Key Facts About the New EPA Plan to Reverse the Obama-era Methane Leaks Rule

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Byย Dana Nuccitelli. Originally posted on Yale Climate Connections.

President Trumpโ€™s EPA is moving to roll back 2016 Obama administration methane leak regulations for key parts of the oil and gas industry, another example of what seems an across-the-board repudiation of Obama-era environmental and climate change initiatives. The new proposal, if made final, is certain to face legal challenges, with its ultimate fate perhaps being decided only by the administration in office inย 2021.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in late August signed and later announcedย a proposed ruleย that would significantly weaken the methane leak reporting regulations. The proposed approach generally would allow transmission and storage sectors of the industry to self-regulate and self-report leaks of the highly-potent greenhouseย gas.

Inย a prepared statement, Wheeler said โ€œmethane is valuable, and the industry has an incentive to minimize leaks and maximize its use.โ€ He said that since 1990, โ€œmethane emissions across the natural gas industry have fallen by nearly 15 percent,โ€ and that the new EPA approach โ€œshould not stifle this innovation and progress.โ€ Separate rules on volatile organic chemicals โ€œalso reduce methane,โ€ making the existing rule โ€œredundant,โ€ Wheelerย argued.

Some large oil and gas companies, including BP, Exxon, and Shell, had voiced opposition to the new rulesย rollback.

But smaller companies and the industryโ€™s principal trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, with more than 620 oil and gas company members, had pushed for weakening the methane regulations. They argue that mandated leak inspections are too costly and could make operation of small, often-leaky wells uneconomical. Wheeler appeared persuaded by these arguments,ย announcingย that the new plan โ€œremoves unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industryโ€ and will save fossil fuel companies around $100 million over the next sixย years.

The larger oil and gas companies appear to have opposed the new EPA move at least in part because their natural gas interests benefit from being seen as a climate-friendly alternative to coal, and a โ€œbridge fuelโ€ for the transition from coal to renewableย energy.

But some scientific research has suggested that methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure such as fracking can erase much of its claimed climate benefits. For instance, authors of aย 2018 studyย published in Science found that the amount of methane resulting from leaks exceeds by 60 percentย the estimates made by EPA. โ€œConsiderable amounts of the greenhouse gas methane leak from the U.S. oil and natural gas supply chain,โ€ the authors of that study wrote. They said the difference between EPAโ€™s estimates and their own are the result of โ€œcurrent inventory methods [that] miss emissions that occur during abnormal operatingย conditions.โ€

Methane and CO2ย Comparisons

Carbon dioxide exceeds by a factor of more than 200 times the levels of methane in Earthโ€™s atmosphere, but methane is a much more potent greenhouseย gas.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013ย estimatedย that the greenhouse effect from methane is 34 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, and 86 times stronger over a 20-year period. Its potency decreases over time because methane is a relatively short-lived greenhouse gas, mostly breaking down under chemical reactions after about 12 years, whereas carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere forย centuries.

However, aย 2017 studyย noted that most of the heat trapped by methane and other greenhouse gases is absorbed by the oceans and transported through Earthโ€™s climate system for hundreds of years. As a result, their effects on climate impacts like sea-level rise last well beyond just the individual greenhouse gasesโ€™ atmosphericย lifetimes.

Overall, methane is responsible for about 16 percentย of human-caused global warming, carbon dioxide for 65ย percent.

Methane levels in the atmosphereย had flattened out between the years 2000 and 2006 but have risen sharply since then. Scientists have struggled to determine the source of this rise โ€” could it be from agriculture (e.g. cattle burps),ย tropical wetlands, and/or fossilย fuels?

Some previous studies have suggested agriculture could be the primary source, but anย August 2019 studyย in Biogeosciences concluded, โ€œshale-gas production in North America over the past decade may have contributed more than half of all of the increased [methane] emissions from fossil fuels globally and approximately one-third of the total increased emissions from all sources globally over the past decade โ€ฆ the commercialization of shale gas and oil in the 21st century has dramatically increased global methaneย emissions.โ€

Shale gas production has boomed in the U.S. in recent years as a result of a rapid expansion of fracking, lending weight to this conclusion. And the industry is poised to continue expanding โ€” aย recent reportย from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch found more than 700 fracked gas infrastructure projects recently built or proposed for development in the U.S.

With the worldย struggling to meet the Paris climate goals, and Americaโ€™s policies and commitments in particular described by the Germany-based international scientific group Climate Action Tracker as โ€œcritically insufficient,โ€ the EPA methane regulations had been seen by some proponents as a way for the U.S. to significantly curb its global warming contribution. Instead, the Trump EPA has decided to relax those rules along withย 83 other environmental regulations, according to a tally compiled and reported by The New Yorkย Times.

The EPA methane rule, if itโ€™s made final and promulgated after a 60-day commentย period, is certain to be challenged in court. Both the Natural Resources Defense Council and California Attorney General Xavier Becerraย threatened to sueย if the rule moves forward as proposed. A final rule may not go into effect until after the next 2020 presidential election, so its actual fate may lie with the next administration, whether a second Trump administration or that of a Democraticย successor.

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