Author
David McCabe
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Science 101 for Administrator Pruitt
Tomorrow the Earth Day March for Science will happen on the National Mall in DC, and over 500 satellite marches will take place in other locations around the world. Like most of those marching, we never thought we would need to make the case for integrity in environmental science. It…
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A Good First Step – But We Have a Long Way to go on Oil and Gas
Earlier this week USEPA took a long-awaited and critical first step to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas is the largest industrial source of methane pollution, and the standards for methane will also reduce pollution that causes ozone smog…
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Putting Out the Fire: Low-cost Solutions are Available to Prevent Flaring in Tight Oil Fields
Flaring of associated natural gas from oil wells in shale formations like the Eagle Ford in Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota has been growing rapidly for several years. Some well developers have acted responsibly, ensuring that gas pipelines with enough capacity are in place at wells before oil…
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Nationwide Standards are Key to Reducing Emissions from Oil and Gas
Recently oil and gas industry lobbyists have been excitedly reporting about how the industry has “substantially reduced methane emissions” through voluntary efforts. For example, Energy in Depth, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), has produced an infographictouting reductions in methane emissions from selected oil and gas…
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Clean Up All Local Gas Distribution Leaks (Not Just Underground!)
The US Department of Energy and EPA’s Inspector General have called attention in the past two weeks to an important issue – harmful methane emissions from the systems that distribute natural gas in cities and towns. There’s been some effort to clean up methane from natural gas systems in recent…
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Study Shows EPA Underestimates Methane Emissions from Natural Gas Production and Demonstrates Need for Tough National Standards
A recently published article (Brandt et al.) assessed methane leakage rates from the natural gas sector and concluded that “official inventories consistently underestimate actual CH4 emissions, with the [natural gas] and oil sectors as important contributors…” The report stacks up 20 years of research—with different scales and seemingly different findings—along…
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New Rules for Gas: Good Policy, Delayed
Last week, EPA announced New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the oil and natural gas industry. These new rules are an important and long-awaited step towards better control of the air pollution emitted by this rapidly expanding sector. Notably, the standards include the first federal air pollution regulations for hydraulically…
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Memo To EPA: Stay Strong On Oil and Gas Standards
Next week, EPA will issue final New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for conventional air emissions from the oil and natural gas industry. The standards must require the capture of hundreds of thousands of tons of smog-forming emissions emitted annually by this industry, along with millions of tons of methane. Methane…
