Wouldn't want to overburden industry

The Interior Department is replacing an Obama-era regulation aimed at restricting harmful methane emissions from oil and gas production on federal lands.

A rule being published in the Federal Register this week will replace the 2016 rule with requirements similar to those in force before the Obama administration changed the regulation.

Interior had previously announced it was delaying the Obama-era rule until January 2019, arguing that it was overly burdensome to industry. Officials said then that the delay would give the federal Bureau of Land Management time to review the earlier rule while avoiding tens of millions of dollars in compliance costs to industry.

  TPM

One thing we're finding out with Trump in office is the things Obama did that were actually good.

The rule forced energy companies to capture methane that’s burned off or “flared” at drilling sites because it pollutes the environment. Many companies consider the rule unnecessary and overly intrusive.

They do? Imagine that.

The new rule comes after a federal judge rejected a bid by the Trump administration to roll back the rule last fall. The Republican-controlled Senate upheld the Obama rule last May in a vote that surprised and angered many conservatives and delighted environmentalists.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said in October that Interior had failed to give a “reasoned explanation” for changing the Obama-era rule and had not offered details on why an earlier analysis by the Obama administration was faulty.

Laporte’s order reinstated the 2016 rule, but BLM later delayed the rule until 2019.

The rule announced Monday is intended to be a permanent replacement for the Obama rule. The public has 60 days to comment, with a final rule expected later this year.

[...]

“The previous administration scorned domestic energy development and crafted the prior rule to deliberately stifle” energy production, said [House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob] Bishop, R-Utah.

Sure. That's why they did it.

The new rule will “promote investment in federal and tribal lands so that economies in the West can grow,” he said.

In other - more accurate - words: open federal and tribal lands to exploitation by companies unhindered by environmental costs.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.