API Officialy Supports A Carbon Tax; Now Lobbying Tooth & Nail Against Methane Fee In Recon Bill

[hatrack]

The oil industry has launched an all-out pressure campaign to kill an attempt by Congressional Democrats to tax methane – an extremely powerful greenhouse gas – for the first time. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group, enlisted over 130 state-level chambers of commerce, oil lobbying outfits, and labor groups, and together they wrote a letter on September 7 to U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is considering the methane fee as part of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill.

This is despite top oil companies and their trade associations earlier this year claiming they were in favor of carbon pricing as their preferred policy choice to address climate change. In the same month as the industry made headlines for supporting carbon pricing, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) introduced a bill in March 2021, the Methane Emissions Reduction Act of 2021, which would impose a $1,800 per ton fee on methane emissions beginning in 2023, and rise by 2 percent per year above inflation going forward.

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Cutting methane could have an enormous impact. Eliminating 50 percent of methane from oil and gas operations could achieve the equivalent climate benefit of shuttering all of the coal plants in China, according to environmental group Clean Air Task Force. “Putting a price on methane pollution that discourages oil and gas companies from continuing their practice of virtually unfettered methane pollution is one of the most effective immediate steps we can take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Senator Whitehouse said in a statement in March. “We believe our new bill would put a stop to virtually all methane emissions from the industry.” But the oil industry is scrambling to prevent such a scenario from playing out.

In its letter last week to the Senate committee weighing a methane fee as part of the budget bill, API called the proposal a “punitive fee” that could “jeopardize affordable and reliable energy with likely little reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” But research suggests the penalty may not be steep enough. “We’re effectively subsidizing fossil fuels relative to renewables by picking up the tab for the climate change they cause, for the air pollution they cause, and so on,” Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth Science at Duke University, and contributor to the UN’s Global Methane Assessment, told DeSmog in an email. He said each ton of methane causes roughly $4,300 in damages.

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https://www.desmog.com/2021/09/14/oil-industry-api-lobbying-against-proposed-methane-fee/

[mopinko]

1. they could be capturing and selling most of it. but no.

glad we are making them invest in some extra revenue.
assholes.