Big Oil to be fined for methane emissions following new climate law

Under a new climate law introduced by the Biden administration, US oil and gas companies will soon have to pay a fee for methane emissions that exceed a certain threshold. Could this be an effective deterrent for repeat offenders?

It’s a poorly kept secret that methane is an ecological scourge on our planet. In-fact, the gas is responsible for a quarter of recorded climate warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions.

Within the US, a nation which trails only to China for its carbon emission toll, methane plays a significant role in the big picture of the region’s dirty footprint.

Methane, after all, is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas after CO2 and is reportedly 80 times as potent in terms of short-term warming — meaning achieving the terms of our immediate climate goals looks increasingly pie-in-the-sky without drastic change.

This lesser talked about ecological foe enters the atmosphere by the metric ton from leaky pipelines, drill sites, and storage facilities. The US witnesses some of this from a distant perch using dedicated satellites set up by the UN, though blind spots still persist.