A few weeks ago MDN brought you the news that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued onerous new regulations on capturing every last molecule of methane all along the route from wellhead to burner tip (see EPA Does it Again: Tries to Destroy O&G with New Methane Rule). The EPA issued 600 pages of new regulations that requires the industry to install expensive new equipment to locate so-called fugitive methane that may or may not be leaking from wells, pipelines, etc. And if they find such microscopic amounts of methane, they need to capture it. All in the name of preventing non-existent man-made global warming. The EPA reassures the oil and gas industry it’s no big deal. Just install some new equipment, jump through a bunch of hoops, and in no time ‘t all you’ll be making money instead of spending it to comply with the new regs. That is a flat, outright, BS (Barbara Streisand) lie. We have proof. A new study from ICF International has run the numbers from some actual operations and finds the cost to comply with these onerous new regs is 5 times more than what the EPA has estimated. Let’s put it in very understandable terms. The ICF study finds in order to comply with the regs, it will cost $3.35 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) for the volume of gas it will save. Producers are only able to sell their gas at an average of $3/Mcf. In other words, the industry will lose money to comply with the regulation, contrary to the line of bull the EPA has tried to feed us…
