Energy

As EPA faces doubts over its authority to delay Obama-era methane limits for new oil and gas drilling operations, a major oil and gas industry group is presenting a menu of legal authorities the agency could use to justify the proposed two-year delay in a likely attempt to shore up vulnerabilities following the agency's court loss over its 90-day stay of the rule.

A federal appellate court has again put a hold on litigation over the Obama EPA Clean Power Plan (CPP), another loss for supporters who had sought the rule's release, though two judges suggest a possible strategy for winning such release by asking the Supreme Court to consider whether its long-running stay of the rule conflicts with EPA's duty to regulate greenhouse gases.

AUSTIN, TX -- A top oil and gas sector official is raising the specter of months of compliance uncertainty regarding EPA's methane standards for new drilling equipment, saying that the agency has not explained how it will enforce major aspects of the rule after a court rejected its effort to pause those provisions and ordered officials to implement them.

Congress in its final fiscal year 2017 spending law restricted EPA's discretion in granting waivers to small refiners from the renewable fuel standard (RFS) following a long-running controversy, language that may have allowed Administrator Scott Pruitt to overcome legal objections and grant some waivers that EPA and the Energy Department (DOE) staff had initially recommended against because they did not comply with requirements in place at the time.