Statement on EPA Methane Pollution Standards from Berks Gas Truth

The Environmental Protection Agency has for the first time issued standards that aim to help the Obama administration meet its goal of reducing methane pollution from oil and gas operations by 40 to 45 percent over the next decade. Berks Gas Truth has issued the following statement by its founder Karen Feridun.

“The Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to control methane emissions from oil and gas operations is a long overdue acknowledgement by the agency of a very serious problem. Unfortunately, the standards don’t go far enough fast enough. The agency continues to understate methane’s global warming potential (GWP) on its website, citing figures using a no longer relevant 100 year time scale.”

“Almost two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put methane’s GWP over 20 years, the only relevant time scale left given the amount of time we have to deal with climate change, at 86 times that of carbon dioxide, C02. Methane is another carbon, C4, and is so much more powerful than carbon dioxide that we are foolish to turn to natural gas as a bridge fuel. Rules like those released today may mislead the public into believing that methane can be regulated into safe use. That could not be farther from the truth.”

“The rules are intended to address methane emissions that occur at every phase of the production, processing, transmission, and distribution of natural gas, but how do you stop a pipeline from leaking? How do you stop a well cap from degrading over time? Pennsylvania is home to hundreds of thousands of orphaned and abandoned wells that a Princeton researcher who recently studied them called “super-emitters” of methane. The PA Department of Environmental Protection isn’t even close to having a handle on locating and capping all of those wells, much less maintaining the caps every 25 years to prevent further leaks. Every one of the more than 9,000 unconventional wells already drilled, and the tens of thousands more the industry hopes to drill if it has its way, will just add to the number of wells that needs to be managed, and at the taxpayer’s expense.”

“The only realistic solution is to speed the transition away from fossil fuels to 100% clean, renewable energy. Stanford professor Mark Jacobson has laid out a 50-state roadmap for getting off fossil fuels by 2050 and by doing it using conventional fuels only, not fracked oil and gas. If the methane rules released today do anything to slow that transition by making fracking appear to be a viable energy solution, we are in trouble.”