Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest oil and gas trade association, announced its opposition to new Clean Air rules proposed by the U.S. EPA. As I discussed in a blog post late last year, EPA has proposed new rules to regulate toxic and dangerous air pollution from fracking and other natural gas production activities that are currently not regulated at all. Many of the controls proposed by EPA will actually save the industry money by capturing more natural gas that can be sold instead of wasted. The EPA proposal does not go far enough to protect public health from all threats in the oil and gas industry, but it's a start.
API says the EPA proposal is "bad public policy." Visit my colleague Vignesh Gowrishankar's blog for the nitty-gritty numbers on the API claims. The bottom line is that oil and gas companies can and should be required to clean up their dirty air pollution.
The reality is that parents across the country are concerned about the harmful air emissions from oil and gas facilities near homes and schools, as you can see in the following video news report from Colorado. A huge thanks to Congressman Jared Polis for visiting families concerned about the health of their children. When was the last time an oil and gas CEO did that? Thanks also to Congressman Polis for introducing legislation to require oil and gas companies to abide by the same clean air and safe drinking water rules as any other industry. Here's the video (please pardon the 15-second ad):