US Presses EU to Align Methane Regulations for Lng

By Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials doubled down on their appeal to EU counterparts to ensure liquefied natural gas shipments that meet current U.S. methane regulations also automatically comply with Europe’s new standards for gas imports, a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday showed.

President Joe Biden’s administration sent a second letter to Ditte Juul Jørgensen, EU Director-General for Energy on Dec. 17, to speed up support for its case that US Environmental Protection Agency rules should be deemed “equivalent” to the EU regulations, whose emission reporting requirements begin to kick in in 2025.

European Union countries approved a law in May to impose methane emissions limits on Europe’s oil and gas imports from 2030, pressuring international suppliers to cut leaks of the potent greenhouse gas.

Linking U.S. and EU methane standards would safeguard the United States’ growing LNG trade with Europe while also cementing Biden’s strict rules on methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, even if they are eventually repealed by President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

“The letter is meant to emphasize in detail the full suite of substantive emissions standards, their robust implementation and compliance, and the reporting requirements’ role in ensuring transparency and accountability,” EPA Assistant Administrator for air and radiation Joe Goffman told Reuters.

Goffman co-signed the letter with Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary at the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. They sent their first letter to the EU at the end of October, just days before the U.S. election.

EU officials were not immediately available for comment.

The United States is the world’s top oil and gas producer, and its exports of LNG surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led European countries to cut their dependence on Russian energy and seek other sources.

The DOE has paused permits for new LNG exports and said this week it had found that rising LNG exports risk dramatically raising greenhouse gas emissions and could also trigger price hikes for U.S. energy consumers.

The EPA has finalized rules that crack down on releases of methane, the main component in natural gas and LNG, from existing and new oil and gas facilities, and set a fee targeting large methane leaks from energy infrastructure.

In its letter to the EU this week, the officials highlighted the emissions reductions potential of the regulations.

EPA methane standards would reduce 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038 while the Waste Emissions Charge rule would result in cumulative 34 million metric tons CO2-equivalent reductions through 2035, they wrote.

The EU has not yet designed the exact methane limits, or determined how another country’s domestic methane regulations could be considered “equivalent” to its own.

Trump, a climate-change skeptic and a big supporter of fossil fuel development, has promised to immediately end the moratorium on new LNG export permits when he returns to the White House on Jan. 20 and has vowed to roll back most of Biden’s climate-focused rules.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Richard Chang)