By Chuck Slothower, The Daily Times
FARMINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed rules to reduce air pollution from oil and gas drilling operations. The standards would require oil and gas producers to capture emissions from hydraulic fracturing that escape into the air. If enacted, the proposed standards would have wide-ranging effects in the San Juan Basin, one of the nation’s busiest natural gas production areas. The rules focus on smog-forming volatile organic compounds and gases such as methane and benzene.
John Byrom, president of D.J. Simmons Inc., a Farmington oil and gas producer, said the regulations could represent “another nail in the coffin” for the prospect of new wells in the San Juan Basin. Byrom said he was “very surprised that they’re proposing this kind of far-reaching, significant increase in regulation at this point in time. … It’s kind of a shock.”
The rules, according to the EPA, actually would save energy companies about $30 million a year because the companies could sell the gas they are forced to collect.
Byrom scoffed at that assumption. “I wonder what other things we could do to make money, because apparently the industry doesn’t know what to do to make money,” he said. “It’s amazing what experts they could be in an industry that they’re not in.”
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