Surprise! Oil & Gas Lobby Group Has Prefab Plan To Destroy Limits On O&G Emissions For Shitstain To Use If He Wins

Last edited Sun Oct 20, 2024, 11:22 AM - Edit history (1)

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 the past nearly four years of Democratic leadership. At the same time, the documents contain confidential data showing that industry’s voluntary initiatives to cut emissions from burning natural gas 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 relative amounts of natural gas, including methane, burned by nine of 19 AXPC member companies that responded to an internal survey are increasing — in many cases sharply. After this article was published online, AXPC said 11 other member companies had eliminated such emissions.

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While AXPC says it would pursue the rollbacks regardless of who wins the November election, almost all the policies it targets for elimination and rewrite were enacted by the Biden administration. Trump has called climate change a hoax and signaled a willingness to embrace the industry’s agenda by pledging favorable policies as he urged fossil fuel companies to donate heavily to his campaign. The agenda contrasts with the public pledges several AXPC members have made to their investors and customers to support aggressive regulation of methane and align with the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change, which aims to cut global emissions enough to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The AXPC action plan calls for killing a new fee on methane releases that many administration officials and environmental scholars say is crucial for pushing companies to cut flaring of methane, a process through which the gas is burned rather than trapped and used as energy. Mark Bednar, the group’s vice president of communications, said AXPC supports methane regulations but opposes the fee. “The data shows that the U.S. leads the world in emissions reduction because of the responsible production of oil and natural gas and we’re happy to engage any organization that wants to have a serious conversation on facts, science, and real solutions,” Bednar said in a statement.

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