Trump's week in review: Comey charged again; $1M reward for reporting election fraud
1. Trump to loosen methane rules
While campaigning in Lubbock, Texas, Tuesday, Trump announced plans to roll back Biden-era regulations meant to reduce methane emissions from the oil industry.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement that the previous rules on the oil and natural gas industry had done serious harm to America’s energy companies.
“Behind every barrel of oil and every cubic foot of natural gas produced in the U.S. are millions of workers, businesses, and the heartbeat of this nation’s economy. The Biden EPA destructively targeted all this. President Trump promised to end the war on oil and natural gas, and I vowed to do my part, while protecting our environment,” Zeldin said.
“We have listened to Americans’ concerns and are taking our biggest step yet to fix it. When owners and operators can produce, America benefits with lower prices. That is common sense, and it’s what we’re delivering with this proposal."
Jon Goldstein, associate vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, contends that rolling back the rules could cost the industry.
“Methane is natural gas, or natural gas is methane,” Goldstein told NPR. “And so if you’re capturing more natural gas, you’re not allowing it to leak out, you’re not allowing it to be flared, you have more product that you can sell. And so that offsets a lot of the costs.”
“That is harmful to our energy security, and it’s harmful to taxpayers that ought to be seeing royalty and tax revenue collected off of this gas that’s going to waste,” Goldstein added.
