[Source: Forbes] The Wall Street Journal reports the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to finalize new rules this week rescinding Obama-era regulations of methane gas emissions for oil-and-gas producers, as the Trump administration continues its systematic rollback of environmental regulations—which is reportedly speeding up ahead of November before a Democratic administration potentially takes over.
The proposed rule changes, which will be reportedly finalized this week after proposals were announced in 2018 and 2019, will apply to wells drilled since 2016 and “remove the largest pipelines, storage sites and other parts of the transmission system from EPA oversight of smog and greenhouse-gas emissions,” the Journal reports, rescinding requirements for energy producers to have systems to detect methane leaks and reducing the frequency for checks for leaks of other pollutants.
The regulations were put in place by former President Barack Obama as part of his broader efforts to tackle climate change.
The EPA reports that methane makes up approximately 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. but it is more potent, accounting approximately a quarter of man-made global warming.
The EPA will reportedly argue in the new rules that the Obama administration did not go through the proper process when it initially established the regulation, which the Journal notes would make it more difficult for a subsequent Democratic administration to reverse the rollback without a congressional mandate.
While small and midsize oil and gas producers favor rescinding the rules, the rule change is opposed by large energy giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, who say it will undermine their claims that their natural gas is a “cleaner” fossil fuel.
The New York Times reported in March that the Trump administration is on an “aggressive timeline” to roll back environmental regulations ahead of the November election, and further rollbacks to inspection requirements were reportedly dropped because they could potentially stretch out the process beyond the end of Trump’s term.
BIG NUMBER
100: The number of environmental regulations the Trump administration has rolled back or is trying to roll back as of July 15, according to the Times, including 68 completed rollbacks and 32 still in progress.
CHIEF CRITIC
Democrats and environmental activists have decried the proposed methane rule change since it was proposed, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer describing it in 2019 as a “dagger in the heart to preserve the planet.” “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,” David Doniger, senior strategic director of climate & clean energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental organization, said in 2019. “We simply cannot protect our children and grandchildren from climate catastrophe if EPA lets this industry off scot-free.”
KEY BACKGROUND
The Trump administration’s sustained push against environmental and climate change regulations has included high-profile moves like withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and rollbacks of vehicle emissions standards and regulations on wildlife, clean water and pesticides. President Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed climate change and committed to tearing down government regulations, touting in a July speech that his administration had accomplished “the most dramatic regulatory relief campaign in American history by far.” Those deregulation efforts have only ramped up amid the coronavirus pandemic: In addition to the agency’s reported push to ram through rollbacks ahead of November, the EPA also used the pandemic to further relax rules on power plants and other facilities, which allow facilities to monitor themselves—rather than being held accountable by the EPA—and remove the threat of fines for violating reporting requirements. The EPA’s actions during the pandemic have been widely criticized by environmental activists and former EPA officials, with Natural Resources Defense Council president Gina McCarthy telling the Times the relaxed rules gave companies “an open license to pollute.” “This brazen directive is nothing short of an abject abdication of the E.P.A. mission to protect our well being,” McCarthy, who led the EPA under Obama, told the Times.
Source: Forbes
August 10, 2020
