WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule undoing the Obama administration’s methane regulations. Nick Loris, deputy director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and Herbert and Joyce Morgan fellow in energy and environmental policy at The Heritage Foundation, said:

Burdensome regulations yielding negligible climate benefits threaten the United States’ ability to produce affordable energy. As the world’s largest natural gas producer, increased supplies have been a huge boon to American families and energy-intensive manufacturing industries. Natural gas exports have helped our allies reduce dependence on Russian gas. The EPA’s reversal of Obama’s duplicative and unnecessary methane regulations further advances the era of United States energy dominance while protecting air quality.

 

Methane emissions had fallen before the Obama-era rule was ever put in place despite substantial increased energy production because companies have an economic incentive to capture it and sell it. These rules were a costly, non-solution in search of a problem. The EPA was right to right size them.