By Maxine Joselow, The Washington PostA flare burns natural gas at an oil well in Watford City, N.D., Aug. 26, 2021. fee for emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas, under a newEnvironmental Protection Agency officials announced the rule during the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, aiming to demonstrate U.S. leadership on global warming despite Donald Trump’s recent election.
The oil and gas industry ranks as the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States. The planet-warming gas can leak from wells, pipelines, storage tanks and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Large amounts of methane also escape from microbes - the tiny organisms that live in cows’ stomachs, agricultural fields and wetlands.
“API supports smart, effective methane regulations, yet this rule hampers our ability to meet the growing energy needs of American families and businesses and fails to advance meaningful emissions reduction,” Dustin Meyer, the institute’s senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, said in a statement Tuesday. “This is the wrong approach on methane policymaking, and we look forward to working with the incoming administration and new Congress to get this right.
The fee “is consistent with a core principle shared by all Americans - that polluters should be responsible for their fair share,” Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund , said in a statement Tuesday. The EDF recently helped design and launch a satellite to monitor the biggest methane leaks from the world’s oil and gas fields.
At the U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP29, the United States, China and Azerbaijan hosted an event Tuesday on reducing greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide. Speakers touted the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas by 30 percent by 2030.