The answer to this problem is twofold. The president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, was first assured that methane emissions had already fallen sharply due to the regulation in place and the innovations of the industry itself. He estimated that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already controlled the equipment that would produce the opposite effect. Though now while people are questioning the “shale energy revolution,” the mass production of gas and oil are not conventional, which now allows the United States to claim energy independence.
The response was quick. The US oil industry, already facing the collapse of oil prices, reacted strongly to the project of the White House announced Wednesday, January 14th to drastically reduce methane emissions registered in the United States that specifically target oil and gas facilities. The Obama administration wants to see a decrease of 40% to 45% of these emissions by 2025. Methane accounts for nearly 10% of greenhouse gases in the United States.
The oil industry has received support from the new Republican chairman of the Senate Committee for the Environment, James Inhofe (Oklahoma). Inhofe denounced a “complicated and inefficient bureaucracy” whose projects will affect “the everyday lives of Americans.” The US agency responsible for environmental protection is a target of Republicans that have reduced its capacity in the last fiscal package adopted in December 2014. The Republicans are also unfavorable to measures that reduce greenhouse gas defended by the Obama administration also affecting the coal industry. The new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was elected in Kentucky, one of major producing states.
For reasons of energy security and economic benefits, the Obama administration supports the production of unconventional hydrocarbons obtained through hydraulic fracturing, which allowed American production to recover levels lost thirty years ago. The White House showed, however, that methane leaks, the negative effects are much higher than those of carbon dioxide, which occur during the operation have been reduced in recent years due to the development of techniques.
But it ensures that methane emissions from the oil industry will increase by 25% without new measures, while production of hydrocarbons already concentrated almost 30% of total US emissions according to the EPA. Focused on generation, transmission and distribution, methane leaks are 8 million cubic meters a year according to a study cited by the Washington Post. Enough to power every home in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. According to the White House, the measures against these losses would heat 2 million homes a year. The program announced Wednesday that combines guidelines and incentives for volunteering in the direction of industry, has been welcomed by organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund.
Obama had announced his intention to fight against these massive methane leaks in March 2014. In October, attention was revived by the discovery by NASA and scientists from Michigan University a methane cloud 6500 square kilometers, or a little more than the size of Delaware, over the state of New Mexico. But the victory of the Republican Party in the midterm elections, a month later, has permanently blocked the legislative track, forcing the president to use the regulation and the armed wing posed by the EPA.