Today, environmental and Gulf groups challenged the Department of the Interior’s outdated and ineffective air quality rules for offshore oil and gas development. The Interior Department finalized these rules in June 2020 after rejecting an Obama administration proposal that would have improved air pollution controls since 1980. Shelf.
Although the Department of the Interior has a legal duty to control waste and ensure that foreign operations comply with air quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it still follow regulations that have been updated for decades. These standards fail to account for technological advances in air pollution control and industry practices and do not reflect current EPA standards.
This failure has serious consequences for the communities of the Gulf and the region. Air emissions from drilling operations, support vessels, combustion and ventilation, as well as the refining, transportation and burning of these fossil fuels, represent a major source of pollution in offshore areas. in seas and coasts, including in cities already burdened by emissions from industry. health related effects.
In addition, current laws fail to do anything about methane pollution, complicating US efforts to significantly reduce methane and other harmful air pollutants from the oil and gas industry. The United States has committed to reducing methane production by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030, which was announced along with 50 other countries at COP28 in Dubai last fall.
Recent science shows that methane emissions from Gulf Coast drilling are three times higher than those from the Interior. Much of the methane from offshore drilling — which accounts for about 10% of total emissions from US petroleum operations — is neither reduced nor properly reported. Methane pollution not only accelerates climate change and is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its first two decades in the atmosphere, but also contributes to ozone pollution in the Gulf.
Earthjustice filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Healthy Gulf, Oceana, and the Sierra Club.
“Healthy Gulf stands firm with our partners in condemning the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) dangerously outdated regulations, unchanged since 1980. These regulations fail to reduce serious air pollution which is caused by drilling in the seas that endangers the residents of the Gulf and worsens the climate crisis,” he said Martha Collins, Executive Director of Healthy Gulf. “BOEM must immediately update its standards to align with EPA regulations, and we hope that federal regulators will put the health of the environment and our communities ahead of the profits of the fossil fuel industry.”
“In order to meet its legal obligation to effectively manage air pollution from offshore drilling, the Department of the Interior will need to amend these outdated regulations,” it said. Global justice lawyer George Torgun. “Millions of Gulf residents are dealing with extreme air pollution from offshore drilling that is washing ashore and adversely affecting their lives. Meanwhile, the Interior has refused to take action to deal with the emissions large amounts of methane from oil and gas operations, undermining domestic and international commitments by the US to address one of the world’s most powerful greenhouse gases.
“We must change outdated laws that have left the Gulf environment and human health at terrible risk from air pollution caused by offshore drilling,” he said. Julie Teel Simmonds, senior adviser at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Damaging our oceans for hard-to-reach oil makes sense in this climate emergency, but until we stop drilling, oil industry operations in the Gulf must use technology to prevent pollution as much as possible.”
“As the climate crisis looms, now is not the time to give big oil, especially “super emitting” offshore drilling,” he said. Hallie Templeton, Legal Director at Friends of the Earth. “Dangers caused by this industry are widespread, from killing endangered animals such as Rice’s whale to lowering the air and water quality of the Gulf communities. We hope that today’s case can force government officials to finally fix these ineffective air pollution laws and help stop the destruction of this industry completely. ”
“It’s time for BOEM and Interior to take responsibility and hold oil and gas companies accountable by improving standards to protect people and the climate,” he said. Athan Manuel Director of the Land Conservation Program at the Sierra Club. So far, it appears that offshore oil and gas drilling agencies have taken an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to reducing air pollution from these facilities in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. . But the effects of this pollution are felt as much by the coastal communities as the development of the world’s oil.”
“It’s a shame that Gulf residents are forced to live with antiquated air quality regulations that haven’t been changed since the first ‘Star Wars’ hit theaters,” he said. Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon. “We know that methane is 80 times more likely to cause climate change than carbon dioxide, and the Department of the Interior’s old greenhouse gas standards allow offshore drilling to harm air quality The Gulf Coast is already a hotbed of US coastal dredging, and the least the Department of the Interior can do is improve these regulations. to the 21st century.”
Rear end
The Air Quality Control, Reporting, and Compliance Act is mandated under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). The current 2020 legislation rejected major changes introduced in 2016 by the Obama administration and kept in place outdated and ineffective 1980s regulations governing air emissions from oil and gas operations in the Outer Continental Shelf. Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Obama administration’s proposed rules would have included important reforms that: address all current standards and pollution priorities and set short-term rather than annual limits; changed how employers measure and model emissions, as well as the areas where impacts are calculated; has ensured that its standards are updated with any EPA updates to air quality standards; required pollution controls for low emission levels; and it required the integration of emissions from many buildings.
Oil and gas exploration, development and production in the Gulf covers more than 13 million acres of contiguous water, including more than 2,400 active oil and gas leases and approximately 2,000 oil and gas platforms . Yet only about 25% of active leases have begun to produce oil and gas – meaning the industry is sitting on 9 million acres that are still available for future development.
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