Trump Eliminates Major Methane Rule, Even as Leaks Are Worsening
Ms. Davenport has reported extensively on the Trump administrations regulatory rollbacks and dismissal of science. WASHINGTON The Trump administration formally weakened a major climate-change regulation on Thursday even as new research shows that far more of the potent greenhouse gas is seeping into the atmosphere than previously known. The rollback of the last major is a gift to many beleaguered oil and gas companies, which have seen profits collapse from the Covid-19 pandemic. But it comes as scientists say that the need to rein in methane leaks at fossil fuel wells nationwide has become far more urgent, and new studies indicate that the scale of methane pollution could be driving the planet toward a climate crisis faster than expected. Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced at an event in Pittsburgh on Thursday that he had completed the legal process of lifting the . He was speaking in a city at the heart of the nations natural-gas boom, and in a state that will be critical to winning this falls presidential election. E.P.A. has been working hard to fulfill President Trumps promise to cut burdensome and ineffective regulations for our domestic energy industry, he said. Regulatory burdens put into place by the Obama-Biden administration fell heavily on small and medium-sized energy businesses. The E.P.A. estimates that the rule changes will yield economic benefits of roughly $100 million a year through 2030, while leading to the release of about 850,000 tons of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere over the same period. Mr. Wheeler has justified the move by citing E.P.A. data showing that leaks from domestic oil and gas wells have remained steady over the past decade, even as oil and gas production boomed. However, numerous recent studies show the opposite: that methane emissions from drilling sites in the United States are far more extensive than the E.P.A.s official numbers. Overall, methane levels are in fact climbing steadily nationwide, according to the research, and have reached record highs globally in part because of leaks from fossil fuel production. Over the past few years there has been an explosion of new research on this, and the literature has coalesced 80 percent of papers show that methane from oil and gas leaks is two to three times higher than the E.P.A.s estimates, said Robert Howarth, an earth systems scientist at Cornell University, who last year published a study estimating that for about a third of the global increase in methane emissions over the past decade. Its crazy to roll back this rule, said Dr. Howarth. Twenty-five percent of the human-caused warming over the past 20 years is due to methane. Methane is going up. We need it to go down. Scientists say that the new data on soaring levels of methane means that, even if the worlds governments were somehow able to meet the targets of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement in which every nation agreed to lower their carbon dioxide pollution those achievements could be wiped out by the heat-trapping power of all the previously uncounted methane in the atmosphere. Already, the effectiveness of the Paris pact is imperiled, since Mr. Trump has withdrawn the United States from it. But environmentalists are hopeful that it could be restored if Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the presidential election this fall and the United States rejoins the agreement. The Paris Agreement was not taking into account the new increase in concentrations of methane, said Peter Raymond, an ecologist at Yale who co-authored a study published in July concluding that to record heights. Because methane is so powerful, this rise could offset a lot of the goals in the Paris agreement, he said. That could intensify many of the already baked-in near-term effects of a warming planet, such as extended droughts, deadly heat waves, stronger hurricanes and more devastating coastal flooding. Methane comes from various sources in addition to energy production, including animal digestive tracts and landfills, and it lingers in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, which comes from burning fossil fuels. But methane has 80 times the heat-trapping power in its first 20 years in the atmosphere. In recent years, the United States has cemented its place as one of the worlds biggest producers of oil and natural gas, a result of the fracking boom. However, a shortage of pipelines, combined with low prices for natural gas caused by the abundant supply, has meant theres less of a financial incentive to prevent leaks at drill sites. During his administration, President Barack Obama sought to use executive power to fight climate change with a suite of E.P.A. regulations that targeted three major sources of planet-warming pollution: carbon dioxide emissions from cars and from coal-burning power plants, and methane leaks from wells. At the time, the methane rule was seen as slightly less consequential than the other two rules, addressing cars and coal plants, in part because data showed significantly lower levels of methane in the atmosphere than of carbon dioxide. President Trump last year , and this . But now, as Mr. Trump rounds the final turn of his unraveling of Mr. Obamas climate legacy, scientists say that the importance of reining in methane has become far greater as the data has piled up indicating the scale of the leaks. According to the E.P.A.s , oil and gas wells emitted about 7 million tons of the heat-trapping gas annually between 2014 and 2018. The more recent studies, however, show the real number could be up to twice that. A found that the United States fossil fuel industry in 2017 emitted about 13 million tons of methane, the heat-trapping equivalent of a years worth of carbon dioxide pollution from all the nations coal-fired power plants. A also concluded that, in 2015, the United States oil and gas industry was leaking about 13 million tons of methane annually. In many oil and gas fields, were finding emissions to be considerably higher than what E.P.A. says they are, said Rob Jackson, an earth scientist at Stanford University who co-authored the July study. Methane emissions, he said, are not stabilizing. Theyre certainly not going down. Several scientists said that the key reason for the discrepancy between their studies and the E.P.A.s numbers was the thoroughness of the methods used to detect methane. To compile its annual inventory of methane emissions, the E.P.A. relies on a mix of self-reported data from companies themselves, and some on-site testing of drilling wells, pipes and other equipment. The scientists said such testing is not comprehensive. In recent years, academic scientists have started using new technologies and techniques to more completely account for methane leaks from drilling sites and pipelines, such as airplanes and vehicles fitted with atmospheric monitors and infrared cameras, as well as satellites. There are blind spots in the E.P.A.s testing they were missing all these sources of the leaks, said Ramon Alvarez, a lead author of the 2018 paper and an atmospheric chemist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group. An E.P.A. spokesman, James Hewitt, contested that assertion. E.P.A.s final methane rule is based on the most accurate and comprehensive accounting of our nations greenhouse gas emissions profile, which is performed by agency scientists based on data from a variety of sources, including the agencys greenhouse gas inventory, the greenhouse gas reporting program, new studies, and comments received on the proposal. We stand by our numbers and analysis, he said. The oil and gas industry itself is divided on the rollback of the methane regulations. Major companies like Exxon, Shell and BP had urged the Trump administration to keep the controls in place. Those companies have invested millions of dollars to promote natural gas as a cleaner option than coal in the nations power plants, because natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide when burned. They fear that unrestricted leaks of methane could undermine that marketing message and hurt demand. But smaller, independent oil companies supported the rule as a measure of relief when many are struggling to stay afloat. Those companies also point out that existing E.P.A. regulations still require them to regulate a separate but related category of gases, volatile organic compounds, and that those curbs have the side benefit of averting some methane emissions. This doesnt shift the regulatory burden were still going to have the same requirements for any new wells that are drilled in the future, said Lee Fuller, a vice president at the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents smaller oil and gas companies. But lifting the methane rule does avert a far more stringent future obligation on small oil and gas companies: If the rule had stayed in place, it eventually could have required companies to repair and retrofit thousands of older existing wells a far costlier undertaking. It is that requirement that terrifies small oil and gas drillers, said Mr. Fuller. To compel it to apply to existing wells is too expensive. It would drive them out of business. That may be true, said some scientists. But they also say that many of those small, older wells could be . This rule helps smaller oil and gas companies, the ones operating on the edge of financial viability, said Dr. Jackson, the Stanford scientist. But its also saying that science doesnt matter. Its prioritizing very short-term economic gain over longer-term economic health and human health. An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the organization where Lee Fuller is a vice president. It is the Independent Petroleum Association of America, not the Independent Petroleum Producers of America. How we handle corrections covers energy and environmental policy for the climate desk from Washington. She was part of the Times team that received Columbia Universitys John B. Oakes award for distinguished environmental journalism in 2018.