by Alec Schemmel
Fox News
‘Congress needs to change the law,’ former Trump admin EPA official says
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading 22 other attorneys general in suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a new rule that would fine the oil and natural gas sector for methane emissions that exceed a certain level.
The GOP states are alleging the new rule, which was established in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, is “arbitrary, capricious, [and] an abuse of discretion.” The complaint against the EPA is scant on details, other than asserting the new rule is “unlawful” because “the final rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.”
While the Supreme Court has articulated a very narrow authority on how Congress can delegate its legislative power, Steve Milloy, former Trump administration EPA transition adviser and senior fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, said it is unclear to him how the EPA’s rule circumvents Congress.
“The IRA clearly says EPA is to levy a tax and prescribes the tax rate,” Milloy told Fox News Digital, pointing to the section of the IRA’s “Waste Emissions Charge” that sets a threshold for methane emissions at 25,000 metric tons. “I will be interested to see how the states support their claims.”
Nonetheless, Milloy is against the new fee on the oil and gas sector, noting methane is an “irrelevant greenhouse gas.”
