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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The White House administration is preparing to ease environmental restrictions for oil and gas companies. Such changes are allegedly helping the energy industry save billions of dollars and substantially reduce the costs of extracting crude.
What prompted the rule review
On Tuesday, 27 October, during a campaign rally in Texas, Donald Trump plans to announce a loosening of federal methane-emission reduction requirements. This is taking place as part of supporting the Republican Party candidate for the Senate, a White House official said on condition of anonymity to Bloomberg.
Texas remains a leader in oil production in the United States, and local entrepreneurs have long pressed the White House to relax restrictions. At the same time, the new proposal appears amid efforts to reassure voters concerned about rising oil and fuel prices due to Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Middle East conflict.
The initiative targets rules from the Biden era that required companies to regularly check wells and replace equipment prone to gas leaks. Now, the so-called “overburden” on business would be removed to make home heating and vehicle operation less costly for Americans.
What nuances did Trump foresee
As part of the changes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would propose favorable terms for low-producing wells that extract no more than 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day. This came in response to calls from small independent companies that warned compliance costs under prior environmental rules exceeded the profitability of operating old fields.
Interesting! Currently, roughly 79% of one million oil and gas wells in the United States are low-producing. Activists and former EPA officials, however, warn that such facilities are a significant source of methane, and scrapping the requirements would increase greenhouse gas emissions amid worsening climate issues.
Additionally, the government would also suspend a program that allowed authorized third-party organizations to report large spills. The agency, which already paused implementing the initiative last year, plans to justify its cancellation with doubts about practicality and legal cautions. Moreover, rules restricting routine gas flaring at oil wells would be softened.
The proposed changes are said to save about 45 billions of dollars and would also ensure additional production of 210 million barrels of “black gold” and 1,41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas between 2027 and 2050 year.
As a reminder, on the eve of this, Trump invoked the Cold War-era law to support the US oil industry: the government would be able to fund strategically important projects, including the construction of pipelines, storage facilities, and offshore terminals.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Трамп планує здешевити видобуток нафти в США на мільярди доларів". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Channel 24.
