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EPA delays methane emissions rule Agency staying compliance date to allow reconsideration of regulations that petitioners say were not available for public comment Alan Bailey Petroleum News
Presumably as part of a general review by the Trump administration of Obama-era greenhouse gas regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency is delaying the implementation of a new rule which places limits on methane and some other emissions from new or modified oil and gas facilities. The oil and gas industry had been required to comply with the rule by June 3 but on April 19 Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator, sent a letter to petitioners who had objected to the rule, saying that he was staying the compliance date by 90 days. The petitioners, from the oil and gas industry, had requested a reconsideration of the rule and, in some circumstances, a stay of certain provisions within the rule.
In his letter Pruitt said that the petitioners had raised at least one objection to monitoring requirements which were in the final rule but which had not been available for comment during the rule’s public comment period. The EPA is convening a proceeding for reconsideration of this component of the rule, Pruitt said.
The petitioners have also raised other issues that meet the requirements for justifying a rule reconsideration, Pruitt said. These issues include provisions for approval of an alternative means of emission limitation and the inclusion of low-production wells within the scope of the regulations. The public was not given an opportunity to object to these provisions, or certain aspects of the provisions, because the provisions were not part of the proposed rule that was published for public comment, Pruitt said. Opportunity for notice and comment In doing this the EPA will provide an opportunity for notice and comment on issues raised in petitions that merit reconsideration under the terms of the rulemaking section of the Clean Air Act. That section of the act allows reconsideration of rules or procedures which have been finalized but which a petitioner can demonstrate could not feasibly have been commented on during a public comment period. However, the agency is not addressing other requests for reconsideration that do not meet the standard required for reconsideration under the terms of the act. Pruitt also said that his letter does not address the merits of any issues raised in the petitions.
A full-scale rewrite or retraction of the regulations, beyond the review and reconsideration that EPA is now carrying out, would presumably require the use of the same formal rule making procedure, including a public comment period, as was used for implementing the regulations.
The methane emissions regulations that were introduced in the new rule apply to emissions sources already subject to regulations issued in 2012 for the reduction of volatile organic compound emissions. However, the 2016 methane regulations apply to some new emissions sources, including hydraulically fractured oil wells. The Alaska North Slope was exempted from the routine monitoring of certain types of equipment. And the regulations do not apply to offshore operations.
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