The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled plans for preventing methane leaks from oil and gas wells at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December. President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, also requires oil and gas companies to pay the first-ever federal fee for each metric ton of methane they emit.
“This final rule, which updates 40-year-old regulations, furthers the Biden-Harris administration’s goals to prevent [methane] waste, protect our environment and ensure a fair return to American taxpayers,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
Wednesday’s rule seeks to prevent accidental and negligent leaks of methane — the main component of natural gas — from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure. It also aims to discourage venting and flaring — the practices of intentionally releasing methane into the atmosphere, rather than building equipment to capture it.
These practices have become prevalent on public and tribal lands across the country, federal data shows. Between 2010 and 2020, companies reported venting and flaring an average of about 44.2 billion cubic feet of gas per year — enough to meet the energy needs of roughly 675,000 homes, according to the Interior Department.
Some fossil fuel companies argue that they need to vent or flare gas because they lack pipelines to deliver the fuel to market. Environmentalists counter that the practices are wasteful and harmful to taxpayers, because companies pay royalties for the oil and gas they sell, but they make no payments for the vented or flared methane.
By setting a ceiling on how much gas companies can vent and flare without paying royalties, the new rule is expected to generate more than $50 million in additional payments to the federal government each year, according to the Interior Department. It will also conserve billions of cubic feet of gas that might otherwise have been vented, flared or leaked, the agency said.
“The BLM methane rule is important for making sure that we are not wasting publicly owned resources, and that if companies flare or vent methane that belongs to taxpayers, they pay for it,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, an advocacy group. “That just makes sense from both a climate standpoint and a taxpayer standpoint.”
Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement that “taking action to limit methane waste on public lands offers a win-win-win for taxpayers, producers and communities harmed by this waste and associated pollution.”
The oil and gas industry has said it supports well-designed federal methane regulations, and it is taking steps to curb its methane output. But in public comments, a coalition of fossil fuel industry groups raised concerns that the BLM’s proposed rule was duplicative of other requirements from the EPA and states.
Holly Hopkins, vice president of upstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement Wednesday that she was still reviewing the final rule. But in general, she warned that “overlapping regulations and lack of coordination between policymakers could hinder progress, create unnecessary barriers to development on federal lands and result in regulatory incoherence.”
The Obama administration first tried to curb methane waste on public lands in 2016, unveiling a rule that required companies to capture leaked gas. But the Trump administration eased these requirements in 2018, saying they were stifling domestic energy production.
A federal court struck down the Obama-era requirements in 2020, ruling that the BLM had overstepped its authority. A different federal court tossed out the Trump-era rule, too, saying it went against the agency’s mandate to ensure safe and responsible drilling on public lands.
Continuing the regulatory whiplash, Donald Trump would probably overturn the Biden rule if he is elected to a second term, said William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the BLM during the Trump administration.
The Biden rule will hamper fossil fuel production and will be…
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