Methane flaring in the Sespe Oil Field of the Los Padres National Forest.
San Francisco, Calif.―A broad coalition of conservation and citizens’ groups including ForestWatch sued the Trump administration last week, challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s rollback of its own 2016 rule that sought to reduce the amount of air and climate pollution from oil drilling and fracking in national forests and other public lands.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, notes Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s BLM illegally rescinded the 2016 Waste Prevention Rules. Those 2016 rules required oil companies operating on public lands to reduce the amount of waste gas they burn off into the atmosphere. The now-rescinded 2016 rules also required the oil industry to take reasonable steps to monitor and reduce leaks in pipelines and storage facilities. Such measures significantly reduce pollution from methane, a dangerously potent greenhouse gas.
The rollback applies to oil production on federal lands throughout our region, including:
- Los Padres National Forest (Santa Barbara and Ventura counties)
- Carrizo Plain National Monument (San Luis Obispo County)
- Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge (Ventura County)
- Upper Ojai (a federal oil lease at the end of Koenigstein Road in Ventura County)
- Timber Canyon (northwest of Santa Paula in Ventura County)
- Cuyama Foothills (Santa Barbara County)
These lands contain active oil and gas facilities, including several flares, thousands of miles of pipelines, and dozens of storage tanks and other facilities that can all release methane into the atmosphere.
Federal law requires oil companies to use “all reasonable precautions to prevent waste.” To meet this standard, the BLM issued its 2016 Waste Prevention Rule to control venting, flaring, and leaks and bring more gas to market (instead of burning or leaking it) using proven, widely-available technologies. In addition to reducing waste, the Waste Prevention Rule had many other benefits. Because oil and gas companies must pay royalties on captured gas, the Rule would have resulted in millions of dollars of increased royalty payments that states, tribes, and local governments could have used to fund schools, healthcare, and infrastructure. The Waste Prevention Rule also reduced air and climate pollution that results when natural gas is leaked or vented into the air or burned in flares. The 2016 rule would have helped taxpayers reclaim about $800 million in royalties over the next decade.
The BLM has been aware of methane waste and pollution problems since at least 2010, when the U.S. Government Accounting Office identified BLM’s lack of consistent and effective regulatory safeguards as a major source of this problem. In 2014 oil and gas companies wasted more than 4 percent of the gas they produced on federal lands, “sufficient gas to supply nearly 1.5 million households with gas for a year,” according to the Interior Department.
The conservation and citizens groups filing the lawsuit include Sierra Club, Los Padres ForestWatch, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Wilderness Society, National Wildlife Federation, Citizens for a Healthy Community, Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights, Montana Environmental Information Center, San Juan Citizens Alliance, Western Organization of Resource Councils, Wilderness Workshop, Wildearth Guardians, and Wyoming Outdoor Council. The organizations are represented by Western Environmental Law Center, Earthjustice, and Clean Air Task Force.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a second legal action challenging the methane rules rollback filed on September 18 by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the California Air Resources Board, and New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas.
Comments are closed.