WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Wednesday to effectively reintroduce an Obama-era ordinance to curb methane emissions, a powerful climate-warming pollutant that must be controlled to meet President Biden’s ambitious climate change promises .
On one side of Congressional Republicans who liberally enacted a once obscure law in 2017 to roll back Obama-era regulations, Democrats invoked the law to roll back a Trump methane rule enacted late last summer. This rule had eliminated Obama-era control over methane leaks from oil and gas wells.
The 52-42 vote marked the first time Congressional Democrats have implemented what is known as the Congressional Review Act. It bans filibusters in the Senate and ensures that the last-minute rules of a simple majority government can be swiftly repealed in both houses of Congress. Three Republican senators – Susan Collins from Maine, Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and Rob Portman from Ohio – joined Democrats and Democrats in voting in favor of the measure.
The in-house adoption of the measure next month is considered pro forma, as is Mr Biden’s signature. And if Donald J. Trump’s regulation were out of the way, the Obama methane rule would come back into effect.
This rule, published in 2016, set the first state limits for methane leaks from oil and gas wells, requiring companies to monitor, plug, and contain methane leaks at new wells.
Mr Biden has vowed to put climate change high on his agenda. He re-acceded to the Paris Agreement, hired his cabinet chiefs to implement climate-friendly policies across government, and included hundreds of billions of dollars in renewable energy projects in an infrastructure package pending before Congress. Last week, at a global climate summit, Mr Biden announced that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030 compared to 2005.
With the strike of the Trump methane rule, the Democrats took the first legislative step towards this goal.
“Once the president signs it, this will be the first step by Congress and this administration to put climate policy back in the books,” said Dan Grossman, director of legislative and regulatory affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.
In a statement in support of the vote, the White House called methane “a powerful greenhouse gas that is responsible for about a third of global warming”.
The statement added that “tackling methane pollution” is “an urgent and essential step”.
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to reverse any executive rule within 60 law days of it coming into effect. However, since the president can veto the measures of the law, the law can only be effectively applied after a new administration has taken control.
Republicans used the process to wipe out 14 late Obama administration rules in the first 16 weeks of the Trump administration, but Wednesday’s vote marked the first time Democrats used the process to reverse the policies of a Republican administration . Democrats plan to use the process just one more time in the coming weeks, before their time window expires in late May, with a vote to repeal a labor rule that had made it easier for employers to deny workers’ claims to employment discrimination.
New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, described Wednesday’s vote as “one of the most important votes that this Congress not only cast, but that has been cast in the past decade on our fight against global warming.”
It will be harder for Democrats to push through broader climate change legislation – they will either have to get enough Republican votes to get the 60-vote majority needed to overcome a filibuster or try to convert climate action into a planned infrastructure spending package and hope they can use a budget rule that allows passage with 51 votes.
Nonetheless, Mr Schumer noted that Wednesday’s vote was a touch of bipartisanism on climate change. Speaking of his vote to restore the methane rule, Mr Graham, who has emerged as a staunch ally of Mr Trump, said, “I think it’s just unnecessary emissions that you can do something about and you have to do it.”
Most Republicans opposed the move to reintroduce the ordinance, but were cautious in their opposition to methane pollution containment.
“More regulations are not the answer,” said Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the senior Republican on the Senate Energy Committee. Mr Barrasso noted that he had written laws to reduce methane emissions by asking for an additional permit for natural gas pipelines. “Congress should push solutions like my legislation – not relict regulatory struggles from the past,” he said.
Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, said, “We need policies that encourage continuous innovation, not more bureaucratic regulation.”
Both the scientific understanding of the role methane plays in climate change and the position of the oil and gas industry have changed since Obama’s administration first tried to regulate methane pollution. Scientists now see that gas is playing a bigger role in rapidly warming the planet than previously thought, while some large oil and gas companies who fought methane regulations a decade ago are now saying they welcome, or at least so, the return of the methane rules can work.
Most of the climate action proposed by Mr Biden aims to reduce carbon dioxide, which is the result of burning fossil fuels and which is the most abundant and harmful greenhouse gas.
Methane, which is barely a second, is released primarily through leaks in oil and gas wells. It stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time than carbon dioxide, but has a larger breakdown as long as it lasts. According to some estimates, methane has 80 times the thermal storage capacity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first 20 years.
A new United Nations report, prepared by an international team of scientists and slated for release next month, is expected to declare that reducing methane emissions, the main constituent of natural gas, must play a far more important role in preventing the worst effects of the Climate change.
The report, the detailed summary of which was viewed by the New York Times, also says that expanding the use of natural gas is incompatible with sustaining global warming unless there is significant use of unproven technologies that remove greenhouse gases from the air Can be drawn 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the international Paris Agreement.
Many large oil and gas companies have spoken out in favor of methane regulations: Exxon, Shell and BP actually urged the Trump administration to uphold the Obama methane rules. These companies have invested millions of dollars in promoting natural gas as a cleaner fuel than coal in the country’s power plants, since natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide when burned. They fear that unconditional methane leaks could undermine that marketing message and reduce demand.
On Wednesday, Vicki Hollub, the executive director of Occidental Petroleum, an international oil company based in Houston, told a Senate committee that she supported the vote to reintroduce methane regulations.
“We need regulations to make sure we have adequate control across the industry,” she said.
Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based natural gas producer, tweeted Wednesday, “We believe that significant reductions in methane emissions are essential to managing the risks of climate change. While the Congressional Review Act is an exceptional piece of legislation that should be used with caution and caution, we support the ongoing efforts of Congress to find a way towards a permanent framework for federal methane regulation that encourages innovation and operational flexibility promotes. “
Once the Obama methane rules are reinstated, Mr. Biden plans to go further: While the Obama rules require companies to monitor and control methane leaks from new wells, Mr. Biden has his Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan, instructed to prepare new regulations in the coming months that would also require companies to control methane leaks at existing oil and gas wells.
This prospect is a cause for concern for small independent oil companies, who fear that new regulations requiring companies to install methane leak control technology could be adopted by large companies but cost small companies a cost they cannot afford.
“Our problem isn’t the need to control emissions,” said Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “The greatest impact of regulating existing wells will inevitably fall on low production wells. There the extent of the impact will decrease. So the question is what it will look like. “
Mr Fuller said his group intends to spend the coming months explaining to the Biden administration that the next round of methane rules should provide tailored guidelines between the giant oil producers of companies like Shell and Exxon and the small two companies distinguish. or three-well operations by independent wildcatter like its members.
“Our goal will be to ensure that the regulatory process distinguishes between large and small wells, each with appropriate regulations,” he said.
Emily Cochrane contributed to the coverage.
