(Bloomberg) — The Biden administration is finalizing requirements meant to stem methane emissions from oil and natural gas wells on public land nearly a decade after the federal government first moved to crack down on the greenhouse gas releases.
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The final rule imposed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management requires operators of oil and gas projects on federal land to do more to find and arrest methane leaks. It also sets limits on how much gas can be flared — or burned off — before companies are charged royalties on the waste.
The measure, a key piece of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, builds on a suite of other regulations meant to discourage emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is estimated to be at least 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere during the first two decades after it is released. Limiting methane releases is seen as critical to constraining global warming and keeping temperature rise below 1.5C, a tipping point for avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.
The measure helps “prevent waste, protect our environment and ensure a fair return to American taxpayers,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a news release. “By leveraging modern technology and best practices to reduce natural gas waste, we are taking long-overdue steps that will increase accountability for oil and gas operators.”
In December, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its own sweeping requirements for stifling methane leaks, largely targeting oil infrastructure on private land. And in January, the agency unveiled its plan for imposing a fee on methane releases that was compelled by Congress.
The new Interior Department rule is narrower, in that it applies just to oil and gas facilities on federal and tribal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, where there are currently about 100,000 actively producing wells. About one-tenth of US oil and natural gas production comes from federal and tribal lands.
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