Some questions remain whether Republicans in the U.S. Senate have the votes to go ahead and put an end to methane regulations introduced by the Obama administration.
So far, there is nothing on the Senate calendar indicating a vote might come on a move to kill the Bureau of Land Management’s Methane and Waste Prevention Rule which was finalized by the Interior Department last November. It leads some on capitol hill to speculate the Republicans don’t have the votes.
Observers indicate that if the Senate uses the Congressional Review Act to overturn the BLM methane regulation, it would be invalidated and the agency could not come up with a similar replacement rule.
It took the BLM five years to create the rule which the Obama administration claimed would reduce methane emissions by as much as 35 percent. With the methane rule, the federal government would have increased revenue. The Government Accountability Office estimated the government loses $23 million in royalties when methane is released, burned off or leaked from wells on federal and tribal lands.
The oil and gas industry calls it a “bad rule” that resulted in a federal lawsuit filed in Wyoming by the Western Energy Alliance and the Independent Petroleum Association of America. The suit alleged the rule was “vast overreach” by the Interior Department.