The American Petroleum Institute has filed a petition for review in federal court challenging Biden administration mandates cracking down on planet-warming methane emissions from wells, tanks, and pipelines.

Changes Sought: Tuesday’s filing preserves the oil industry group’s legal options and leaves the door open for it to fully litigate the matter later. In the meantime, the group is pursuing administrative changes with the EPA, said Dustin Meyer, the institute’s senior vice president of policy, economics, and regulatory affairs. “API is continuing to work with EPA to advance a final methane rule that builds on the industry’s emissions reduction progress, but we remain concerned with some technical provisions and implementation hurdles in the final rule,” Meyer said.

API is asking the EPA to issue guidance or write new rules creating exemptions for equipment used only temporarily at sites. The group also is requesting the administration provide a clearer path for approving new leak detection equipment in the future, going beyond the optical gas imaging cameras now widely used to pinpoint possible emissions. Read More

Biden shouldn’t waive sanctions for a French-owned company to work with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, Rosatom, according to Republican leaders of House and Senate foreign policy committees. Exempting France’s EDF from US sanctions would allow it to acquire a subsidiary of a major US company that was engaged in civil nuclear projects with Rosatom in Hungary, Turkey, and Egypt, thereby allowing those projects to restart and facilitate “Russian energy influence and related corruption,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) wrote in a May 6 letter to Biden.

• Read the Letter

The Industrial Energy Consumers of America is supporting a bipartisan bill that aims to award refunds to consumers if FERC finds unjustified changes in rates or charges. IECA is refuting attacks that the bill (S. 4171) would hamstring efforts to building new interstate natural gas pipelines. “IECA is strongly in support of building new pipeline capacity and would not support this legislation if we thought that it did,” President Paul N. Cicio said in a statement Tuesday.

EPA’s $11 billion budget request for fiscal 2025 will help the agency continue “its work to address the climate crisis and reduce greenhouse gas emissions” as well as continue to put in place science-informed clean energy rules, Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) will say in planned remarks at a hearing today.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan will testify on the administration’s budget request, a 20% increase over the fiscal 2024 enacted level for the agency. “In recent years, flat budgets and staffing shortages have severely undermined the agency’s ability to do its job in many respects,” according to Carper’s remarks obtained by Bloomberg Government.

The budget recommendation proposes hiring 2,000 new full-time employees in fiscal 2025. Ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) likely will question Regan about multiple clean energy and climate rules that they agency has finalized in recent weeks, including those related to power plant emissions and tougher emissions standards for new cars.

• More on the Hearing

More Hearings Today:

• Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will also review her department’s FY25 budget request Wednesday before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. | More on the Hearing