US Court Temporarily Halts Methane Rules Rollback
A three-judge federal panel has temporarily blocked a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) move aimed at reversing the stricter standards for methane emissions in the oil and gas sector passed by the administration of US president Barack Obama. The ruling will temporarily halt the rollback while the court deliberates on whether it can go ahead.
In their decision, the judges were responding to a lawsuit brought by environmental and Native American tribal groups as well as separate legal action brought by a coalition of 20 states and four municipalities opposing the weakening of standards.
The EPA’s new rules, issued in August would eliminate the requirement to regulate methane emissions from production, processing, transmission and storage of oil and gas as well as overturning standards regulating volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
If implemented, the agency’s changes would allow an additional 450,000 t of methane and 120,000 t of VOCs to be released into the atmosphere over a 10-year period. When weakening the standards, the administration of current president Donald Trump argued that specifically regulating methane emissions was redundant and that the regulations overlapped with those covering VOCs.
The federal environment agency, headed by business friendly hardliner Andrew Wheeler, asserts that the proposed changes would reduce regulatory burdens on industry, particularly small producers. But major oil companies have opposed the revision, noting that regulating methane is important for protecting the environment.
Natural gas and petroleum systems are the second largest source of methane emissions in the US, behind only agriculture.
The current EPA leadership’s views on methane emissions diverge substantially from the positions of the Obama administration, which in 2016 that found that while restricting VOCs also “incidentally” reduces methane emissions, a methane-specific standard would achieve meaningful GHG reductions and represent an important step toward mitigating their impact on climate change.
Author: Dede Willilams, Freelance Journalist
