The Biden administration is advancing new rules for oil and gas wells and pipelines that are designed to improve safety and cut down on releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
For the first time, rules proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday would apply to hundreds of thousands of existing oil and gas sites as well as strengthening current standards for equipment at new sites as they are built.
The proposal’s target — methane — traps 86 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide over 20 years. Because it is both powerful and short-lived, the gas is a primary focus of international efforts to address climate change rapidly in the short term.
About a third of methane emissions in the U.S. come from the oil and gas industry. The changes proposed by the EPA would reduce methane emissions from regulated well sites and equipment by 74% in 2030 compared to 2005 levels, the agency estimated.
Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued a final rule that expands federal safety oversight to all gas gathering pipelines, including large, high-pressure lines running through rural areas.
The rule will require pipeline operators to report safety information for more than 425,000 additional miles of gathering lines nationwide and will apply federal pipeline safety regulations to a smaller subset of those lines.
The agency cited the explosion of the Revolution pipeline in Center, Beaver County, in September 2018 as one of several incidents nationwide that caused deaths, destroyed property or released bursts of climate-warming methane from high-pressure lines previously exempt from federal safety oversight.
More than 1,000 metric tons of methane gas are emitted, on average, with each pipeline rupture, the agency said.
Pennsylvania is already pursuing a rule to curb methane emissions from existing oil and gas sites, but it doesn’t target the greenhouse gas directly and, like the EPA proposal, it wouldn’t require routine leak monitoring at most of the state’s older wells.
The federal proposal intends to exempt well sites that release less than 3 tons of methane per year from ongoing monitoring, but would require those wells’ owners to perform an initial survey to look for leaks and make repairs.
EPA is asking for comments for a supplemental proposal it plans to issue next year on whether low-flowing wells with leak-prone equipment should be required to conduct regular monitoring.
Pennsylvania’s draft rule does not require leak detection surveys at low-producing wells, including nearly all of the state’s 70,000 producing conventional wells. The long-awaited final version of the state rule is expected to be released “very soon,” said Jamar Thrasher, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Pennsylvania must submit the final rule to EPA no later than June 2022.
It’s not possible at this point to determine whether the proposed federal rules would apply to the same wells that will be covered by Pennsylvania’s proposal, but there are likely to be some differences, Mr. Thrasher said.
In a statement on the EPA proposal, Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Callahan said, “Pennsylvania’s modern natural gas operators have a long-standing commitment to advancing best-in-class environmental performance, which has resulted in the lowest methane intensity of producing basins and has made Appalachia one of the world’s most environmentally responsible producing regions.”
Several of the state’s shale operators are already aiming to surpass what EPA’s rules would require, with companies like Downtown-based EQT Corp. and Texas-based Southwestern Energy Co. adopting advanced technologies such as continuous monitoring sensors at well sites to catch leaks.
Those companies are already ahead of EPA’s new plan to phase out natural gas-driven pneumatic devices that release methane by design. Polluting versions of the controllers are common and account for nearly 30% of all methane emissions from oil and natural gas systems, EPA said.
Environmental and public health groups are focused on pushing state and federal regulators to require regular monitoring for leaks at low-producing wells.
The Environmental Defense Fund said marginal wells account for 80% of active oil and gas sites in the country and they have disproportionately high emissions for the amount of fuel they produce for sale.
Russell Zerbo, an advocate with the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, said the federal rule “really begins the process of monitoring emissions from individual wells.” Pennsylvania does not currently collect emissions data on conventional wells, and emissions data it collects from other oil and gas sources is mainly based on formulas.
Whether the federal rule covers more oil and gas sites than Pennsylvania is currently proposing will depend on that monitoring and the scope of the final rule, he said, which EPA plans to issue before the end of 2022.
Laura Legere: llegere@post-gazette.com.
First Published: November 5, 2021, 10:00 a.m.