CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is leading a multistate coalition, this time in a supplemental letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding an oil and natural gas rule proposed by the agency that he calls a job killer.
The letter, addressed to EPA Administrator Michael Regan, follows a missive penned by Morrisey in January 2022 which expressed concerns the proposed rule would establish new standards of performance under the Clean Air Act for new and modified sources of methane in the oil and natural gas sector.
Recently, the EPA submitted a supplemental proposed rule — Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas Sector Climate Review — which the coalition said goes “far beyond its statutory authority and would impose unnecessary costs on the energy industry, all while disregarding the role of the States in regulating methane emissions.“
“It’s either the EPA missed our letter or ignored our concerns,” Morrisey said, writing “Rather than listen to our advice, EPA has doubled down — proposing a rule that vastly increases the EPA’s authority while imposing compliance obligations even stricter than the ones described in the Proposed Rule.”
The February 13 letter highlights, according to the 24 AGs who signed it, how the EPA’s supplemental proposal exacerbates the flaws of the proposed rule, which incorrectly reinstates legal deficiencies of the 2016 Clean Air Act rule, reflects an unbalanced view of EPA’s prior regulations and improperly preserves duplicative and costly regulation.
West Virginia is a leader in natural gas production. The natural gas, pipeline and construction sectors provide thousands of jobs to hard-working West Virginians. Morrisey says reintroducing unnecessary and costly regulations would jeopardize those jobs.
Experts estimate that in West Virginia alone, implementation of the proposed rule under EPA’s preferred two-year timetable could cost that state’s environmental regulatory agency more than $278 million each year
Morrisey was joined in the letter by his counterparts in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.
