Trump administration to reverse methane rules for energy industry

Daniel de Vries

The Trump administration announced a plan Thursday to remove federal requirements for the oil and gas industry to control emissions of methane, the primary component of natural gas and a potent contributor to climate change. The move continues Trump’s reversal of climate policies enacted by the Obama administration, eliminating even the most minimal measures to address the unfolding climate catastrophe.

The proposal, which may be finalized as early as next year, aims to remove methane leakage limits for oil and natural gas drilling, processing, pipeline transportation and storage.

Releases of methane directly to the atmosphere already occur at an alarmingly high rate in the energy industry. According to a comprehensive study published in the journal Science last year, this leakage has roughly the same near-term impact on climate change as all the coal-fired power plants in the country.

On a global scale, methane is responsible for about 25 percent of the warming experienced today, second only to carbon dioxide. It has a shorter longevity in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but when evaluated over 20 years, is 86 times more potent pound for pound.

Controlling methane pollution is crucial to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, especially in the near term. Recent climate-related developments, from the fires raging in the Amazon to the hottest ever monthly temperatures recorded in July, underscore the urgency.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed not only scrapping controls on methane leaks—perhaps the easiest and least costly of all measures—but also reinterpreting the Clean Air Act to limit the agency’s authority to regulate these emissions by transmission and storage facilities. The proposal argues that a lengthy administrative process to declare that emissions from these operations endanger public health and the environment is needed before any regulations can be issued—potentially slowing any future administration’s attempts to reinstate rules.

The rollback plan drew mixed reaction from the oil and gas industry, with major transnationals Shell, BP and ExxonMobil distancing themselves from it or coming out against EPA’s proposal. These companies have been promoting natural gas in the US and around the world as a “bridge fuel” to replace coal and reduce greenhouse gases in the near term, while at some unspecified point in the future, natural gas itself would be replaced by renewables.

Now, with the government of the world’s largest natural gas producer removing controls on methane leaks, this marketing scheme is seriously undermined.

The pending reversal of the methane leakage rule also sparked concern over the level of regulatory uncertainty, with legal challenges likely when the regulation is finalized. Even if the rollback is upheld in the courts, the rule may well be reopened by a future government facing demands for more aggressive controls. In the meantime, producers face a patchwork of differing state regulations.