Oil & Gas: BLM Gets Ahead of EPA by Targeting Methane Emission on Public Lands

To address the climate change issue targeting natural gas emission from oil and gas facilities nationwide, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently proposed standards to deal with it. Methane is the main substance found in natural gas, also known to be a highly strong greenhouse gas that contributes heavily to climate change.

Apart from BLM, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also working on its part to contain and control the O & G sector’s air pollution. The recent BLM proposal (which is a federal effort) could target a wide range of existing oil and gas facilities for their contribution to methane emission to the atmosphere. The plan is to adopt containment and controlling steps already being utilized by several states that use low-cost technologies, effectively to tackle methane pollution from existing facilities.

As a reminder, the EPA issued standards in 2012 targeting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from a set of oil and gas operations. But this BLM rule covers federal lands, and goes on to encompass more areas than previous EPA efforts to address the transmission and storage segment, where methane emissions are high but VOCs lower.

News Source Credits: Meleah Geertsma (environmentalleader.com)

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