Trump administration scraps limits on methane leaks at oil and gas sites
Last edited Thu Aug 13, 2020, 06:12 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Washington Post
The Obama-era regulations overturned by Trump restricted the potent greenhouse gas.
The Trump administration is scrapping limits on methane leaks, allowing oil and gas companies to decide how much of the potent greenhouse gas can escape into the atmosphere from wells, pipelines and storage tanks.
The new rules, to be issued by the Office of Management and Budget later today, effectively rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate methane, the largest component of natural gas. Although it dissipates faster than carbon dioxide, methane is estimated to be at least 25 times and as much as 80 times more potent in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.
The administration said methane would now be regulated under the Clean Air Act like other volatile compounds, but the rules governing those smog-forming compounds are comparatively weak.
EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler was set to announce the new rules in Pittsburgh, in a battleground state that has the most extensive shale gas resources in the country.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/08/13/trump-administration-scrap-limits-methane-leaks-oil-gas-sites/
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