EPA Flip Flops on Methane, Pushes Costly New Rule
Wednesday February 24, 2016
At the proceedings of the CERA Week conference today in Houston, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy completely flip-flopped on EPA’s position on the success of voluntary measures by oil and gas producers to reduce methane emissions.
As Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Harder tweeted,
.@GinaEPA on oil, gas voluntary efforts to cut emissions: “Those efforts have not been as successful as w/ other industry sectors” #CERAWeek
— Amy Harder (@AmyAHarder) February 24, 2016
EPA’s own data show otherwise – they show a dramatic reduction in methane emissions as shale gas production has soared:
Let’s also not forget that in EPA’s last Greenhouse Gas Inventory, released in April 2015, the agency specifically credited a 38 percent drop in methane emissions since 2005 to voluntary efforts by producers. From the inventory:
“The decrease in production emissions is due to increased use of plunger lifts for liquids unloading, from regulatory reductions such as reductions from hydraulically fractured gas well completions and workovers resulting from the 2012 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for oil and gas, and from a variety of voluntary reduction activities. The decrease in distribution emissions is due to a decrease in unprotected steel and cast iron pipelines and their replacement with plastic pipelines.” (emphasis added; ES-14)
EPA also noted methane emissions from crude oil production fell largely through voluntary efforts as well:
“Since 1990, CH4 emissions from production of crude oil have decreased by 21...