White House officials pushed the EPA to maximize savings for the oil industry despite the agency's concern that weakening regulations would allow more methane to escape into the atmosphere, according to newly released documents.
The White House pressure campaign came as the Environmental Protection Agency honed a proposal to relax President Barack Obama-era requirements governing how frequently oil companies have to check for and repair leaks of methane, an intense greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere 84 times more than carbon dioxide.
Every move to dial back required inspections and reduce industry costs triggered a corresponding climb in projected methane emissions, a jump that appeared to trouble some EPA officials, according to internal documents filed in a government docket Tuesday.
The documents show EPA officials also repeatedly resisted White House pressure to dramatically decrease the frequency of required inspections at oil wells and compressor stations in the name of saving money.
In one case, officials with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs argued that less-frequent inspections would provide "the highest net benefits."
But the EPA rejected that argument in May, countering that less-frequent inspections also would allow more methane to escape.
The behind-the-scenes debate, revealed in hundreds of pages of correspondence, analysis and drafts from a White House-led review of the plan, offers a rare look at how President Donald Trump's administration is pursuing a deregulatory agenda that it says is saving the U.S. $1.6 billion annually.
The episode "encapsulates the Trump administration's environmental deregulation strategy," said David Hayes, a former deputy interior secretary who now is the executive director of New York University School of Law's State Energy and Environmental Impact Center. First the Trump administration overstates the costs to industry of environmental safeguards, then it ignores the costs to society of dismantling them, Hayes said.
The entire process was driven by an attempt to maximize corporate profits at the expense of public health and the environment, said Amit Narang, a regulatory policy expert with Public Citizen. "The further OIRA tried to force EPA to maximize net benefits, the more it forced a weakening of the rule, and the more emissions went up."
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs' edits raised projected cost savings from $246 million over six years to $484 million -- and resulted in a plan that is projected to more than double the release of methane. Representatives of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs did not respond to an email seeking comment on the documents.
Under Trump, the agency has at least twice advocated taking a more moderate course and cautioned against deeper weakening of Obama-era environmental rules. Earlier this year, EPA officials disputed the safety and economic assertions underpinning a Trump administration plan to ease vehicle efficiency and emission standards.
Business on 10/20/2018