Mother Jones reports:

Last week, less than a month after rolling back power plant pollution standards, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin addressed an audience of oil and gas executives at the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting in Santa Fe. The environmental agency was “within days,” he told them, of releasing the draft reconsideration of a major Biden-era oil and gas methane rule. The new proposal would weaken regulations on oil and gas operators to allow for additional leaking, venting, and flaring—a move that could significantly raise emissions of the greenhouse gas super-pollutant.

Methane has 80 times more heat-trapping potential than carbon dioxide over a 20-year life span, and some scientists and policy experts say reducing the gas could help pull “the emergency brake” for climate change. The oil and gas sector is one of the largest sources of methane emissions in the United States and is responsible for one-third of global methane emissions. Previous regulations attempted to rein in those emissions, as well as other harmful air pollution emitted by oil and natural gas operations.

Zeldin said the new EPA measure would save taxpayers $45 billion. “Americans must be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter and fill up their car and drive to work,” Zeldin said in a press statement issued during the meeting. “They can’t do that when the people producing the energy are weighed down by unnecessary burdens. The Trump EPA is committed to fixing this so the US can reach its full energy potential.”

In line with advancing the Trump administration’s determination to “[unleash] American energy,” the revisions would significantly weaken pollution controls for older and leakier oil and gas wells. It would also rescind the agency’s Methane Super Emitter Program, a third-party monitoring system designed to report major leaks and blowouts on oil and gas wells, and ease regulations for other operation components that work in tandem to capture, destroy, or recover methane.

Some environmental advocates argue that the EPA’s proposed regulatory rollback reflects a coordinated industry wish list. “Lee Zeldin’s EPA is giving oil and gas corporations exactly what they’ve long wanted,” said Julia Kane, a researcher with oil and gas watchdog Fieldnotes, “a toothless methane standard they can use to pretend they’re well-regulated, all while they continue to knowingly leak and flare dangerous amounts of the heat-trapping gas.” [Continue reading…]