In a press release, the agency announced that, effective immediately, an Obama-era information collection request has been cancelled.
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The EPA will no longer require oil and gas companies to report their methane emissions
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. But the EPA will no longer collect information about how much of it oil and gas producers send into the atmosphere.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt
The original request, sent to companies in November 2016, required oil and gas producers to provide a broad range of information about their methane emissions and equipment, as well as the feasibility of controls designed to limit methane release.
That information was being collected as part of a long-term project to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas production, an initiative that grew out of an agreement between Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, gets released during the extraction process for oil and natural gas. In fact, the sector is the largest industrial emitter of methane.
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While the gas accounts for a small portion of overall greenhouse gas emissions and doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it traps thirty times more heat per ton than carbon dioxide does. Climate scientists are still working to understand how methane emissions fit into the overall climate change puzzle.
In the EPA's press release, the agency explained its decision to end its information-gathering initiative, writing:
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