Trump has vowed to gut climate rules. Oil lobbyists have a plan ready.

Source: Washington Post

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Trump has vowed to gut climate rules. Oil lobbyists have a plan ready.
As companies fall short on methane emission reductions, a top trade group has crafted a road map for dismantling key Biden administration rules.

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Excess natural gas, which contains methane, is burned in a process called flaring at a well pad near Watford City, N.D., on Aug. 26, 2021. (Matthew Brown/AP)

By Evan Halper and Josh Dawsey
October 18, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

An influential oil and gas industry group whose members were aggressively pursued for campaign cash by Donald Trump has drafted detailed plans for dismantling landmark Biden administration climate rules after the presidential election, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The plans were drawn up by the American Exploration and Production Council, or AXPC, a group of 30 mostly independent oil and gas producers, including several major oil companies. They reveal a comprehensive industry effort to reverse climate initiatives advanced during nearly four years of Democratic leadership. At the same time, the documents contain confidential data showing that industry’s voluntary initiatives to cut emissions have fallen short.

The lobbying blueprint takes particular aim at a new tax on emissions of methane, a gas that the International Energy Agency (IEA) says is responsible for nearly a third of human-caused global warming. The documents show the methane emissions of nine of 19 AXPC member companies that responded to an internal survey are increasing — in many cases sharply.

The policy plans, contained in documents distributed to a wide group of company executives at AXPC board meetings in April and August, also call for a repeal of more than a half dozen executive orders that lie at the center of the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change. Taken together, the group’s goals amount to a monumental rollback of some of the most aggressive federal tools to cut emissions.

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By Evan Halper
Evan Halper is a business reporter for The Washington Post, covering the energy transition. His work focuses on the tensions between energy demands and decarbonizing the economy. He came to The Post from the Los Angeles Times, where he spent two decades, most recently covering domestic policy and presidential politics from its Washington bureau.follow on X @evanhalper

By Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.follow on X @jdawsey1

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/17/oil-industry-trump-climate-lobbying/