Out-of-Control EPA Tries to Regulate All O&G Via Methane Regs November 15, 2022 Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel, Industrywide Issues, Regulation + Bookmark The Bidenistas waited until the UN’s 2022 Climate
November 15, 2022 Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel, Industrywide Issues, Regulation
Out-of-Control EPA Tries to Regulate All O&G Via Methane Regs
November 15, 2022 Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel, Industrywide Issues, Regulation
The Bidenistas waited until the UN’s 2022 Climate Change Conference, called COP 27, was up and running (in Egypt) before *going to Egypt* to announce their latest attack on the oil and natural gas industry. At COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is “strengthening its proposed standards to cut methane and other harmful air pollution” in the oil and gas industry. In other words, yet another massive power grab in attempting to regulate oil and gas at the federal level, instead allowing O&G to be regulated at the Constitutionally-designated state level.
The EPA began the process of trying to take over O&G regulations last year when it announced a new methane regulation framework (see EPA Launches Massive Power Grab, Targets O&G Methane Emissions). The Biden EPA claims by wresting control of oil and gas regulations from the states and concentrating power in the federal government, the feds will be able to save the planet from man-made global warming. Here’s the thing: fugitive (escaping) methane from all fossil fuels, which includes oil and gas activity as a subset, is the third-largest source of methane emissions. EPA is ignoring the two largest sources–which emit FAR MORE methane than O&G.
In Egypt, the Bidenistas announced their plans to flesh out what they began last year. The new “flesh on the bones” plan essentially eliminates all flaring and forces all producers (including old conventional wells) to sniff for methane leaks using expensive equipment. It is only the beginning. Once EPA controls the regulation of methane at the federal level, they can and will (in the near future) squeeze so hard it basically shuts down oil and gas production. It’s coming. That’s the plan. We’re not exaggerating.
Biden didn’t even have the decency to announce these onerous new changes in his own country. He did it in Egypt. What a putz.
From the official Democrat news agency, Associated Press:
The Biden administration on Friday ramped up efforts to reduce methane emissions, targeting the oil and gas industry for its role in global warming even as President Joe Biden has pressed energy producers for more oil drilling to lower prices at the gasoline pump.
Biden announced a supplemental rule cracking down on emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming and packs a stronger short-term punch than even carbon dioxide — as he attended a global climate conference in Egypt.
“We’re racing forward to do our part to avert the ‘climate hell’ the U.N. secretary general so passionately warned about,? Biden said, referring to comments this week by United Nations leader António Guterres.
The new methane rule will help ensure that the United States meets a goal set by more than 100 nations to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels, Biden said.
“I can … say with confidence, the United States of America will meet our emissions targets by 2030,? he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency rule follows up on a proposal Biden announced last year at a United Nations climate summit in Scotland. The 2021 rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells as previous EPA regulations have done.
The new rule goes a step further and takes aim at all drilling sites, including smaller wells that now will be required to find and plug methane leaks. Small wells currently are subject to an initial inspection but are rarely checked again for leaks.
The proposal also requires operators to respond to credible third-party reports of high-volume methane leaks.
The Biden administration will embark on “a relentless focus to root out emissions wherever we can find them,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Friday.
Oil and gas production is the nation’s largest industrial source of methane, the primary component of natural gas, and is a key target for the Biden administration as it seeks to combat climate change.
“We must lead by example when it comes to tackling methane pollution — one of the biggest drivers of climate change,? said EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who also is in Egypt for the climate talks. The new, stronger standards “will enable innovative new technology to flourish while protecting people and the planet,” he said.
“Our regulatory approach is very aggressive from a timing standpoint and a stringency standpoint,” Regan said at a briefing in Egypt. The old and new rules should be able to prevent more than 80% of the energy waste, about 36 million tons (32.6 million metric tonnes) of carbon emissions, he said.
Leakage from wells and pipelines is why former Vice President Al Gore and others call natural gas “a bridge to nowhere.” In an interview with The Associated Press, Gore said: “When you work the math, a leakage of 2 to 3% of the methane completely negates the climate advantage of methane gas. And, tragically, the wildcatters that do most of the hydrological fracturing do not pay attention to the methane leakage. You have leakage in the LNG (liquefied natural gas) process, you have leakage in pipelines, you have leakage in the use.”
The supplemental rule comes as Biden has accused oil companies of “war profiteering” and raised the possibility of imposing a windfall tax on energy companies if they don’t boost domestic production.
Biden has repeatedly criticized major oil companies for making
record-setting profits in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine while refusing to help lower prices at the pump for the American people. The Democratic president suggested last week that he will look to Congress to impose tax penalties on oil companies if they don’t invest some of their record-breaking profits to lower costs for American consumers.
Besides the EPA rule, the climate and health law approved by Congress in August includes a methane emissions reduction program that would impose a fee on energy producers that exceed a certain level of methane emissions. The fee, set to rise to $1,500 per metric ton of methane, marks the first time the federal government has directly imposed a fee, or tax, on greenhouse gas emissions.
The law allows exemptions for companies that comply with the EPA’s standards or fall below a certain emissions threshold. It also includes $1.5 billon in grants and other spending to help operators and local communities improve monitoring and data collection for methane emissions, with the goal of finding and repairing natural gas leaks.
Multiple studies have found that smaller wells produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half the methane emissions from well sites.
“We can’t leave half of the problem on the table and expect to get the reductions that we need to get and protect local communities from pollution,” said Jon Goldstein, senior director of regulatory affairs for oil and gas at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The draft rule is “a welcome sign that reducing methane emissions is a top priority for EPA,? said Darin Schroeder, an associate attorney at Clean Air Task Force.
The oil industry has generally welcomed direct federal regulation of methane emissions, preferring a single national standard to a hodgepodge of state rules.
Even so, oil and gas companies have asked the EPA to exempt hundreds of thousands of the nation’s smallest wells from the upcoming methane rules.
The American Exploration and Production Council, which represents the largest independent oil and gas companies in the U.S., said it appreciates changes made by EPA as the rule was developed but still has concerns to make it truly workable. “We will continue to work with EPA on meaningful solutions,? said Anne Bradbury, the group’s CEO.
The EPA will accept public comments through Feb. 13 and issue a final rule in 2023. (1)
E&E News writes about the “super-emitter” provision in the new regs, which is nothing more than encouraging everyone to rat on everyone else. A nation of ratfinks. What a great concept. Sounds like the Soviet Union or North Korea.
A new “super-emitter” provision in EPA’s proposal to regulate methane emissions would empower third parties to identify large leaks of the greenhouse gas, putting more pressure on oil and gas operators to quickly fix any problems.
EPA released the updated proposal on Friday, coinciding with President Joe Biden’s remarks at the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt (Climatewire, Nov. 11). The new proposal, which updates the methane draft rule unveiled at last year’s U.N. talks, includes a program that would require oil and gas operators to respond to large-emission events identified by EPA-approved third parties.
The result would be a wider circle of leak investigators — and potentially a rise in communities partnering with nonprofits and others to investigate nearby oil and gas infrastructure.
“There are a lot of possibilities for this super-emitter program to kind of share the burden and really make sure that when we see a big leak, we can get it stopped as quickly as possible,” said Darin Schroeder, an attorney with the Clean Air Task Force, in an interview. “I think that’s really important for the people that live near those leaks.”
The oil and gas industry is one of the largest sources of methane, which traps roughly 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. A handful of environmental groups already use optical gas imaging cameras — the same equipment EPA uses — to document sources of methane emissions in oil fields across the country.
But when those groups find a leak, their complaints often go to state regulators, who are then in charge of enforcing local regulations on pollution. Sometimes state agencies take action, and sometimes they don’t.
Under EPA’s draft rule, approved third parties would make such complaints directly to owners and operators, triggering federal requirements.
Companies would be required to analyze a leak within five days of being notified, according to an EPA fact sheet. In cases where a leak was caused by a malfunction, the operators would have 10 days to fix the problem. If mitigation would take longer than that, operators would have to develop a corrective action plan and schedule.
The oil and gas industry has complained in the past about third-party findings of leaks, asserting that they sometimes contain errors. Under the EPA proposal, companies could ask the EPA to revoke a third party’s certification, “if they can demonstrate that repeated notifications contained verifiable errors.”
Asked about EPA’s proposed super-emitter response program, the American Petroleum Institute declined to comment. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said support would depend on how the program is implemented.
“What’s happened in the past is that conclusions are drawn that a facility is a ‘super emitter’ when in reality what’s detected is a maintenance event with a short-duration release that’s not indicative of continual operations,” Sgamma said Friday in an emailed statement.
Harnessing community power
Andrew Klooster, a field advocate for the environmental group Earthworks, said a recent case in Colorado shows how the EPA would help local communities. Almost two years ago, he pulled up to an aging oilfield outside Fort Collins, Colo., and was hit with a “pretty powerful, knock-you-off-your-feet odor.”
Klooster was there to document what surrounding homeowners already suspected: The tank battery was leaking a mix of methane and other pollutants that were wafting into the surrounding community. Armed with a $100,000 gas imaging camera, he captured the plume of methane and other gases that are invisible to the naked eye.
But it took more than 18 months for before the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment ordered the tank battery to shut down.
The state has some of the strictest oil and gas regulations in the country, but shutting down the battery only happened after a concerted campaign by local homeowners, Earthworks, the city of Fort Collins and Larimer County. State inspectors eventually discovered that the tanks were not just leaking methane, but also hydrogen sulfide, a potentially deadly gas.
EPA’s proposal aims to both make such reporting more common — and the response much quicker. In releasing the new draft rule, the agency pointed to comments from groups affected by oil and gas pollution, including communities that expressed environmental justice concerns.
The super-emitter response program will “create opportunities for communities to partner with entities engaged in remote sensing to monitor nearby sources of emissions,” the agency said.
While the oil and gas industry hasn’t come out for or against the proposal, some companies have expressed openness to third-party data. In a January 2022 letter to EPA, BP PLC gave qualified support to such data.
“In principle, and to the extent third-party organizations are able to contribute data that are legally collected and scientifically sound, BP believes that harnessing the power of this information can help to identify and solve problems in a transparent, efficient, and responsible way,” the company wrote.
In Egypt, Biden focused on the new proposal’s standards for super-emitters.
Such strong regulatory action to strengthen methane standards, he said, will “make sure it’s not released into communities, impacting our public health.” (2)
How do we know these newly fleshed-out regulations are bad? By looking at the environmental zealots that support them, including those from our own region:
Local environmental groups cheered the Biden administration’s proposed tougher regulations on methane emissions in the oil and gas industry, while Pennsylvania’s biggest shale group said it would work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The stricter rules target the emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is also natural gas itself, as well as other air pollutants from new and existing oil and gas wells and pads. The goal is to cut back methane emissions into the air by 87% from the 2005 baseline. The proposed rules also include a so-called super-emitter response program that would obligate producers to alleviate high-volume methane leaks reported by third parties.
“For too long, methane pollution from the oil and gas industry has jeopardized public health and driven climate change,” said Ellie Kerns, climate associate at the PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center.
Kerns said the proposal would help cut down on methane emissions.
“Climate change will threaten Pennsylvania indefinitely until we rein in methane, a potent global warming pollutant,” she said.
Other groups, including the Moms Clean Air Force and Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania, also supported the proposed rule. So did Clean Air Council.
“My family and neighbors need this federal rule to combat the negative health impacts, including cancer risks that have increased during the rapid, unregulated expansion of gas drilling in the last decade,” said Lois Bower-Bjornson, southwestern Pennsylvania field organizer at the Clean Air Council.
The industry’s leading organization said it looked forward to working with the EPA on what it called a workable and common-sense final rule.
“Natural gas is the very product our members produce and transport, and we have every environmental and economic incentive to ensure the product safely and efficiency reaches market,” Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Callahan said in a statement. “This is America’s largest natural gas producing basin and it has the lowest methane intensity because companies here are monitoring and taking actions to minimize unwanted leaks.”
Individual companies didn’t respond to a request for comment although they have been moving, over the past several years, toward carbon neutral and net-zero goals and targeting greenhouse gas emissions and, increasingly methane leaks. That commitment has jumped in recent years with the rise of methane reduction programs and certification through Project Canary and MiQ, among others. (3)
Our main point is this: The federal government, under the U.S. Constitution, has NO RIGHT to regulate oil and gas in the individual states. NO RIGHT. And yet we are just rolling over and ceding that right–giving it up without a fight. We don’t even recognize this country anymore.
Our further point is that EPA is ignoring two other sources of fugitive methane that are far bigger. In fact, the #1 source of fugitive methane emissions (40% of all such emissions) is…Mom Earth herself! That’s right. Wetlands, termites, the oceans, wild animals, etc. (under the umbrella term “Natural”) all contribute about 40% of all fugitive methane emissions. The #2 source is man-influenced–agriculture (24% of all fugitive methane emissions). The #3 source is from the fossil fuel sector, which includes oil, gas, and coal (21%).
From the UN Global Methane Assessment of 2021:
Here is a more detailed listing of sources of fugitive methane from the same report:
As you can see in the chart above, total natural sources of fugitive methane and total man-caused sources are almost equal. Which points out the utter folly of the EPA attempting to control emissions for a small subset of man-caused emissions like the oil and gas sector. Even if the EPA (and all of the world’s regulatory authorities) could eliminate ALL human-caused methane emissions (they can’t, we’d all be dead), the earth itself will still be belching out methane like a furnace. FUGITIVE METHANE IS NATURAL!
Do you now understand how this issue is being used by the left as a means of controlling you? They use scare tactics announcing the end of the world, a “living hell” if the government doesn’t deny you the right to choose your own energy sources. It’s a complete sham, a farce, a lie.
Here’s the EPA announcement from Friday about its sweeping (and illegal) takeover of O&G regulation via methane:
…
(1) Associated Press (Nov 11, 2022) – Biden tightens methane emissions rule amid push for more oil
(2) E&E News – EnergyWire (Nov 14, 2022) – How EPA’s draft methane rule targets ‘super-emitters’
(3) Pittsburgh (PA) Business Times (Nov 14, 2022) – Environmental groups cheer tighter methane emission rules