era methane limits imposed “a disproportionate effect on small businesses” in the oil industry, Milito said. “A lot of mom and pops would have their wells shut in, elderly people with wells on their properties that could be shut down.”

The rollbacks on emissions from oilfields, storage sites and pipelines have split the oil industry, worrying some in the industry about growing blowback in a world increasingly mindful of climate change.

Royal Dutch Shell this year urged the administration to crack down – not ease up – on the emissions. Many others in the oil and industry have welcomed the easing, however.

The latest rollback “highlights the Trump administration’s complete contempt for our climate,” Kassie Siegel of the created this sort of pinch-point where sea lions can take advantage of the fish,” said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for National Marine Fisheries Service.

About 900 California sea lions and 250 Steller sea lions could be killed each year, starting about 110 miles (180 kilometers) from the river’s mouth and extending 300 miles (480 kilometers) upstream. Experts say sea lions in that area are

Bolsonaro

Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, said in a statement. “The EPA is now so determined to actually increase greenhouse pollution that it’s even shrugging off concerns from oil and gas companies about gutting these protections.”

EPA said easing the 2016 regulation that targeted methane would save energy companies up to $123 million through 2025. The plan will undergo a period of public comment before being finalized, and environmental groups pledged court action to try to block repeal of the limits.

The EPA said it will keep rules issued in 2012 that limit emissions known as volatile organic compounds that cause smog and also control some methane emissions.

Some large energy companies including BP favor federal regulation of methane, saying the regulatory certainty is preferable to a patchwork of varying rules by states and legal challenges by environmentalists. BP has said it is already taking steps to limit methane emissions.

The move is the Trump administration’s latest easing of rules designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including many put forth by his predecessor, President Barack Obama. Trump, who insists he is an environmentalist, has also relaxed rules on carbon emissions from vehicles and intends to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change.

Concern

Concern about climate has heightened in recent weeks amid fires in the Arctic and the Amazon rain-forest and melting of ice in Greenland. Democrats seeking their party’s nomination in the 2020 US presidential election will participate in a series of town halls on climate next week.

In 2016, Obama’s EPA issued the first rule limiting methane emissions from new oil and gas fracking operations including transport equipment. Thursday’s proposal would repeal those regulations.

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The US Environmental Protection Agency is making Volkswagen Group correct fuel economy labels for about 98,000 gasoline-powered vehicles.

The revisions of about one mile per gallon (0.4 kilometer per liter) cover VWs as well as affiliated brands Audi, Porsche and Bentley. All are from the 2013 through 2017 model years.

The EPA said Friday that it investigated the gas vehicles after finding that VW cheated on diesel emissions in 2015.

The agency and the California Air Resources Board found that transmission software on the gas vehicles made them shift differently during government lab tests on treadmills so they got better mileage and polluted less than when they were on the road.

The software was on about 1 million vehicles, but only 98,000 were found to have lower mileage than stated on EPA window stickers, according to an EPA statement.

VW Group said it also settled lawsuits filed by owners and will reimburse them for overstated mileage. Under the settlement, valued at $96.5 million, owners will get payments ranging from $5.40 to $24.30 for each month that they have owned or leased the vehicles.