The Trump administration official leading an effort to loosen rules on methane pollution was an unnamed author of key industry arguments against those same rules just four years ago when he was an oil and gas lobbyist.<\/p>\n
Aaron Szabo, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, is listed in PDF metadata as the author of a January 2022 comment letter objecting to proposed controls on methane emissions in the oil and gas industry. The letter was submitted to the EPA by the American Exploration and Production Council, which represents some of the industry\u2019s largest emitters of the planet-warming gas, including ConocoPhillips, Diversified Energy and Hilcorp. Szabo\u2019s name does not appear in the document itself, but it can be found in information embedded by the software used to create the PDF file.<\/p>\n
Szabo was registered as a lobbyist for one of the AXPC\u2019s lesser-known members, Ovintiv, when he drafted the arguments against the restrictions, which were finalized later in the Biden administration. He has also lobbied for other clients in the oil and chemicals sectors. While he did not hide that work during his confirmation last year as head of the EPA\u2019s Office of Air and Radiation, he described it in terms that avoided any mention of efforts to influence climate policy: \u201cI learned how regulated entities comply with the federal government\u2019s thousands of regulations and policies. I also saw firsthand that the people working in these companies want to ensure the environment is properly protected.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his current role overseeing federal climate rules at the EPA, Szabo has been soliciting input and even specific regulatory language from oil industry groups that stand to gain from watered-down methane rules, according to internal emails, calendar entries and records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica.<\/p>\n
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the ranking Democrat on the Senate\u2019s Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed to Szabo\u2019s previous lobbying as evidence that the EPA had effectively been captured by the oil and gas industry. \u201cNow he can do Big Oil\u2019s dirty work from inside the EPA,\u201d Whitehouse told ProPublica in an email.<\/p>\n
As part of its plan to \u201cunleash American energy,\u201d the Trump administration has waged an unprecedented campaign against regulations on fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming. One of its biggest moves was to repeal the \u201cendangerment finding\u201d that classified greenhouse gases as pollutants \u2014 the basis for the EPA\u2019s authority to limit emissions at all. Rather than throw out the methane rules entirely, however, Szabo\u2019s office is working to revise them, emails and documents show. It has already delayed many of the compliance deadlines until next year.<\/p>\n
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a climate superpollutant, responsible for one-third of the rise in global temperatures since preindustrial times, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. When it escapes into the atmosphere without being burned for energy, it can trap 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, research shows. The oil and gas business is the largest industrial source of U.S. methane emissions, in part because of leaks from poorly maintained equipment. If it is uneconomical to collect the gas for sale, companies sometimes intentionally release it in a process known as venting.<\/p>\n
To cut down on methane discharges, President Joe Biden\u2019s EPA imposed much stricter controls on oil and gas operations, including requiring increased monitoring for leaks and equipment upgrades. According to agency estimates, the new rules would have lowered the industry\u2019s methane emissions by nearly 80%. And, given that the gas breaks down relatively quickly, this would have been one of the fastest ways to reduce global warming.<\/p>\n
Industry groups pushed back. In the January 2022 letter that Szabo helped to draft, the AXPC used the word \u201cburdensome\u201d 10 times to describe the new requirements and pushed for more \u201cflexibility\u201d to allow for less expensive leak-detection methods and less frequent monitoring, among other requests.<\/p>\n
The group also cast doubt on the rules\u2019 expected climate and health benefits, highlighting what it called \u201cthe importance of communicating the significant uncertainties within the estimates.\u201d The AXPC\u2019s chief executive, Anne Bradbury, added in a later statement that the rules risked \u201cundercutting US production in the near and long-term \u2014 which will lead to increased energy costs and reduced energy security.\u201d<\/p>\n