When it comes to climate change, what happens in Texas—the nation’s top oil and gas producer—increasingly doesn’t stay in Texas. The Lone Star state accounts for nearly a third of the country’s refining capacity and emits more greenhouse gasses than any other state. Now, those emissions are poised to increase, as the Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Thursday to repeal an Obama-era rule that limits methane emissions from the industry.
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas that’s 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It leaks at nearly every stage of drilling and production. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, repealing existing methane limits could lead to an annual increase of 5 million metric tons of methane emitted, which would be enough gas to heat about 4 million homes.
The proposed rollback is a political maneuver by the Trump administration that will make it harder for the next administration to regulate methane. The EPA argues that the Obama administration, which enacted the regulation, never had the authority to regulate the gas since it wasn’t technically considered a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.
