Major oil and gas companies, environmental groups, state agencies and lawmakers are in a rarefied place of agreement: Methane regulations on Pennsylvania’s new oil and gas sites must be retained.

The odd man out: the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA has proposed a rollback of current regulations (which were enacted in 2016.) Those regulations require companies to identify and stop methane leaks that emanate from new and modified oil and gas production, pipelines and storage equipment. The EPA contends that controls on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — which are a separate but related category of chemicals present in oil and gas extraction — serve the purpose and that methane controls are redundant on the new and modified equipment.

This is the wrong course of action for Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania produces more than 20% of the nation’s natural gas supply. It also generates huge amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that causes global warming.

The exact amount of methane varies depending on the source: The Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group, estimates it could be as high as 520,000 tons per year; the state Department of Environmental Protection puts the number at 112,100 tons, based on reporting from the industry.

Either way, that’s a lot of methane posing a potential risk to the environment.

Recognizing the optics, some major natural gas companies — Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Equinor and Canonsburg-based Equitrans Midstream — want national rules targeting methane. They wisely and rightly see that relaxed methane standards could erode public confidence in natural gas as a cleaner fossil fuel.

The state Department of Environmental Protection wants no weakening of current standards. The state agency has gone on record as opposed to the EPA plan because some methane leaks could go undetected.

Federal lawmakers also oppose the proposed EPA change, including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, whose district includes Beaver County, where Shell’s ethane cracker plant is under construction.

Mr. Lamb points out that the ecological benefit of natural gas — a cleaner fuel source — is lost if commonsense standards for detecting methane leaks are weakened in any way. His concern is both for the environment and the potential lost jobs if natural gas production falls out of favor in Pennsylvania.

The EPA has set out on a course to benefit the natural gas industry. However, even many major players in the industry don’t believe this move will help. The EPA should listen to the stakeholders and take heed.

First Published: December 17, 2019, 11:00 a.m.