The 2016 BLM Methane Waste Prevention Rule: Should It Stay or Should It Go?
Our first report in a series examining US oil and gas sector regulations evaluates the costs and benefits of repealing or modifying BLM’s 2016 methane waste prevention rule under several scenarios.
Key findings
- Whether repealing the rule results in net benefits depends entirely on which estimate of the social cost of methane (SC-CH4) is used in the analysis (i.e., accounting for either domestic costs only or global costs).
- Using a domestic SC-CH4, repealing the rule results in net benefits of $495 million to $860 million. With a global SC-CH4, repeal results in net costs of $814 million to $1.2 billion.
- Adjusting other assumptions in our analysis results in only slight changes to the net benefits of repealing the rule.
