Tag: oil and gas industry

When it comes to acknowledging humans’ role in climate change, oil and gas industry lawyer says ‘that ship has sailed’

Washington Post logoIn a closed-door meeting of oil and gas executives this summer in Colorado Springs, industry lawyer Mark Barron offered a bold proposal: Energy companies must accept that fossil fuels are helping to drive climate change.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s real, or not real, or what the issues are,” said Barron, who heads the energy litigation arm of Baker Hostetler. “That ship has sailed from a political perspective.”

Barron added that any American younger than 40 had grown up learning that climate change is “an existential crisis that we need to address.”

View the complete September 26 article by Juliet Eilperin on The Washington Post website here.

Even Big Oil doesn’t like the EPA’s methane rollback

Powerful members of the fossil fuel lobby support the Trump administration’s rollback, but not all of the industry is on board.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday announced it will reverse Obama-era limitations on the greenhouse gas methane, which is far more potent than carbon dioxide and often associated with fracking.

In a statement Thursday, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the Trump administration will remove “unnecessary and duplicative regulatory burdens from the oil and gas industry” by slashing methane regulations.

A number of major fossil fuel corporations have objected to the rollback, however, even as the oil and gas lobby more broadly has played a key role in securing the move. Meanwhile, environmental activists and public-health experts have expressed alarm at the potential impacts of loosening methane regulations.

View the complete August 29 article by E.A. Crunden on the ThinkProgress website here.