By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. authorities opened up on Friday aggressive bidding that may shut on Aug. 26 for $850 million in grants to assist small oil and fuel producers monitor and scale back methane from their operations, a serious a part of the Biden administration’s plan to crack down on leaks of the potent greenhouse fuel.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
The funding, made obtainable by means of the administration’s signature local weather regulation known as the Inflation Discount Act, will particularly assist small oil and operators scale back methane emissions and achieve entry to methane detection and discount applied sciences. Will probably be open to trade, academia, NGOs, Native American tribes, and state and native governments.
THE CONTEXT
Some smaller, impartial U.S. oil and fuel operators had strongly opposed the Environmental Safety Company’s new methane requirements that concentrate on a whole bunch of hundreds of current sources nationwide as a result of they’d place a monetary burden on low-producing wells, in addition to the company’s proposed methane payment on producers.
KEY QUOTE
“These investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will drive the deployment of available and advanced technologies to better understand where methane emissions are coming from. That will help us more effectively reduce harmful pollution, tackle the climate crisis, and create good-paying jobs,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan stated.
BY THE NUMBERS
Oil and fuel manufacturing is the supply of round a 3rd of the nation’s methane emissions and is a key goal for the Biden administration because it seeks to fight local weather change. The US is amongst greater than 100 international locations which have pledged to chop their methane emissions 30% by 2030 from 2020 ranges. Low-producing oil and fuel wells that account for simply 6% of whole U.S. manufacturing account for half of the methane emitted from all U.S. effectively websites, a 2022 report discovered.
