Gas holes: Trump administration targets Obama methane rule GOP Congress failed to kill

When it comes to Obama-era environmental protections, congressional Republicans have been on a killing spree since capturing both chambers. For the first time since the election, one survived.

The Obama-era rule prevents oil and gas drillers from venting, burning or leaking methane on public and tribal lands. Over a 20-year period, methane—the main part of natural gas—can warm the planet more than 70 times as much as carbon dioxide.

Environmentalists celebrated a rare victory on May 10, when the U.S. Senate failed to repeal the rule. On the same day, the Interior Department vowed it would try to roll it back, though the process could take years.

Some have argued the natural gas can play a key role in the future of U.S. energy policy because it’s abundant and environmentally preferable to coal. However, methane’s high-warming capacity means even small leaks can create large climate problems.

In California, the Aliso Canyon leak near Los Angeles in 2015 released 97,000 tons of methane into the air, the single worst natural gas leak in U.S. history.

As of 2014, the oil and gas industry accounted for just 4.7 percent of California’s methane emissions, according to the California Air Resources Board. Most of the rest comes from farms and landfills. The total amount of those leaked emissions was up 11 percent since 2000. About 10 percent of those emissions happened on federal lands.

Data on California methane leaks is hard to come by. CARB only provides aggregated estimates. Scientists have studied specific regions over the last 10 years using atmospheric methods, but that makes it difficult to determine the exact cause and location of the leaks. For the first time this year, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are using aircraft to analyze methane emissions above California because of how scattered the data is.

CARB passed the nation’s toughest methane protections in March—the first major environmental regulations passed since President Donald Trump took office. They require curbing emissions up to 45 percent over the next nine years at oil and gas plants.

And yet, most of the methane damage is being done outside of California.

Tim O’Connor, director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s oil and gas program, said California should use its purchasing power to pressure other states, such as Texas, which annually releases 10 times the emissions that Aliso Canyon did once.

“California imports 90 percent of its natural gas from other states,” O’Connor said. “We are responsible for that. We’re using it.”

O’Connor said he believed the evidence was on environmental groups’ side regarding the methane rule, adding that efforts to revise it could take years, with proposals to change or remove federal regulations requiring public hearings.

But scientific evidence has mattered little to this president, who last week announced the United States would extract itself from the Paris Accord, an international climate treaty signed in 2015. Meanwhile, his administration continues its ongoing assault on the federal environmental regulations of the past.

In March, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency withdrew a request for more detailed information on methane emissions. The Bureau of Land Management told a federal court that month that a rule requiring companies to protect groundwater and report the chemicals used in fracking would be “revised or withdrawn.” Just last month, the EPA postponed a rule that would have required oil and gas companies to retrofit rigs to prevent leaks of methane and other gases.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has close ties to oil and natural gas. Back when he was the Oklahoma attorney general, he signed his name to industry-friendly letters to the EPA prepared by Devon Energy. In turn, the industry donated generously to Pruitt’s political interests.

The methane action was the first time since November that Republicans were unable to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal regulations.

The CRA is a little-known tool that allows the repeal of a prior administration’s regulations within 60 days of their enacting. It was only used once between 1996 and the start of the Trump administration.

Most importantly, CRA repeals prevent all future, similar regulations from being proposed. That’s why Sen. John McCain joined Sens. Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins, all Republicans, to vote against the methane rule repeal.

The time line for CRA repeals ended May 11. Fourteen regulations were eliminated prior to that deadline, including rules on:

Stream protection. This rule shielded streams from the impacts of coal mining, particularly from blasting mountaintops and underground mining, most often in Appalachian communities. Mountaintop “strip mining” razes trees from mountainsides while burning plant matter and detonating explosives for coal. Then, companies bulldoze the debris into stream beds, permanently blocking waterways. The EPA claimed the rule would have little impact on employment, but coal interests warned it would cost thousands of jobs. Coal development was also made easier on public lands.

Alaskan hunting. This rule banned certain methods for hunting wolves and bears inside federal wildlife refuges, including shooting from planes and helicopters, using live traps and killing cubs in dens. Repealers desired more state control.

Public lands. This rule gave the public a stronger voice in BLM decisions around logging, drilling, mining and other resource extraction industries on public lands.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra also sued the Interior Department in April for delaying a rule that would have closed a loophole allowing companies to pay lower royalties on fossil fuels mined from public lands.

Becerra said his office may challenge federal overreach on methane.

“We are going to challenge any violation of federal law where they’re trying to walk back what they’ve done, whether it’s on methane or on something as simple as energy efficient light bulbs,” Becerra said at a Sacramento Press Club event. “We think the facts and history are on our side. The question is if federal statutes are on our side given the discretion federal authorities have.”