Environment

Shell Urges Trump White House To Tighten Methane Leak Rules

Royal Dutch Shell urged US President Donald Trump’s administration to tighten restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production, instead of weakening them as planned.

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Royal Dutch Shell urged US President Donald Trump’s administration on 12 March to tighten restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production, instead of weakening them as planned.

Breaking from a decades-old tradition of avoiding criticism of US government policies, Shell’s US Country Chair Gretchen Watkins called on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten rules to plug methane leaks, a potent greenhouse gas.

“It is a big part of the climate problem, and, frankly, we can do more,” Watkins said in an interview with Reuters at IHS Markit’s CERAWeek conference in Houston.

"We don’t usually tell governments how to do their job, but we’re ready to break with that and say, ‘Actually, we want to tell you how to do your job.’”

She urged the EPA “to put in a regulatory framework that will both regulate existing methane emissions but also future methane emissions.”

The Trump administration in September proposed weakening requirements for repairing leaks of the greenhouse gas in drilling operations in a step to roll back an Obama-era policy intended to combat climate change.

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