US oil and gas operators must immediately start complying with methane rules that President Joe Biden reinstated last night, according to guidance from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Oil and gas producers, processing plants and pipeline operators are expected to immediately comply with methane regulations for any facilities built after September 2015, based on EPA's interpretation of a bipartisan congressional resolution that Biden signed into law last night. Operators that fail to do so could be subject to enforcement action, EPA said.
"The EPA expects owners and operators of regulated sources to take immediate steps to comply," the agency said in a questions-and-answers document published yesterday.
The swift enforcement of the regulations is unlikely to cause disruptions for industry, which had been exempt from methane-specific regulations over the last nine months as a result of a rollback finalized under former president Donald Trump. That is because even after the rollback, most operators were subject to separate regulations limiting leaks of volatile organic compounds that are commingled with methane in unprocessed natural gas.
The methane resolution was enacted under the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows the US Congress to throw out recent federal rules. Even though the resolution does not "explicitly address" compliance deadlines, EPA said the statute is clear that the effect is immediate by finding a disapproved rule is treated like it "had never taken effect." If the Trump-era repeal never existed, then the earlier methane regulations would remain intact.
The larger significance of reinstating the methane regulations has been triggering a requirement for EPA to regulate methane from potentially tens of thousands of existing facilities. Oil industry officials said they are concentrating their efforts on working with the Biden administration on those existing source regulations.
"We have an opportunity to build on the progress the industry has made in driving down methane emissions through technological advancement, and we are committed to finding common ground on cost-effective government policies," the industry group the American Petroleum Institute said.
Biden has made curbing methane one of his top climate-related priorities, which environmentalists say could have an outsized benefit because methane has a potent short-term global warming effect. Biden's bipartisan infrastructure framework would seek $21bn for environmental remediation, which would include funding to cap abandoned wells leaking methane.
"This an important first step of cutting methane pollution," Biden said yesterday before signing the congressional resolution.
EPA is now working to meet Biden's September deadline to propose first-time methane limits on existing facilities. The agency said it expects proposing revisions at the same time to the rules for new sources, which could address a separate Trump-era methane rollback and any other discrepancies in the rules.
