Settlement Under EPA’s Energy Extraction Initiative Offers Insight
A recent settlement under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Extraction Enforcement Initiative provides insight into EPA’s approach under the Clean Air Act and highlights the type of “beyond compliance” requirements on which industry should focus, reports King & Spalding in a white paper.
“Given its patchwork of regulatory authority over operations in the oil and natural gas industry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted a national enforcement initiative to focus its efforts,” the paper says. “Through its Energy Extraction Enforcement Initiative, EPA has been steadily targeting the energy industry.”
Advanced air emissions monitoring tools that EPA pursues in its settlements may expose settling companies to future litigation based not on the compliance demonstration method of the applicable air rule, but rather on broader Next Generation technology, the authors write.
