• Oil and Gas

  U.S Federal Court overturns rollback of methane ‘waste prevention’ rule

  Posted by Nigel on 18 July 2020 at 6:25 am

  A federal court has struck down the Bureau of Land Management rollback of most of a 2016 rule meant to minimize the venting and flaring of natural gas from oil and gas wells and related storage vessels.

  The US district court for the Northern district of California ruled on the 15th July that Bureau of Land Management in 2018 did not do an adequate job of justifying its policy changes and consequently had violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act and had failed to fulfill its waste prevention obligations under the Mineral Leasing Act.

  Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote in her decision that the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump acted in such haste and “unmitigated fervor” that its rule making contained “myriad inadequacies.”

  The judge faulted Bureau of Land Management for failing to go into more detail on various points, including points of science and cost-benefit calculations, to justify its reversal of the Obama administration’s Waste Prevention Rule, as it was called. It also is referred to as the methane rule.

  The Bureau of Land Management in 2018 emphasized it was rolling back some provisions out of concern that operators of marginal or low-volume wells might be disproportionately harmed by the costs of the 2016 rule. The judge dismissed that approach as “protecting the economics of certain operators” and “carve outs which benefit a select few.”

  The judge vacated the 2018 rule but stayed the effect of her decision for 90 days. The lead case was California v. David Bernhardt, consolidated with Sierra Club v. David Bernhardt.

  Sen. Kevin Cramer ‘Activist judge got it wrong’

  The attorneys general of California and New Mexico, who teamed up on the lead case, applauded the decision as a victory for human health, the environment, and common sense.

  In California there are about 600 producing oil and gas leases on more than 200,000 acres of federal land, and in New Mexico there are more than 400 million acres of federal land leased for oil and gas production, the attorneys general said.

  Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), whose state includes the oil-producing Bakken and Three Forks shales, had a different view.

  “Yet again, an activist judge got it wrong. The Obama administration’s methane rule was a direct attack on America’s energy jobs,” Cramer said in a press releasing indicating an appeal would follow. “I look forward to working with North Dakota’s Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, like-minded states, and the Trump administration to rectify this.”

  “We had the misfortune of a very bad draw in the Northern CA District Court,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the trade group Western Energy Alliance, said in an emailed reaction. “We got a judge without experience in federal oil and natural gas issues who wouldn’t even follow well-established Chevron deference,” she said, referring to the federal court policy of deferring to the expertise of an agency when interpreting the agency’s legal mandates.

  “This decision looks very good on appeal, and we have options in the District Court of Wyoming as well,” Sgamma said.

  Regulatory procedures or merits

  The judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, said her ruling was based on procedural errors, not the merits of the 2018 or 2016 rules. At the same time, she praised the contents of the Obama administration’s rule, saying it was “modeled on cost-effective standards” and “included reasonable exemptions.”

  She criticized the Trump administration’s rule for limiting its economic calculations to domestic costs despite what she saw as “the scientific and economic facts” in support of taking global costs into account.

  It is a recurrent issue in debates over climate change—the global nature of climate change and the difficulty of estimating global impacts from something like an oil well or a policy on oil wells.

  Another issue was the intent by the 2016 rule to push the pace of conversion to less-polluting pneumatic controllers, which are attached to storage tanks. The 2018 rule concluded it was unnecessary to mandate conversions.

  “Without any factual or logical basis, Bureau of Land Management baldly proclaims it ‘expects many operators to adopt low-bleed pneumatic controllers even in the absence of’ a requirement to do so. Bureau of Land Management blindly trusts the industry to act voluntarily,” the judge wrote.

  The Bureau of Land Management in 2018 cited the economics of low-bleed controllers as favoring the transition, which is already under way. “Low-bleed continuous pneumatic controllers are already very common, representing about 89 percent of the continuous bleed pneumatic controllers in the petroleum and natural gas production sectors,” the agency explained in its proposed rule.

  

  Nigel replied 3 years, 10 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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