The Patriot Post® · New EPA Methane Regs All for Nothing. Literally.

You can’t make this stuff up. Last week the federal government removed all exemptions related to its regulation of methane emissions for no other reason than sheer incompetence. For starters, “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expanding its crackdown on methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling to all existing wells,” writes the Houston Chronicle’s Fuelfix blog. “The announcement from the White House Thursday came as part of a joint agreement with Canada on climate change, curbing methane emissions from North America and taking steps to protect the Arctic region from rising temperatures and oceans.”

Just one problem. The EPA evidently either forgot to ask for or simply ignored the counsel of government scientists. How’s this for ironic timing? “Just one day after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will regulate methane emissions from existing sources of oil and natural gas in order to ‘combat climate change,’ scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have released a new study finding that oil and natural gas producers are not to blame for a global increase in methane emissions,” Energy In Depth reports. “In fact, according to the researchers, the increased emissions are instead coming from wetlands and agriculture.”

And what was the point of tightening methane regulations anyway? As Hot Air points out, “The energy industry didn’t need anyone to tell them to reduce methane leakage at drill sites. Why? Because it’s a primary component of natural gas. In case that’s not sinking in yet… it’s the stuff they are drilling for. When they let it slip out into the atmosphere that’s literally money going up in smoke.” Unlike Socialism, industries competing in a capitalist system can’t survive without making every dollar count (i.e., conservation). That sound you hear? It’s the collective groan of the estimated 30,000 polar bears currently living in the Arctic. Wait, didn’t the climate lobby also predict they’d go extinct? Was that before or after the ice age scare? Science — it’s so confusing. Maybe, just maybe, the government should stop forcing ill-advised rules on us, particularly when the feds can’t even agree on the science.