The Trump administration is lowering the regulation of greenhouse gases, even oil companies

Just two days after President Donald Trump qualified as an ecologist, his government has announced a relaxation of methane regulations, to the point that even oil companies are opposed to this change.

In the proposed rule change, released Thursday morning by the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency would end federal regulations requiring oil and gas companies to use technology to inspect and repair methane leaks in their infrastructure. This would leave large segments of the oil and gas industry completely uncontrolled, with no pollution limit. Methane emissions are known to cause climate change.

The administration estimates that the setbacks will save the oil and gas industry $ 17 million to $ 19 million a year.

But the big oil and gas arms do not support the change. Susan Dio, President and President of BP America, wrote an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle in March, in which she claimed that it was essential that the EPA regulate methane gas.

"It's the right thing to do for the planet," she wrote. "The best way to help further reduce and eventually eliminate methane emissions across the entire industry is to directly regulate new and existing sources at the federal level."

Last year, ExxonMobil wrote to the EPA asking it to keep methane regulations intact. Gretchen Watkins, Shell's US president, said in March that the EPA should maintain rules governing methane production.

Many of these leaders focus on regulating future methane emissions. This is because red tape or regulatory rules often benefit large, long-standing companies with the money and infrastructure to meet them. They function as a natural barrier to prevent newcomers from entering the industry. These companies have already spent considerable sums to develop technologies to reduce their emissions and even more to convince the American company that natural gas is a good energy alternative.

The new change in the rules of the administration could harm the entire sector. "The reputation of US natural gas is on the brink, and the reduction of methane is the cause," said Ben Ratner, senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund, The New York Times.

However, it is likely that small businesses will benefit, at least temporarily, from this backtracking. Lee Fuller, executive vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said at the Time that it's easier for large companies to comply with federal regulations simply because they have the means to do so, normally "for these small businesses, the economic impact is very different ". But the field level and barriers to entry will now be a little more uniform for companies that can not afford large infrastructure or technological changes.

"This proposal is a blatant attempt to give oil and gas companies another free pass to release as much harmful air pollution as they want while the public pays the price," said Sierra's chief executive Club, Michael Brown, in a statement. The cost of climate change is expected to be about $ 224 billion more per year in the United States by 2090, according to Trump's own EPA.

Methane is the second largest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions, after carbon dioxide. Methane accounts for about 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions from the country, but initially has about 86 times more energy to capture heat in the atmosphere than CO₂.

The EPA rule change will be open to comment from the public and stakeholders for 60 days prior to its finalization.

At a press conference at the G7 summit in France, Donald Trump said he was "an environmentalist.Many people do not understand that." The president also said that he knew "more about the environment than most people". In the past, the president described climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. This is the seventh time that the Trump administration is trying to go back in the regulation against oil pollution.