Obama Said to Plan Release of Methane-Limit Rules on Thursday
The Obama administration will unveil on Thursday the first explicit U.S. regulation of methane emissions with a rule designed to reduce leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from oil wells.
The measure will require oil and gas companies to do a better job finding and plugging methane leaks at new wells, pumps, pipes, compressors and other equipment. It will be released by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to three people told of the plans who asked not to be identified prior to the formal announcement.
The primary ingredient of natural gas, methane is pound for pound 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere when measured over two decades. Previous regulations pared traditional air pollutants from some natural gas wells but did not specifically target methane.
"This is an incredibly important step," said Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Climate and Energy Program at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a phone interview earlier this month. "Methane is responsible for 25 percent of the warming that our planet is experiencing right now, and in the United States, the oil and gas industry is the largest source of methane emissions."
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/obama-said-to-plan-release-of-methane-limit-rules-on-thursday
= new reply since forum marked as read
Here's the announcement: 
This story has been updated.
The Obama administration on Thursday announced a set of much-anticipated — and first ever — steps to regulate oil and gas industry emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas second only to carbon dioxide in its role in the climate debate.
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a new rule that will target emissions from new or modified oil and gas wells — and prevent 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by the year 2025, the agency said.
And while this would not apply to the vast numbers of existing rigs, well pads and auxiliary equipment that have driven a historic boom in domestic oil and gas production, the agency also signaled that it plans to regulate these as well. It issued a new request for more information from industry to help study how to contain emissions from these sources.
It all adds up to a suite of new or planned regulations, by the outgoing administration, to curb fugitive emissions of a gas that is drawing ever-more attention, despite debate over precisely how much the United States is emitting and how severely that contributes to climate change.
The new policies “will help combat climate change and reduce air pollution that immediately harms public health,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said on a media call Thursday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/12/obama-administration-announces-historic-new-regulations-for-methane-emissions-from-oil-and-gas/
A gas flare is seen at a natural gas processing facility near Williston, N.D.(AP Photo/Matthew Brow
