Almost 60 Republican lawmakers want Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to get rid of new methane emissions standards that they believe are a “solution in search of a problem.”
Primarily written by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the letter from 57 House members calls the agency’s new rules overly burdensome for energy companies.
The Department of Interior is a major over-regulator and is causing a slowdown in entrepreneurship, the letter states. The methane rules would just be another example of federal red tape hurting businesses.
“This rule adds another layer of duplicative federal regulation on top of already existing federal and state regulations,” the letter says. “The rule oversteps [Bureau of Land Management’s] regulatory jurisdiction and completely fails to address crucial failures by the BLM to capture methane emissions through common sense methods.”
The regulations propose to limit the amount of natural gas that is vented and flared on federal and tribal lands. Venting and flaring is an industry practice in which natural gas is burned off, as a byproduct of oil drilling, due to safety concerns or because there is too much natural gas being produced and it can’t be transported safely.
The rule seeks to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions coming from natural gas production on federal and tribal lands, and methane is a potent, while short-lived, greenhouse gas. Many scientists blame the burning of the gases for driving manmade climate change.
The letter says that Interior has not addressed a solution to venting and flaring that would help both the environment and industry: Approving more pipelines to transport the gas.
“Unfortunately, these regulations fail to address BLM’s ongoing permitting delays for natural gas gathering line rights-of-way,” the letter states. “The best method to capture methane emissions from a well site is through the construction of natural gas gathering lines and pipelines.”
A right-of-way permit grants company land to use as a corridor for pipelines carrying natural gas from wells to distribution facilities.
The letter states that no bureau field offices approve a pipeline or a right-of-way permit in the 60 days set out in the bureau’s guidance. Instead, it can take as long as six months.
Bishop, McCarthy and the other lawmakers want Jewell to withdraw the regulation to increase job growth in the energy sector and to keep energy prices low for consumers. The rule would keep both from happening, they said.
“Rather than put all these benefits in jeopardy, the BLM should continue to work collaboratively to drive more innovative technologies that build upon existing methane emissions decreases, while also promulgating common sense reforms to address the ongoing delays that plague the current right-of-way permitting process,” the letter says.
