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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.
Gas taxes are per gallon, not per dollar. They make more in taxes when gas prices drop and people worry less about saving gas.
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.
To be fair, Obama has had zero to do with any of that....he's reduced federal production and exploration
http://www.westernenergyallian...
The massive increase in production is due to private enterprise and mostly private land, nothing to do with the feds:
http://www.exxonmobilperspecti...
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
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
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
...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?
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?
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.