Oil and gas companies for the first time will face fines for emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities, the Biden administration announced on Tuesday.
John Podesta, President Biden’s top climate diplomat, discussed the congressionally mandated measure at the United Nations climate summit in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Administration officials are trying to reassure other countries that U.S. climate action will continue even after the impending return of Donald J. Trump to the White House.
Methane is considered a “super pollutant” because while it dissipates more quickly than carbon dioxide, it traps about 80 times more heat in the atmosphere in the short term. Methane emissions from the United States have risen sharply, the result of a booming fossil fuel industry that is producing and exporting oil and gas at record levels.
The Biden administration has made slashing methane a major part of its climate strategy and has encouraged other nations to do the same. When it passed the landmark climate law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress required that large oil and gas companies pay a fee for methane pollution to encourage them to stop emitting. The law spells out the amounts to be charged.
“Slashing these super pollutants is the fastest and often, I would add, the cheapest way to slow down warming in the coming decades,” Mr. Podesta said at a joint event with officials from China and Azerbaijan, where those countries detailed their efforts to curb potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide.
Many in the oil industry strongly oppose the methane fee. Several billionaire donors to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign who run oil companies have made it clear that they want him to scrap it. The American Exploration and Production Council and the American Petroleum Institute, two of the biggest trade groups representing oil and gas producers, also want the fee erased.
“This rule hampers our ability to meet the growing energy needs of American families and businesses and fails to advance meaningful emissions reductions,” Dustin Meyer, senior vice president of policy at the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement.
Environmental groups said that companies could avoid the fee if they cleaned up their emissions. “There is no charge for oil and gas companies that use common sense, readily available solutions to reduce methane pollution that is intensifying extreme weather and putting millions of Americans in harm’s way,” said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Under the new rule, the E.P.A. would charge large energy producers $900 for every ton of methane emissions that exceed levels set by the federal government, beginning in 2024. The fee would increase to $1,200 in 2025 and plateau in 2026 at $1,500 per ton.
The fee would apply to oil and gas facilities that report methane emissions of more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
Eliminating the methane fee could be complicated. Republicans, who will control the Senate and are likely to retain control of the House next year, may be able to quickly repeal the regulation using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to overturn a regulation or rule within 60 days of it being finalized.
The Inflation Reduction Act would still require specific fees and fines imposed on companies that spew excess methane. But with a regulation repealed, the Trump administration would not be required to collect the fee while Republicans in Congress worked to repeal the underlying law.
Climate advocates said they believe even under the Trump administration, the U.S. will be compelled to restrict methane releases. The European Union, the world’s largest gas importer, has already established methane import standards and other nations are considering similar ones.
“Regardless of the pathway the new administration takes, globally-traded gas is going to need to demonstrate its methane emissions,” said Jonathan Banks, global director of methane pollution prevention at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group. “Market access will be dictated by proof of low methane emissions,” he said.
In the United States, a booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, according to research from Kayrros, an environmental data company.
Much of the world’s efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane’s effects on the climate have become better appreciated recently, with the advent of more advanced leak-detection technology, including satellites.
Methane is the main component of what is commonly known as natural gas. It leaks from the production and transportation of gas. Methane easily escapes from storage facilities, pipelines and tankers but is also often deliberately released. Methane is also emitted from livestock and landfills, and occurs naturally in wetlands.
The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is now more than two-and-a-half times as much as preindustrial levels, and more than half of the world’s methane emissions are man-made.
In addition to the methane fee, Mr. Podesta said that the United States would begin a program that would use satellite data and other tools to spot exceptionally large leaks of methane and alert companies.
China’s top climate envoy, Liu Zhenmin, said that his country was also working to reduce methane pollution, with new efforts underway to curtail leaks of the gas from coal mines. But, he added, China still needed better technology to control its emissions as well as improved monitoring equipment.
Last year, the United States and China agreed to work together on curbing methane, a rare moment of cooperation between two geopolitical rivals.
“Our work has not been effective enough, however, China is firmly committed to improve non-CO2 emissions control,” Mr. Liu said at the climate talks in Baku. “I hope U.S.-China cooperation will continue to be enhanced.”
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