The Environmental Protection Agency announced two piecemeal actions on Thursday to reduce costs and regulatory “burdens” imposed on the oil and natural gas industry by the Obama administration’s methane emission rules.
The EPA said the two actions would reduce “significant and immediate compliance concerns” for the industry, while reducing “burdens” on state environmental agencies and saving millions of dollars in compliance costs.
Bill Wehrum, the EPA’s recently appointed air pollution chief, described the actions as the first steps in addressing the broader methane regulations imposed by the Obama administration on new wells.
He anticipates that the agency will take future actions to dismantle the methane regulations, including addressing the question of whether emissions from oil wells should be regulated.
“The technical amendments to the 2016 oil and gas [new source rule] are meant to alleviate targeted regulatory compliance issues faced by affected sources,” Wehrum said. “While this action addresses an immediate need, it does not deter the ongoing work at the agency to assess the 2016 rule as a whole, including whether it is prudent or necessary to directly regulate methane.”
The first of the two actions taken Thursday includes two amendments to the fugitive emissions requirements under the rule for oil and natural gas wells.
The first amendment updates a requirement that all leaking components of a well be repaired during unplanned or emergency shutdowns. The second amendment covers the emissions monitoring surveys that drillers are required to perform on Alaska’s North Slope, the heart of U.S. oil operations in the Arctic.
These two amendments were made final in Thursday’s announced actions.
In addition, the agency proposed to withdraw the Obama EPA’s “control techniques guidelines” for drillers, which Wehrum noted would save the industry between $14 million and $16 million in costs from 2021-2035.
The guidelines are meant to help control smog-forming volatile organic compound emissions from existing oil and natural gas equipment in regions where smog has been a long-standing problem.
