December 9, 2016 – Andrea Sears, Public News Service (PA)
The draft permits requiring natural-gas operators to check for and repair leaks only would apply to new oil and gas facilities in Pennsylvania. (Jeremy Buckingham/Flickr)
HARRISBURG, Pa. – The Department of Environmental Protection has released new draft permits to reduce methane emissions in the state.
The draft general permits, announced Thursday, would require natural-gas operators to check for and repair leaks from new equipment on a quarterly basis at well sites and at compression, transmission and processing facilities.
Andrew Williams, senior state regulatory and legislative affairs manager for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the proposal is in keeping with commitments Gov. Tom Wolf made in January.
“Now there are no standards or rules that work to cut methane emissions directly,” he said, “so, this will be the first step that actually directly controls methane emissions across the natural-gas supply chain in Pennsylvania.”
Gas producers have said emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, already are declining, making the new permits unnecessary. However, Williams pointed to recent scientific research that contradicts those industry claims, finding that emissions are much higher than what the industry estimates.
“Currently, producers report roughly 100,000 tons of methane leakage per year,” he said. “We estimate that methane emissions in Pennsylvania could be as high as five times what is being reported.”
However, the new permits only address leaks from new and modified facilities. The Wolf administration’s plan also calls for development of standards to control leaks from existing oil and gas facilities.
Williams noted that all the emissions happening today are coming from sources that already are in place.
“So, the next steps need to be soon,” he said, “and they need to apply these sort of policies and emission-reduction strategies to existing sources here in Pennsylvania.”
The new draft permits now must be published and will be subject to a 45-day public comment period before further action by the DEP.
More information is online at files.dep.state.pa.us.
Leave a Reply