President Barack Obama and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday proposed new rules to regulate methane emission. The new regulations, which will primarily affect hydraulic fracturing, are a part of Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
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“The shale gas drillers in North Dakota have been working on methane capture for a few years and have succeeded in reducing methane emissions by 30 percent. While methane is indeed a greenhouse gas, it has no measurable impact on Earth’s temperature regardless of its capacity to capture a great deal more heat than carbon dioxide because of its insignificant quantity in the scheme of things.
“However, methane is the primary composition of natural gas, so the industry already has every incentive to try and capture that which comes out of the wells that are producing oil. Therefore the industry does not need more poorly formed additional regulations to make EPA ever stronger to their green supporters – whose goal is not to alter Earth’s temperature one way or the other, but instead to destroy our nation’s economy for reasons I will never understand.”
Jay Lehr
Science Director
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“The Environmental Protection Agency rule requiring a 40 to 45 percent reduction in methane emissions from 2012 levels from the oil and natural gas industry by 2025 isn’t about climate change, it’s about President Obama’s climate change legacy. There is an important distinction.
“If this rule were such a slam dunk for the climate, why hasn’t the administration told the public how much potential future warming would be mitigated by these regulations? The fact of the matter is, these regulations will drive up costs for consumers and energy producers, but yield no tangible climate benefit.
“According to EPA estimates, only 1.5 percent of methane is lost during the life cycle of natural gas production, and these estimates were validated by the most recent research on the topic, which found emissions of just 1.6 percent of the life cycle production. At these emission levels, natural gas reduces total greenhouse gas emissions when substituted for burning coal.
“Make no mistake, there will be negative consequences for this rule. This rule won’t hurt Big Oil; it will hurt smaller, independent oil companies who are already operating on thin margins. For an administration that supposedly cares about the little guy on Main Street, his policies seem to indicate otherwise.”
Isaac Orr
Research Fellow, Energy and Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“For the president, it’s another day, another nail in the coffin of the fossil fuel industry. There is no evidence methane emissions at the present levels are a threat to human health or the environment, so these new limits can only be aimed at raising the costs of doing business for the oil and gas industry that fueled much of America’s growth through the twentieth century, and is almost entirely responsible for what little economic recovery this economy has seen under Obama. He is truly attempting to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, and all to please the radical eco-fringe that supports is inane climate agenda.
“America has the cleanest and most efficient oil and gas production industry in the world with a loss of emissions through pipelines, at well pads, and in refineries so low, our domestic oil and gas industry is the envy of the world. If it made economic sense to capture the scant emissions escaping, industry would already be doing it.”
H. Sterling Burnett
Research Fellow, Environment & Energy Policy
The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News
[email protected]
312/377-4000
The Heartland Institute is a 31-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
Jay Lehr was an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition and Senior Science Analyst at CFACT.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
