Slashdot Mirror
Obama Planning New Rules For Oil and Gas Industry's Methane Emissions
mdsolar sends this quote from the NY Times:
In President Obama's latest move using executive authority to tackle climate change, administration officials will announce plans this week to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry's emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, according to a person familiar with Mr. Obama's plans. The administration's goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 from the levels recorded in 2012.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution — but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.
Methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere
that '25 times as powerful as CO2' statistic is its equivalent over a 100-year period. even though methane may not last long before being oxidized into CO2, during that period it has a much greater forcing.
trust me here, methane aint nothin to fuck with. tightening up leaks is inarguably a good thing.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
This seems like a reasonable goal. Methane is natural gas, why not capture and use it? Lots of places still flair tons of it off as part of the oil extraction process – so it may no longer be methane, but it is still carbon in the atmosphere with no useful purpose other than to make oil drilling easier.
Let’s face it Obama could cure cancer and a sizeable portion of the population led by Fox News would accuse him of putting doctors out of work. Natural gas is putting coal workers out of work, but the right blames Obama. Strange I though mining coals was dirty and dangerous and led to black lung. To the right those are all positive things because it shows what a strong work-ethic coal miners have.
How about we really try to make the future cleaner and safer and not scream so much about jobs. If jobs are going away in one sector the answer is to retrain and educate to work in new safer better sectors. Last century’s jobs will not keep our economy afloat in the information age.
I’ll probably get burned on mod points for saying this, but at least half these anger posts are probably some repressed prejudice and bigotry. Obama hasn’t been the greatest president ever – so evidently everyone made a mistake voting a black man to office. The economy is better; we have fewer troops fighting and no new wars. But the right is convinced it would have done 10x better. They sure screwed the pooch the administration before – lord help me how did they make so many gains in the midterms?
It slowly got safe to point to Obama’s failings at which point the mob turned. Early after the first election you could be accused of being a bigot for criticizing the president at all. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and the bigots have ample cover to yell criticism. Of course I will get angry replies that it is all about the jobs and the economy and our foreign policy – and you may well believe it. But really it just galls to have a black man in power, especially if he threatens anything that whites see as fair play and ethnics see as white privilege.
Letter To Iran
To be fair,
Nahh, thats no fun. If we play the politics game we get some fun facts(ish): Obama has delivered Michelle Bachman's promise of $2 gas (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/19/michele-bachmann-stands-by-2-a-gallon-gas-pledge/) and is on track to deliver Mitt Romney's promise of 12M new jobs (or get real close anyway, 2.5M jobs are currently being added each year). Of course we all know the main connection between administrations and economic issues is taking credit when things are good and getting blamed when things are bad. (That said there are exceptions such as deregulation->mortgage crisis...getting off topic here)
If we want to be fair, these new methane regulations are merely holding oil producers accountable for the consequences of their activities. If that reduces production then its only reverting back to what it should have been all along had all costs been considered at the outset.
Side note: since those industrious oil scamps increased production all on their own without federal handouts (i.e. access to fed managed land) then we no longer need to consider drilling in ANWR and the like, right?