Dealing a legal blow to the Trump administration, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot suspend an Obama-era rule to restrict methane emissions from new oil and gas wells.
The 2-to-1 decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the first major legal setback for Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, who is trying to roll back dozens of Obama-era environmental regulations. The ruling signals that President Trump's plans to erase his predecessor's environmental record are likely to face an uphill battle in the courts.
In upholding green groups' efforts to end the E.P.A.'s 90-day stay over parts of the regulation, the appeals court ruled that the agency's decision was ”unreasonable," ”arbitrary" and ”capricious." The agency, it said, did not have authority under the Clean Air Act to block the rule.
”E.P.A.'s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rule's effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule," Judges David Tatel and Robert Wilkins wrote. The third member of the three-judge panel, Janice Rogers Brown, dissented. The judges said the agency would have to undertake a new rule-making process to undo the regulation.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/...prod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-shareOil and gas companies have argued that the rule requiring them to report and fix any methane leaks in their equipment is an unnecessary burden because many oil-producing states already have their own regulations. The E.P.A. announced on June 5 that it was suspending enforcement of the rule, arguing that the industry had not had enough opportunity to comment. The court rejected that argument.
https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/881965686972665856
Fun when EPA is doing work for oil and gas lobby instead of for environment