USEPA’s new fracking
emission standards, released Wednesday, April 18, require shale gas fracking
owners and operators to either flare volatile emissions, or employ green completions
technologies to reduce air pollution from fracking well operations. After
January 1, 2015, permissibility of emission flares will be eliminated and all
fracking wells will be required to use the green completion technology to
reduce 95% of VOC emissions from shale gas recovery operations.
Colorado and Wyoming
already regulate fracking well emissions. USEPA’s Assistant Administrator for
Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy describes the new regulations as “practical, flexible,
affordable, and achievable.” American Petroleum Institute’s Director of
Regulatory and Scientific Affairs Howard Feldman acknowledges that EPA’s just
published final rule is better than the agency’s initial proposal. “EPA has
made some improvements in the new rules that allow our companies to continue
reducing emissions while producing the oil and natural gas our country needs,”
Feldman remarked.
On the other hand,
Natural Resources Defense Council staff scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman
complains the rules are far too long in coming: “The rapid expansion of oil and
natural gas drilling without modern air pollution controls has exposed millions
of Americans to a toxic brew of cancer-causing, smog-producing, and climate-changing
air pollutants. … The oil and gas industry has failed even to adopt pollution
controls that pay for themselves.”
