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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 is a far more powerful (25 times or so) greenhouse gas than c02, so sealing leaky problem wells and extraction sites makes perfect sense.
But since Obama proposed it, I'm against it.
Obama has always been trying to reduce domestic oil production.
Gas taxes are per gallon, not per dollar. They make more in taxes when gas prices drop and people worry less about saving gas.
9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution is a bloody lot of greenhouse gas! Does the adding of the word "just" make it any less?
I'm pretty sure you'd really not like living in the fetid cesspool your environment would become if you killed off the EPA.
Oh, but, of course .. you're going to make the idiotic claim that if people want a clean environment 'that market' will find a solution.
The only solutions the market finds is maximizing profits, killing off the EPA just removes one more constraint to allow corporations to be even bigger assholes.
Tell you want, let the Republicans all live down stream of plants which have no EPA controls. I dare you. Go ahead, drink that water and tell us it's safe. Expose your children to it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Because brilliant geniuses like yourself remember how awesome it was back before things like the EPA and the Clean Air and Water acts?
Junior, some of us were alive in the 1960's and 1970's. We remember how well the "invisible hand" of the market didn't do shit to stop rampant pollution. We remember not being able to swim or fish in the rivers, lakes and bays we can now swim and fish in comfortably.
Go swim in some toxic sewage this weekend. Then get used to that feeling if the EPA is defunded.
The problem with the EPA is like other Gov agencies. For example, the IRS is a needed function, but is it efficient and looking for the best interests of the citizens? Hardly. The EPA is needed, but its growing into a giant lumbering obstacle to many economic and personal ventures.
We all agree that the obvious things are obvious. No one should be allowed to dump toxic waste in a creek. The non-obvious things are where things start to suck. For example a home owner find some outrageous amount for building an unauthorized pond, or restricting development due to a variety of field mouse.
No the market wont find a solution, because the market is designed to find the best price/competition point. There is no real incentive to protect the economy, other than maybe bad press. This is a valid function of government, but like everything else, is prone to abuse.
The US system is horribly designed so incentive wise you actually have it backwards.
The public can't really tell who's fault is what when both sides point fingers, nor can they readily distinguish between the President and his party in congress. So they hold him accountable for everything that happens in government and every election is basically a referendum on whether the country is doing well.
So when the congress is controlled by another party it's actually in that congress's best interest to misgovern. Because the worse things get the more dissatisfied voters get, and more dissatisfied the voters the more they'll punish the President by voting the opposing party into congress.
There's a reason the Daily Show and Colbert Report could be so good by simply showing clips of politicians talking for large portions of the show. For a country of your size and wealth the quality of your governance is shockingly bad.
I stole this Sig
Methane doesn't last long in the atmosphere
>that '25 times as powerful as CO2' statistic is its equivalent over a 100-year period
Not according to the references I can find.
from http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014...
"...methane is a potent greenhouse gas, as well as a significant byproduct of using natural gas — advocated by many as a “bridge” to a lower-emissions future. But a direct comparison between methane and carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas emitted by human activities, is complicated: While the standard figure used for emissions trading and technology evaluation says that, gram for gram, methane is about 30 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2, scientists say that’s an oversimplification.
''As reported in a paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, authored by MIT assistant professor of engineering systems Jessika Trancik and doctoral student Morgan Edwards, this conversion factor (called the global warming potential, or GWP) may significantly misvalue methane. Getting this conversion factor right is challenging because methane’s initial impact is much greater than that of CO2 — by about 100 times. But methane only stays in the atmosphere for a matter of decades, while CO2 sticks around for centuries. The result: After six or seven decades, the impact of the two gases is about equal, and from then on methane’s relative role continues to decline."
Or, if you prefer Wikipedia as a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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
More importantly, the market doesn't do very good job of predicting what solution will be needed. Rather, it must wait until a problem has occurred and then there are clear directions for market-based solutions. So, things like the interstate system never get built except as a labyrinth of disconnected routes with no rhyme or reason and they'll all be toll roads.
Clean air is similar. It would never have been cleaned up because just about all industries were involved in screwing up the air quality, so there was no market solution. Similarly, there is no market solution to clean water.
I would posit there is no market solution to security. There might be litigious "solution" which means you get to sue after your credentials have be spewed to the interwebs...strangely, that's what we have now. There are no federal laws saying you need to protect your customers' data. There are companies who will sell you "security"...which is mostly snake oil in a can. That's the sum total of the market solution for security.
Food and Drug safety is another area. How many people need to die before the market respond to a bad manufacturer? 10? 100? Surely, a good market actuary could figure this out, but the result will not be pleasing to just about every one except Rand Paul types.
Obama is starting to sound more like his old campaign-trail self than the president we have come to know. I think it's probably easy for him to make promises now as he can just blame the Republican congress when they don't actually happen.
Not really all that far fetched.
In terms of GHG emissions from human activity, livestock production is responsible for 14.5 of all emissions, in terms of methane alone, it's responsible for 40%.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
...what AC sibling said, and summarized for visibility: Federal gasoline taxes are a fixed amount per gallon, not a percentage of retail. Gas can be $0.50/gallon or $50.00/gallon, and the feds will take in the same amount based on actual consumption.
Higher gasoline taxes are however beneficial to the Oil Shale industry, which OPEC is currently trying to damage by creating the current glut.
I think it will however backfire on them as Russia is experiencing collateral damage from this, as is Venezuela, Canada, and other economies which rely on oil exports for a significant percentage of their wealth.
I don't see too much of an impact here in the US (outside of Texas and North Dakota), and what damage does occur may be offset by lower prices overall brought by the cheaper fuel/transportation costs.
I also doubt that Obama is specifically doing this to lash out at the oil industry, so much as doing it to satisfy his particular ideological and supporters' demands/desires as regards fossil fuels.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The profits are gathered or lost by a lot of folks:
* The largest consumers of petroleum such as airlines and other transportation companies stand to make or lose millions of dollars by a penny's change in prices.
* Oil companies obviously see a huge chunk of this, natch.
* Commodity traders
Not seeing too many of them (outside of Warren Buffett and his trains) who are friends of the president and would stand to benefit or lose anything significant from this. Then again, there is the Keystone XL pipeline... a crippled oil shale industry won't ship as much oil, which means that Mr. Buffett would have a stronger argument to continue shipping that oil on his rail lines.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The EPA is empowered, by Congress, to make such rules. The EPA falls under the executive branch, and so takes direction from the President, within the broad legislative mandate to protect the environment. In any event, the President hasn't actually issued new rules by decree - he's got certain goals, and has set the EPA to the task of actually drafting the rules and regulations through their normal process (which, for better or worse, includes lawsuits).
A President can't drop such regulations by decree, because that would violate the EPA's mandate and other existing laws enacted for the environment.