The Trump Administration announced the convening of a proceeding for reconsideration of the fugitive emission requirements at well sites and compressor station sites in the final Oil and Natural Gas Sector: Emission Standards for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources, published in the Federal Register on June 3, 2016. The Environmental Protection Agency( EPA ) is granting reconsideration of additional requirements in that rule , specifically the well site pneumatic pumps standards and the requirements for certification by professional engineer . In addition, the EPA is staying these rule requirements pending reconsideration for three months.
Last month, APGA filed comments urging EPA to withdraw its regulations that require natural gas distribution operators to annually report to EPA data on receipts and deliveries of natural gas as well as estimates of fugitive methane emissions. APGA’s comments pointed out that the federal government already has the receipts and delivery information so there is no need for operators to file these data with EPA. APGA pointed out that the fugitive emission estimation method that assumes that every main and every service line is leaking results in grossly inaccurate estimates. Furthermore, EPA already has access to the underlying main and service line mileage and could perform the calculations without requiring operators to resubmit data to EPA. The same fatal flaws in the estimation method would, however, result in EPA’s estimates being as inaccurate as those it now requires operators to submit.
This action by EPA does not address APGA’s comments. Until EPA acts on APGA’s comments, operators are still required to comply with EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting rule.
A copy of EPA’s notice staying the oil and gas production methane emission rule can be found
here. For questions on this article, please contact John Erickson of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0834 or by email at
jerickson@apga.org.