TARGETING REGULATIONS
Trump’s proposal to weaken methane emissions standards draws flack from environmentalists — even energy companies
WASHINGTON » The Trump administration laid out a farreaching plan Thursday to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency, in its proposed rule, aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It will also reopen the question of whether the EPA even has the legal authority to regulate methane as a pollutant.
The rollback is particularly notable because major energy companies have, in fact, spoken out against it, joining the ranks of automakers, electric utilities and other industrial giants that have opposed other administration initiatives to dismantle climate- change and environmental rules. Several of the world’s largest auto companies are pushing back against President Donald Trump’s plans to let vehicles pollute more, saying those rollbacks stand to split the U. S. auto market in two, while utilities have opposed the relaxation of restrictions on toxic mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants.
The weakening of the methane standard is the latest in a historic march of environmental- policy rollbacks by the Trump administration designed to loosen regulations on industry.
Trump has sought to open millions of acres of public land and water to drilling, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has lifted an Obama-era moratorium on new coal mining leases on public land. This month, the Interior Department completed a plan to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Later this year,
the EPA plans to roll back clean-water regulations affecting streams and wetlands.
EPA officials said the new methane rule, which would replace one dating from the Obama administration, is a response to Trump’s calls to trim regulations that impede economic growth or keep the nation reliant on energy imports.
The plan “removes unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said. “The Trump administration recognizes that methane is valuable and the industry has an incentive to minimize leaks and maximize its use.”
Wheeler said that since 1990, natural gas production in the United States has almost doubled while methane emissions across the industry have fallen 15%.
Anne Idsal, the agency’s acting senior clean-air official, said the Obamaera rules being eliminated have “minimal environmental benefits.”
Environmental advocates described the proposal as a major setback in the effort to fight climate change. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
“The Trump EPA is eager to give the oil and gas industry a free pass to keep leaking enormous amounts of climate pollution into the air,” said David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group. “If EPA moves forward with this reckless and sinister proposal, we will see them in court.”
Under the proposal, methane, the main component of natural gas, would be only indirectly regulated. A separate but related category of gases, known as volatile organic compounds, would remain regulated under the new rule, and those curbs would have the side benefit of averting some methane emissions.
The new rule must go through a period of public comment and review and would most likely be finalized early next year, analysts said.
Overall, carbon dioxide is the most significant greenhouse gas, but methane is a close second. It lingers in the atmosphere for a shorter period of time but packs a bigger punch while it lasts. By some estimates, methane has 80 times the heating-trapping power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years in the atmosphere.
Methane currently makes up nearly 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. A significant portion of that comes from the oil and gas industry. Other sources include cattle and agriculture.
The EPA’s economic analysis of the rule estimates that it would save the oil and natural gas industry $17 million to $19 million a year. For comparison, the annual revenue of the United States oil industry as a whole typically ranges between $100 billion and $150 billion.
The Obama-era methane regulation has been in the administration’s crosshairs since Trump’s earliest days in office. In March 2017, Scott Pruitt, then the EPA administrator, tried to suspend the regulation while the agency considered an alternative, but a federal appeals court ruled the move unlawful.
Erik Milito, a vice president at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing the oil and gas industry, praised the new rule, saying, “We think it’s a smarter way of targeting methane emissions.”
But several of the biggest oil and gas companies have called on the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on methane, not loosen them. It was smaller companies that had sought the weakening of the rules, arguing to the Trump administration that requiring them to perform leak inspections was too costly.
Larger energy companies have invested millions of dollars to promote natural gas as a cleaner option than coal in the nation’s power plants because natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide when burned. They fear that unrestricted leaks of methane could undermine that marketing message, hurting demand.
Exxon wrote to the EPA last year urging the agency to maintain core elements of the Obama- era policy. Earlier this year Gretchen Watkins, the U. S. chairwoman for Shell, said the EPA should impose rules “that will both regulate existing methane emissions but also future methane emissions.”
Susan Dio, the chairwoman and president of BP America, wrote an oped article in March saying that regulating methane is the “right thing to do for the planet” and for the natural gas industry. “To maximize the climate benefits of gas — and meet the dual challenge of producing more energy with fewer emissions — we need to address its Achilles’ heel and eliminate methane emissions,” she wrote.