Trump administration to roll back methane regulations

The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly preparing to roll back regulations on methane emissions in a move one expert called "extraordinarily harmful."

The Trump administration will announce the elimination of requirements that technology be put in place to "inspect for and repair methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities," The New York Times reports. The Times notes that methane, a climate change contributor, would only be "indirectly" regulated under this proposal, which would wouldn't be finalized until next year.

"This is extraordinarily harmful," Rachel Kyte, United Nations special representative on sustainable energy, told the Times. "Just at a time when the federal government's job should be to help localities and states move faster toward cleaner energy and a cleaner economy, just at that moment when speed and scale is what’s at stake, the government is walking off the field."

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Anne Idsal, acting assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation, told The Wall Street Journal that "the purpose of this rule is to get to the fundamental basis of whether [methane] should have been regulated in the first place," arguing that there's not "going to be some big climate concern here."

This is the latest instance of the Trump administration rolling back an Obama-era environmental regulation, and it comes at the end of a week in which President Trump did not attend a climate meeting at the Group of Seven summit, subsequently touting himself as an "environmentalist."

"A lot of people don't understand that," Trump said, The Hill reports. "I think I know more about the environment than most people."