By Kate Abnett<\/p>\n
May 6 (Reuters) – The European Commission has drafted plans to let oil and gas companies avoid penalties for breaching the EU’s methane emissions law, a draft \u200cdocument seen by Reuters showed, after pressure from industry and the United States government.<\/p>\n
The \u200cmove follows calls from oil and gas industry groups to pause the law, warning it could disrupt EU fuel imports \u200bwhen tougher provisions kick in from 2027. The U.S. government has also demanded the EU exempt U.S. oil and gas from the rules.<\/p>\n
In draft guidance to EU countries’ national authorities, seen by Reuters, the Commission said countries could choose not to enforce penalties for breaching the rules during an energy supply crisis.<\/p>\n
“Sanctioning \u200cshould be delayed until the situation \u2060is stable and resumed if the infringement persists and the risk to the security of supply is no longer present,” the document said.<\/p>\n
Companies could also \u2060be let off the law’s penalties even if there is no supply crisis, but it is deemed that enforcing the penalties would endanger energy supplies, the document said.<\/p>\n
Oil and gas prices have surged in response to \u200bthe \u200bIran war, adding short-term pressure on governments to secure \u200benergy supplies.<\/p>\n
The EU methane law requires that, \u200cfrom January 2027, imported gas must comply with monitoring and verification rules equivalent to Europe’s. Penalties for breaching the law include fines up to 20% of a company’s annual turnover.<\/p>\n
Those terms have met strong pushback from the U.S. government. The U.S. has become the EU’s biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas, as the bloc races to replace Russian gas.<\/p>\n
The draft Commission guidelines would not change the \u200claw, but rather give national authorities more leeway in \u200bhow they enforce it.<\/p>\n
Environmental campaigners warned the move would undermine \u200bthe law’s ability to steer investments in \u200bcurbing emissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf companies conclude that non-compliance carries little or no consequence, investment and \u200cbehavior shift in the wrong direction,” said \u200bLea Pilsner, a director \u200bat Environmental Defense Fund Europe.<\/p>\n
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and the second-biggest cause of climate change after carbon dioxide emissions.<\/p>\n
Reducing methane emissions has been singled out by organisations including \u200bthe International Energy Agency as one \u200cof the quickest and most cost-effective ways to curb climate change.<\/p>\n
A Commission spokesperson declined \u200bto comment on the document, which was reported earlier on Wednesday by Politico.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bChandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kate Abnett May 6 (Reuters) – The European Commission has drafted plans to let oil and gas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[207114,18,207116,440,128725,19,17,5201,207113,86820,133,207115,150455,35840],"class_list":{"0":"post-471957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-draft-document","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-energy-supplies","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-eu-countries","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-methane-emissions","16":"tag-oil-and-gas-companies","17":"tag-penalties","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-supply-crisis","20":"tag-the-european-commission","21":"tag-united-states-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116530014206843725","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}