The US shale industry will face a crackdown on greenhouse gas leaks under regulations being prepared by the Obama administration to curb a harmful side-effect of the fracking boom.
The administration will unveil rules requiring that new oil and gas wells prevent unintended leaks of methane, a gas that has a more powerful heat-trapping effect than carbon dioxide.
The move is part of president Barack Obama’s effort to leave a legacy of action on climate change, coming two weeks after he unveiled landmark measures to cut carbon pollution from electricity generators.
By 2025 the White House is seeking a 40-45 per cent cut in emissions of methane – the main component of natural gas – from 2012 levels.
That goal is essential to meeting the US’s international pledges on climate change, said Conrad Schneider of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.
The regulations will create modest extra costs for oil and gas producers, which are already facing the financial strain of a low oil price, but cheap crude is itself deterring the kind of new drilling that would be subject to the rules.
The White House has taken a carefully balanced position on the shale revolution spurred by fracking, celebrating its creation of jobs and cheap fuel but sounding increasingly vocal warnings about the impact of methane on the climate.
The Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator writing the rules, is tackling only new wells because US law requires that rules be set first for new pollution sources before existing emitters are addressed, said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defence Fund, another green group.
The US industry is generally unconcerned about requirements to cut methane leaks from new wells, but it has fought against controls on existing wells, fearing it would have to spend a lot of money to capture relatively small amounts of gas.
Ahead of international climate talks in Paris in December, Mr Obama has set a target of a 26-28 per cent reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2025.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)
