Obama-era rule on methane gas to be replaced
Environmental groups warn emissions add to climate change
WASHINGTON — New Mexico’s senators and environmental activitists blasted the Interior Department’s decision to replace an Obama-era regulation aimed at restricting harmful methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands.
A rule being published in the Federal Register this week will replace the 2016 rule with requirements similar to those in force before the Obama administration changed the regulation.
Interior had previously announced it was delaying the Obama-era rule until January 2019, arguing that it was overly burdensome to industry. Officials said then that the delay would give the federal Bureau of Land Management time to review the earlier rule while avoiding tens of millions of dollars in compliance costs to industry.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is frequently wasted through leaks or intentional releases during drilling operations. An estimated $330 million a year in methane is wasted on federal lands, enough to power about 5 million homes a year.
The new rule announced Monday marks at least the fourth time the Trump administration has moved to delay, set aside or replace the Obama-era rule, which was finalized in late 2016.
“The BLM’s proposal to gut a rule designed to limit wasteful venting and flaring of natural gas would hurt taxpayers, school children, New Mexico’s economy, and our environment,” Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, said in a joint statement. “Ultimately, it would rob the state of New Mexico of millions of dollars in royalties that could be used to pay for school books, hospitals, and infrastructure projects, and to keep our air clean.
“The arguments being made against this rule do not hold water, and that’s why last year, a bipartisan group of senators successfully voted down an effort in Congress to scrap it. Since the rule came into effect in November 2016, employment data shows no evidence of any jobs lost, and the number of drilling rigs in operation has increased significantly. In Colorado and Wyoming, which also have statelevel rules, a methane mitigation business has grown strong, creating new jobs.”
The rule forced energy companies to capture methane that’s burned off or “flared” at drilling sites because it pollutes the environment. Many companies consider the rule unnecessary and overly intrusive.
“The previous administration wrote rules that were overly burdensome and were largely duplicative of rules that we see here at the state level,” said Robert McEntyre, a spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. “In many cases the rules that the Obama administration wrote had some pretty outrageous cost to benefit claims in them, and I think a lot of the cost to benefit promises were highly exaggerated and unrealistic to achieve.”
McEntrye said there is a “universal commitment” across industry to reduce methane emissions and leaks.
“We’re actually starting to see some progress as a result,” he said. “In the San Juan Basin, we see methane emissions are down 46 percent from 2011 to 2016. In the Permian Basin, we see methane emissions are down about 6 percent from 2011 to 2016 — all of that happening while production continues to climb, while we see our oil and natural gas industry rebound after a period of low market prices.”
“When you have industry actually moving the needle out in the field, we have to question what impact these rules have and whether or not expensive red tape is the best solution,” he added. “What we’re seeing is market-place solutions where companies are driving innovation.”
But environmental groups warn that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are the second largest industrial contributor to climate change in the United States. Methane is far more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide but does not stay in the air as long.
Methane pollution also poses a risk to public health, especially to those who suffer from asthma or other breathing difficulties.
“Again and again, New Mexicans have stood up to say, ‘Don’t waste our natural gas from our publicly owned lands.’ This message was so powerful that even Congress refused to roll these rules back. So we will stand up once again to defend against methane waste and pollution,” Camilla Feibelman, director of the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.
The new rule comes after a federal judge rejected a bid by the Trump administration to roll back the rule last fall.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said in October that Interior had failed to give a “reasoned explanation” for changing the Obama-era rule and had not offered details on why an earlier analysis by the Obama administration was faulty. Laporte’s order reinstated the 2016 rule, but BLM later delayed the rule until 2019.
The rule announced Monday is intended to be a permanent replacement for the Obama rule. The public has 60 days to comment, with a final rule expected later this year.
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop hailed the latest proposal on how to handle methane emissions on federal lands.
“The previous administration scorned domestic energy development and crafted the prior rule to deliberately stifle” energy production, said Bishop, R-Utah. The new rule will “promote investment in federal and tribal lands so that economies in the West can grow,” he said.
Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Obama-era rule required oil and gas companies to “take common-sense and cost-effective measures to reduce preventable leaks and venting of methane.”
The new proposal by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “would only serve to reward the least responsible actors in industry at a time when other companies are moving forward to tackle methane waste,” Krupp said, citing a voluntary program by large energy companies to reduce methane emissions.
A program backed by the American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, is intended to encourage drillers to find and fix leaks and take other steps to reduce the escape of natural gas into the atmosphere during drilling operations.