Biden’s climate law fines oil companies for methane pollution. The bill is coming due. Recent research suggests the IRA’s methane fee could batter the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1 Billion+
Biden’s climate law fines oil companies for methane pollution. The bill is coming due. Recent research suggests the IRA’s methane fee could batter the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1 Billion+
Recent research suggests that the IRA’s methane fee could batter the oil and gas industry to the tune of more than $1 billion.
Make it $1T+ and you'll raise my eyebrows.
Fuck em.
A billion to the industry as whole? Man they might have to fish in the couch cushions to come up with that kind of money.
What matters here is that this is expensive enough that it suddenly makes financial sense to stop emitting in a lot of cases. That's a big deal.
It really should be more. The fossil fuel industry in the U.S. is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion per year. I probably don't have to point it out but 1 billion is just 5% of the free money they get from the government anyway.
People are complaining that this isn't enough, but no one is celebrating that we're fining them over a billion more now? A billion is a big number. I'm glad we're doing more to fight these industries than we were before
I'll celebrate when it actually gets enforced.
The fossil fuel industry in the U.S. is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion per year. I probably don't have to point it out but 1 billion is just 5% of the free money they get from the government anyway.
Good
Good, but not good enough.
I’ll believe it when I see it. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the past decade is that rules and laws are only as good as their enforcement.
A billion dollars is chump change. How do we fine people the cost if doing business for something that is going to cost us the habitabiloty of the planet if we don't fix it. Am I living in crazy town or something, bcz that seems insane to me.
Happy to see it
Diversified, which has become the largest owner of oil and gas wells in the U.S., has some 70,000 such old and potentially leaky wells — making it potentially one of the biggest methane emitters in the industry as well.
According to Geofinancial, Diversified would be liable for as much as $184 million if its annual excess methane emissions are equivalent to what it released over the year ending in September 2023. While the satellite results are a snapshot in time and contain some uncertainty, the overall finding that Diversified is probably facing catastrophically steep methane fees likely holds regardless of the potential variation.
If diversified goes under, I doubt it has enough in escrow to close all of those wells. Will the government allow it to use the money from the fine to close the leakiest wells as a compromise?
Yea, a company like Diversified that buys old wells really gets hit hard with this, while big companies that just drill new wells (and create new problems when the wells get old) have much less methane emission and don't get penalized that much, if at all.
A drop in a barrel. Pathetic. No more than a fee to do business as usual.
It's expensive enough that it's cheaper to prevent emissions in most cases. That's the idea.
$1 Billion+ Military budget increase incoming
Boo fucking hoo
Pay up
I'd rather see things fixed so that they don't leak methane. That's a kind of tax avoidance I can get behind.
Too little, too late.
The thing about methane is that it only lasts a few years in the atmosphere before breaking down. This means that its impact is determined by the rate of release, unlike CO2, which accumulates, so that total cumulative emissions are what matter.
Cut the release rate for methane, and we can make a big difference, no matter when we do it.