Court blocks EPA push to slow gas rule

Denies aim to loosen Obama’s standards

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in Washington ruled Monday that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of a new rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks.

In a split decision — the first major legal setback for Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator — the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered the environmental agency to move forward with the Obama-era requirement that aims to reduce planet-warming emissions from oil and gas operations.

The ruling signals that President Donald Trump’s plans to erase his predecessor’s environmental record are likely to

face an uphill battle in the courts.

Mr. Pruitt announced in April that he would delay by 90 days the deadline for oil and gas companies to follow the new rule, so that the agency could reconsider the measure. The American Petroleum Institute, the Texas Oil and Gas Association and other industry groups had petitioned Mr. Pruitt to scrap the requirement, which had been set to take effect in June.

Last month, Mr. Pruitt announced he intended to extend the 90-day stay for two years. A coalition of six environmental groups opposed the delay in court, urging the appeals judges to block Mr. Pruitt’s decision.

In a detailed 31-page ruling that could set back the Trump administration’s broad legal strategy for rolling back Obama-era rules, the court disagreed with Mr. Pruitt’s contention that industry groups had not had sufficient opportunity to comment before the 2016 rule was enacted.

The judges also said Mr. Pruitt lacked the legal authority under the Clean Air Act to delay the rule from taking effect with an “unreasonable,” “arbitrary” and “capricious” decision.

“EPA’s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule,” Judges David Tatel and Robert Wilkins wrote. They dismissed “the flimsiness” of the EPA’s “claim that regulated entities had no opportunity to comment” on one aspect of the rule limiting methane and smog-forming pollutants emitted by oil and gas wells.

Monday’s decision does not mean the rule imposing the first-ever federal limits on leaks of methane cannot be reversed. But to do so, the judges said, the agency would have to undertake a new rule-making process to undo the regulation and must comply with the Obama-era rule in the meantime.

EPA spokeswoman Amy Graham said the agency was reviewing the court’s opinion and examining its options. The EPA could seek to appeal the matter to the Supreme Court.

Even as one aspect of the administration’s push to promote domestic energy production faced a legal setback Monday, it advanced on a separate front.

The Interior Department launched a new offshore-leasing planning process for 2019 to 2024, a move that could open up new areas for drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the Gulf of Mexico.