The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt to delay the implementation of a federal rule intended to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production. The underlying case, however, will continue to work its way through the federal court system.
The order issued on Friday in Oklahoma v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency comes after about two dozen states joined with industry groups in petitioning the court in August for a stay on the implementation of the new rules.
The Supreme Court denied the request without hearing arguments.
Friday’s order does not mean that Oklahoma v. U.S. EPA is over. The petition for a stay was an attempt to override a lower court’s refusal to stop the implementation of the rule pending a court ruling regarding whether the EPA overstepped its authority.
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The case stems from a final rule that the EPA published in March aimed at significantly limiting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. The EPA says that Section 111 of the Clean Air Act gives the agency the authority to draft rules that limit emissions if those pollutants threaten the health and welfare of the public.
“Climate change is the Nation’s most pressing environmental challenge; the primary cause of climate change is the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas that drives climate change and additionally results in ground level ozone; and the oil and gas industry is the largest industrial emitter of methane in the United States,” the EPA wrote in its response to the petition.
The federal government argued that halting the implementation of the rule would postpone the methane reductions that the EPA is trying to achieve and that could harm public health.
Among other things, the rule attempts to limit flaring, a practice that involves burning off methane gas. Methane is the main component of natural gas and, if captured, can be put to beneficial use. Practices such as venting and flaring are some of the main ways that methane is released from oil and gas sites. While flaring tends to have less emissions associated with it, improperly operating flares can be a major source of methane emissions.
“These requirements include reasonable exemptions for certain temporary and emergency uses of flaring, and a transition period to allow owners and operators adequate time to incorporate this requirement into their development plans and to deploy any necessary equipment and controls,” the rule published in March states.
David Doniger, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that the Supreme Court “sensibly rejected” the efforts by industry to halt the rule’s implementation.
“For far too long, oil and gas producers have been allowed to ignore the leaks in their own equipment and let dangerous methane and smog-forming compounds pollute our air,” he said.
“This EPA rule is a simple step forward that says the industry must periodically check its equipment and pipelines for leaks and cut down on flaring. With this crucial and commonsense decision today, the rules will stay in place, and states and the industry must begin to plan to comply with them. Of course, this isn’t the end of the road. We’ll now join EPA in defending these standards at the D.C. Circuit. But the decision today is a key sign that the EPA retains the ability to address climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.”
New Mexico already had rules in place limiting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector prior to the EPA drafting the new requirements. However, many of the states that petitioned the Supreme Court to stop the implementation of the rule border New Mexico and the emissions from oil and gas production in those neighboring states already impacts people living in New Mexico. Methane is also a potent greenhouse gas, which means emissions contribute to climate change and that is impacting people all over the world.
Camilla Feibelman with the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter in New Mexico described the state as a national leader in “protecting our communities and climate from methane and smog pollution.”
She said in a statement that the safeguards championed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham set the standards for the federal rules. Feibelman said these federal standards protect communities particularly in southeast New Mexico “from unfettered oil and gas pollution from Texas.”
“Because of the Permian oil boom, New Mexico is now the country’s second most prolific oil producer, so we have a special responsibility to act, especially after this summer of fires, floods and extreme heat in our state,” Feibelman said.
The petitioners who sought to overturn the EPA rule argued that it is a form of government overreach and that only the states have the authority to implement such regulations.
Under the new rule, states have two years to develop and submit plans to the federal agency to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas facilities. For some states, that means increasing oversight of sites that have gone largely unchecked. Oklahoma argues that the new rule would require it to regulate more than 200,000 oil and gas facilities while it currently only regulates 10,000. Should the states fail to develop and submit satisfactory plans, the EPA will step up and regulate those existing oil and gas facilities. But the states involved in the petition say that two years is not enough time for them to develop these plans and that they would need at least three years.
Prior to approaching the Supreme Court for a stay, the petitioners asked the D.C. Circuit to halt the implementation of these rules. But that was also rejected, prompting the petition filed with the Supreme Court.
While the petition to halt the implementation of the rules was denied by both the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit is still tasked with evaluating the arguments that petitioners have made. Should the D.C. Circuit rule against the petitioners, that decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Although Friday’s order is not the end of the Oklahoma v. U.S. EPA case, environmental advocates celebrated it as a victory.
“Despite their best efforts, the corporate polluters who filed these stay applications identified no legal flaws at all in EPA’s standards, which reflect reasonable, commonsense measures for reducing the harm that oil and gas operations impose on our climate and health,” Sierra Club Senior Attorney Andres Restrepo said in a statement following the order. “These safeguards fulfill the agency’s legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to protect the public from methane and other pollutants that contaminate our air. With no noted dissents from the Supreme Court, we are confident the oil and gas industry’s baseless legal arguments will continue to fall flat as litigation proceeds, and look forward to defending EPA’s standards at every step in the process.”