Congress to Curtail Methane Monitoring

Innovation in methane detection is booming amidst tightened state and federal standards for oil and gas drillers and targeted research funding.  Technology developers, however, may see their market diminished by a regulation-averse Republican Congress and President.  Senate Republicans are expected to attempt to complete a first strike against federal methane detection and emissions rules as soon as this week.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas responsible for an estimated one-fifth to one-one quarter of the global warming caused by humans since the Industrial Revolution, and oil and gas production puts more methane in the atmosphere than any other activity in the U.S.  Global warming, however, is not a moving issue for Republican leaders or President Donald Trump, who reject the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change.

What moves them are complaints from industries that “burdensome" regulations unnecessarily hinder job growth and—in the case of methane rules—domestic oil and gas output.  The House of Representatives got the methane deregulation ball rolling on 3 February, voting along party lines to quash U.S. Bureau of Land Management rules designed to prevent more than a third of methane releases from nearly 100,000 oil and gas wells and associated equipment operating on federal and tribal lands.

The House vote is one of the first applications of the hitherto obscure Congressional Review Act of 1996, which gives Congress 60 legislative days to overturn new regulations.  If the Senate concurs and President Trump signs, the resulting act will scrap the Bureau's ban on methane venting and flaring and its leak monitoring requirements.  It will also restrict the Bureau from ever revisiting those mandates.

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