Biden Pushes Accelerator on Methane Abatement

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Some $850 million in government funding will support methane abatement projects for small oil and gas operators, investments that the U.S. energy secretary said were vital for public health.

Departing President Joe Biden and his Cabinet officials are running out of time to push a greener agenda before pro-oil President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. On December 20, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that 43 projects were selected for negotiating for the funds.

"The public health of our nation depends greatly on our ability to drastically reduce harmful pollution from America's largest source of industrial methane--the oil and gas sector," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

Methane is the main component of natural gas, though it is also a potent greenhouse gas with a warming potential far greater than that of carbon dioxide. Biden enacted a pause, which was later suspended by the courts, on new export facilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG) while the administration studied the potential emissions up and down the supply chain.

Operators are working to capture the natural gas that's associated with oil deposits, but it's burned off, or flared, in many cases. The EPA said the investments outlined in mid-December will support the adoption of advanced abatement technology in the oil and gas industry.

Though short on specifics, the Biden administration said 31 of the 43 projects outlined in the latest funding measure would deploy "early-commercial technology solutions to reduce methane emissions from new and existing equipment."

In October, EQT Corporation (NYSE:EQT) (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the largest U.S. natural gas producer by volume, said it reached its climate goals early in part due to the alteration of its upstream operations by replacing diesel frac fleets with electric fleets powered by its own natural gas, avoiding some 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalent emissions over the course of two years.

The fate of the funding effort may seem unclear given that Trump has suggested dismantling the EPA at times, though much of the funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained green incentives and was supported by many in the Republican Party.

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