Colorado methane pollution rules won’t change — even if federal regulations are rolled back

The Trump administration has proposed a sweeping rollback of federal rules to cut methane emissions from oil and gas operations, but that regulatory broom won’t reach Colorado, which has its own controls on the pollutant.

In September, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission finished two years of rulemaking aimed at reducing oil and gas methane emissions, including adopting most of the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency rules that the Trump administration seeks to overturn.

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission has also banned venting or burning off methane — flaring — at well sites save for emergencies. The commission also set limits for fugitive emissions.

 “Our rules are all now in state statute and state regulation, regardless of what happens at the federal level,” said Stefanie Shoup, the Air Pollution Control Division deputy director for regulatory affairs. “We feel strongly that we have all of the protections that are appropriate.”

Cyrus Western, the EPA administrator of Denver-based Region 8, which covers Colorado and five other mountain and plains states, agreed Colorado was a special case.

“In Colorado, you guys have got your own state regulatory framework for some of those issues,” Western said.

Methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over the first 20 years. It begins to dissipate after that. The gas is also a component of ozone pollution.

Russia is the world’s largest methane emitter, followed closely by the United States, according to the International Energy Agency. In Colorado, the oil and gas industry accounts for 60% of the state’s methane emissions. 

The Trump administration wants to relax regulations cutting emissions from “marginal” wells, which produce less than the equivalent of 15 barrels of oil a day. These wells produce 7% of domestic oil and gas, and about half the industry’s methane.

In Colorado, marginal wells make up 67% of all the wells in the state, almost 30,000 wells, according to Colorado State University analysis.

Marginal wells will continue to be regulated in Colorado under state laws that seek to curb emissions from wells and equipment and reduce overall emissions.

The Trump EPA is also proposing to allow flaring and the use of methane-powered pneumatic controllers — devices widely used to manage temperatures, pressure and liquid levels at oil and gas facilities and drill pads. The Biden rules limited both.

The proposed rule — which is now open for a 45-day public comment period — would require flaring to destroy 95% of the methane and that the controller gases be run through a pollution control device that would destroy 95% of the gas.

Beginning in 2021, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission started requiring the use of nonpolluting controllers, first in new and retrofitted oil and gas sites and then phasing out of all polluting controllers, pumps and compressors by 2027 in areas suffering from ozone pollution and by 2029 for the rest of the state.

EPA’s Western said the administration is trying to balance economics and the environment.

”We can engage in high standards of environmental regulation while simultaneously allowing industry to fulfill their business models and create these really good middle-class jobs,” he said.

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A problem with the Biden rules, Western said, is that “affected everybody, from the littlest guy to the biggest guy, and it really did increase their cost of compliance.”

“For a lot of these small mom-and-pop operators, if the 2024 rules went into full effect, it would seriously hurt their ability to operate or even to exist at all,” Western said. The Trump administration estimates that revised regulations would save $45 billion.

Critics do not see it that way. “At a time when Americans are struggling with energy prices, the Trump administration is going out of its way to allow industry to pollute with zero safeguards,” Ramesh Bhatt, chair of Colorado Sierra Club’s Conservation Committee, said in a statement.

In several ways, Colorado’s rules go beyond the EPA regulations with more extensive requirements for controls on storage tanks and continuous monitoring requirements for certain enclosed areas.

The state has also adopted the first-in-the-nation rule tying oil and gas production to methane emissions. The goal is to reduce the methane emitted for each unit of oil and gas produced, with the goal of ratcheting down the permissible level. Even marginal wells participate in this program.

“Colorado has pretty robust regulations around methane,” Nini Gu, senior regulatory and legislative manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, a national advocacy and policy group. “What Colorado has done is to go above and beyond federal level regulation.”