October 25, 2021 6:30 PM - October 25, 2021 8:00 PM
Online Event

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Description: Tannis Fox of Western Environmental Law Center has been representing 350 New Mexico and others in the promulgation hearings that have just concluded for new methane and oil and gas air quality regulations. Attorney Fox will give us a report on the outcome of her efforts that involved complicated three-way negotiations between the state agencies, industry players and the environmental community. New Mexico executive agencies, Energy, Minerals and Natural Resource as well as the Environment Department have been busy for over a year writing long overdue new state methane regulations. Fox has had technical support from Tom Singer, Senior Policy Advisor for WELC. Tom will talk about some of his efforts as part of the Methane Advisory Panel that laid the groundwork for the new regulation hearings.

Methane emissions and their climate emergency impacts jumped into the national consciousness with the detection of a huge methane cloud over the Four Corners area in New Mexico. The resulting scientific studies of the sources of the emissions there and over other oil and gas basins concluded that methane emission were many times greater than had been represented by industry and the E.P.A. Petroleum development and production in five states are responsible for as much as 25% of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the entire country. Historically, New Mexico has had among the weakest methane regulation of any petroleum producing state.

Join us for a close look at this historic moment when the state is making the first serious attempt to address some of these egregious abuses by the oil and gas industry.