PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Pennsylvania environmental regulators are “re-evaluating” their overdue rule for cutting air pollution from oil and gas well sites even as they face a deadline to finalize the new standards or risk the loss of federal highway funds.
On Wednesday, the state Department of Environmental Protection withdrew the rule from consideration by the state’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which was scheduled to vote on it at an upcoming meeting on May 19.
DEP spokesman Neil Shader said the department pulled the rule after the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee sent a disapproval letter that triggers a legislative review process that could stretch through the end of the year.
The rule is the last piece of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s strategy to reduce methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas well sites and associated equipment. It’s designed to curb emissions of a smog-forming group of chemicals called volatile organic compounds while cutting emissions of methane, a powerful climate-warming gas, as a side benefit.
Pennsylvania is more than three years past the deadline when it was required to implement the oil and gas air pollution controls, which are based on federal guidelines.
It now faces a June 16 deadline to finalize the rule or face sanctions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
”This delay caused by the disapproval resolution would jeopardize billions of dollars in federal highway funds,” Mr. Shader said. “DEP believes that re-evaluating the regulation and resubmitting to [the Environmental Quality Board] could avoid or minimize sanctions from the federal government.”
The state Environmental Quality Board reviews and formally adopts rules developed by DEP. It voted to adopt the final oil and gas pollution rule in March.
In its letter, the Republican-led House committee wrote that the rule has “a fatal flaw” because it did not follow a 2016 state law that requires conventional oil and gas wells to be regulated independently from those tapping the Marcellus and Utica shales.
The air pollution rule, like the federal guidelines it is based on, does not distinguish between the two types of well sites. DEP has said the law requiring separate oil and gas rules does not apply to air pollution rules.
”DEP had every opportunity to comply with this law, but chose not to and instead chose to concoct a specious argument to justify their failure instead of addressing the issue,” 16 members of the committee wrote, including all of its Republican members and Democrat Pam Snyder of Greene County.
The disapproval letter echoes a complaint made in a lawsuit by the state’s conventional oil and gas producers, who are seeking court action to block the rule from applying to their well sites.
In a court filing Thursday, DEP said the conventional industry’s claims should be dismissed since “only the possibility of a future regulation exists” at this point. The Commonwealth Court tossed “virtually indistinguishable” claims made by one of the industry trade groups in 2016 at a similar stage of the rule-making process for that reason, DEP wrote.
Environmental advocates said there was no time to waste.
”Methane is a growing climate threat and Pennsylvania urgently needs to adopt these regulations,” said Joseph Otis Minott, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council. “At this point, it is likely that EPA will sanction Pennsylvania shortly for not adopting the rule. Unless DEP can figure out how to quickly adopt the rule, the EPA sanctions will be quite draconian.”
The first sanctions would require major new air pollution sources in Pennsylvania to offset double their emissions, according to DEP. Federal highway funding sanctions would begin six months later, unless the air pollution control rule is in effect.
