Earth Protect Blog

Shared from the 8/14/2020 The Denver Post eEdition

ROLLBACK OF OBAMA RULE  By Coral Davenport © The New York Times Co.

WASHINGTON»The Trump administration formally weakened a major climate change regulation Thursday — effectively freeing oil and gas companies from the need to detect and repair methane leaks — even as new research shows that far more of the potent greenhouse gas is seeping into the atmosphere than previously known.

The rollback of the last major Obama-era climate rule is a gift to many beleaguered oil and gas companies, which have seen profits collapse from the pandemic. But it comes as scientists say that the need to rein in methane leaks at fossil fuel wells nationwide has become far more urgent, and new studies indicate that the scale of methane pollution could be driving the planet toward a climate crisis faster than expected.

Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which completed the legal process of lifting the methane regulation Thursday, has justified the move by citing EPA data showing that leaks from domestic oil and gas wells have remained steady over the past decade, even as oil and gas production boomed.

However, numerous recent studies show the opposite: that methane emissions from drilling sites in the United States are far more extensive than the EPA’s official numbers. Overall, methane levels are in fact climbing steadily nationwide, according to the research.

“Over the past few years there has been an explosion of new research on this, and the literature has coalesced — 80% of papers show that methane from oil and gas leaks is two to three times higher than the EPA’s estimates,” said Robert Howarth, an earth systems scientist at Cornell University, who last year published a study estimating that North American gas production was responsible for about a third of the global increase in methane emissions over the past decade.

The 2016 EPA methane regulations and similar rules that apply to oil and gas sites on federal lands were modeled in part after 2014 Colorado regulations. Colorado was first in the nation with state-level restrictions on methane emissions and is strengthening the rules as it implements a 2019 law overhauling oil and gas regulations.

“I strongly oppose an EPA rollback of the federal methane standards and I am prepared to join others to challenge it in court,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.

“The EPA’s proposal to reverse these standards is misguided and ignores the requests from the oil and gas industry to keep them in place.”

Some global oil and gas companies, including BP and Exxon Mobil and Shell, support the EPA’s direct regulation of methane. However, the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance, which represents about 300 companies working in the West, welcomed the EPA’s announcement Thursday and said the 2016 regulations violated the Clean Air Act.

“The Obama Administration, as with shortcuts in other areas, failed to follow the law at the behest of an environmental lobby seeking to impose its goals without being bound by the democratic process inherent in an open, public rulemaking process,” Kathleen Sgamma, WEA president, said in a statement.

But Peter Zalzal, a Colorado-based attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Obama administration followed the law and provided “exhaustive details” about the dangers of methane emissions and evidence that the oil and gas industry is the country’s largest source of the pollution.

“The EPA has an obligation under the Clean Air Act to adopt standards to reduce harmful pollution and protect people. This action does the opposite of that,” Zalzal said.

The Trump administration’s action underscores the importance of states, including Colorado, to continue to lead on reining in pollution, Zalzal added.

Denver Post reporter Judith Kohler contributed to this report.

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