As the final months of the Obama presidency draw to a close, the Regulator in Chief has been keeping quite busy, particularly through the offices of his EPA chief, Gina McCarthy. Yet another jab in the regulation department was delivered this week when the now hilariously named Environmental Protection Agency announced new methane emission standards which will essentially accomplish zero, zilch and nada in terms of total greenhouse gases but will be cripplingly expensive for the energy industry. (Intelligencer)
Because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency believes methane – the main component of natural gas – can be 25 times worse for the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, officials Thursday mandated that drillers, processors and pipeliners curb emissions of it by 45 percent.
These methane standards are even stronger than EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy proposed in August. After reviewing more than 900,000 comments, the final plans call for cutting methane emissions by 510,000 tons by 2025. The August plan called for trimming pollution by 400,000 tons by that year.
American oil and gas industry companies are already in a tight corner these days because of sustained low oil prices, and this was one more unscientific, politically oriented blow to their bottom line which was expected but not at all welcome.
Read more:
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/05/14/epa-jacks-up-methane-regulations-in-defiance-of-science/
