Methane Emissions

Obama Is Planning New Rules on Oil and Gas Industry’s Methane Emissions

By CORAL DAVENPORT

In President Obama’s latest move using executive authority to tackle climate change, White House officials on Wednesday announced plans to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The administration’s goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 from the levels recorded in 2012.

The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016.

Environmental advocates have long urged the Obama administration to target methane emissions, and the rules would be the first to do so. Most of the planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution in the United States comes from carbon dioxide, which is produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas. 

Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.

“This is the biggest opportunity to curb climate change pollution that they haven’t already seized,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.

The oil and gas industry has pushed back against methane regulations, insisting that new rules could stymie a booming industry and that voluntary industrywide standards are sufficient to prevent methane leaks.

“We don’t need regulation to capture it, because we are incentivized to do it,” said Howard Feldman, director of regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute.

Methane is a major component of natural gas, and oil and gas companies say they are motivated to prevent leaks of the product that they sell.

“We want to bring it to market,” Mr. Feldman said. “We don’t think additional regulation is needed at this time.”

Both sides said that the stringency, cost and effectiveness of the rules would be revealed this summer.

The new rules are part of Mr. Obama’s push for regulations designed to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases from different sectors of the economy. The White House says it can make the moves under the Clean Air Act, rather than by trying to push legislation through the Republican-controlled congress.

In November, in a joint agreement with President Xi Jinping of China, Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would cut greenhouse gas pollution by up to 28 percent by 2025. That deal came on top of a 2009 United Nations accord in which Mr. Obama pledged to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from their 2005 levels.

Neither of those goals can be achieved without new climate change legislation or a suite of new regulations aimed at slashing greenhouse gases from different sectors of the economy, according to most climate policy experts.

Mr. Obama issued rules in his first term to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from cars and trucks. Last year, he proposed regulations on carbon dioxide from power plants.

Methane emissions from oil and gas drilling and production and transmission systems are projected to increase because of the breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing technology that have led to an energy boom. A 2014 study published in the journal Science found that methane was leaking from oil and natural gas drilling sites and pipelines at rates 50 percent higher than previously thought.

Mr. Obama’s new regulations will be designed to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells, pipelines and valves — the entire fossil fuel drilling, production and transportation system.

Initially, they will apply only to new and modified oil and gas systems, but eventually, the E.P.A. is expected to issue regulations on existing systems.

The Interior Department is also expected to propose standards this spring that would reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells on federal land.

The methane announcement will coincide with a series of climate change moves from the administration this summer. The E.P.A. has said that it will also release final regulations on power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.