GQP Moving To End Methane Fee, And To Make It Impossible To Do Anything Similar In The Future

Every day in oil and gas fields, companies lose gas to leaks and other issues—product they make no money from while venting a potent climate-damaging pollutant into the atmosphere. In November, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a first-of-its-kind fee on those methane emissions so more companies would plug their leaks. Now, House and Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to roll the rule back—using a mechanism that would prevent the EPA from advancing a similar rule ever again. “It’s about as wrong-headed as it can be, on every scale,” said Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor of law and senior fellow for climate policy in the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. “The rule requires you to plug leaks and stop wasting a valuable product.”

The methane fee, or Waste Emissions Charge, was part of the bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Congress passed in 2022. It applies only to large emitters of methane if their emissions exceed certain thresholds. Facilities in compliance with Clean Air Act standards for oil and gas operations are exempt from the charge. The IRA also included $1 billion in financial and technical assistance to help oil and gas producers monitor and reduce their methane emissions.

The fee was part of a broader set of regulations designed to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by nearly 80 percent. EPA estimated that the methane fee alone would reduce 1.2 million metric tons of methane through 2035—the equivalent of taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year. Methane is the biggest driver of climate change after carbon dioxide.

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The fee, according to an assessment by Energy Innovation, would create more than 70,000 jobs by encouraging investments in U.S. natural gas and would increase gross domestic product by more than $250 billion from 2023 to 2050. The group is a climate policy think tank with offices in Washington and San Francisco. By curbing the release of harmful pollutants, the fee would also save lives and prevent asthma attacks, Parenteau said. “What this says is Republicans don’t give a damn about protecting public health, about conserving important energy resources [and] about achieving energy independence and dominance,” Parenteau said. “If they really did, they would double down on the investments of the IRA, 80 percent of which are going to Republican districts.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06022025/gop-lawmakers-seek-to-roll-back-methane-fee/