Texas Sues Biden Administration to Stop "New Radical" Emissions Rule
The new rules ban routine flaring, require oil companies to monitor for leaks from well sites and compressor stations and establish a program to use third-party remote sensing.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued to prevent an expansion of authority by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) by means of a rule aimed at regulating methane and other emissions from sources in the oil and natural gas industry.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenges EPA rules first announced last year that seek to reduce methane emissions through measures like bans on routine flaring of natural gas produced at new oil wells.
EPA’s new rule establishes onerous emissions standards for the oil and gas industry that would require producers to drastically update infrastructure. Additionally, the rule usurps the States’ role in establishing emissions standards for existing sources and establishes new guidelines that mirror the Federal standards for new sources. EPA’s rule violates fundamental principles of federalism by forcing the States to adopt Federal standards as their own in an unlawful attempt to regulate existing sources.
The rule has been developed despite the Clean Air Act’s clear requirements for findings as to specific emissions and emission sources. Instead of making such findings, the EPA relies upon its past rules that Texas and other states challenged as illegal. Attorney General Paxton filed the petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“The EPA is once again trying to seize regulatory authority that Congress has not granted,” said Attorney General Paxton. “I am challenging this blatant overreach by the Biden Administration and will continue to defend vital sectors of the Texas economy.”
Click here for the entire petition.
The new rules ban routine flaring, require oil companies to monitor for leaks from well sites and compressor stations and establish a program to use third-party remote sensing to detect large methane releases from so-called "super emitters," the EPA said in a statement when it announced the rules.
The rules would prevent an estimated 58 million tons of methane from reaching the atmosphere between 2024 and 2038 - nearly the equivalent of all the carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector in the year 2021, according to the EPA.
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