HOUSTON — Oil and gas giant Shell urged the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday to keep Obama-era regulations targeting methane leaks from oil and gas drillers and fracking operations, instead of weakening them as planned.
Gretchen Watkins, the U.S. president of Shell, said the company is breaking from a decadeslong tradition of not criticizing U.S. government policies by calling on EPA to regulate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas.
“At Shell, we generally don’t make a habit of trying to tell governments how to do their jobs,” Watkins said during an appearance at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit energy industry conference in Houston. “I’m breaking that rule today to request that the EPA continue the direct regulation of methane emissions. The U.S. should not strip methane regulations out of the Clean Air Act. We need to do more.”
Large oil and gas companies have acknowledged the industry must better contain methane leaks to stay relevant in the future as cleaner renewables become a more prominent energy source. But they had generally preferred voluntary action rather than government regulation. Methane is more potent than carbon dioxide because it traps more heat, although its greenhouse gas emissions are relatively short-lived in the atmosphere.
The EPA proposed in September to weaken a 2016 Obama administration rule by allowing companies to reduce how often they have to inspect and fix wells and pipelines that leak methane. The proposal would permit drillers to do inspections every year and give them 60 days to make repairs. It would also allow companies operating in states with weaker methane standards to follow those instead of federal rules.
Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of Environmental Defense Fund, which works with industry to contain methane leaks, said Shell’s criticism of the Trump administration EPA policy reflects what other companies say behind closed doors. He said he expected other companies to also urge EPA to maintain strong methane leak rules. Exxon has previously indicated privately to EPA it supports maintaining the Obama administration methane rule, but its position was less public than Shell’s.
“In the Washington bubble, there is the sense the Trump administration is doing the oil and gas industry a favor by rolling back every imaginable environmental and health regulation,” Brownstein told the Washington Examiner in an interview at CERAWeek. “What you are hearing from literally the world’s largest second oil and gas producer [Shell] is that in fact, regulation is important. It provides assurance that a product is going to be produced and delivered safely and with environmental integrity, and ultimately, that makes good business sense.”
