Wyoming has joined 22 other states in suing the Environmental Protection Agency over a new rule that targets a methane tax in the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.

In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law. Despite the laws' name even President Biden later admitted that it had nothing to do with reducing inflation.

It created the Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP) to tax the oil and natural gas industry based on the amount of methane emissions released by the industry.

Based on this the EPA wrote a rule to implement MERP, which is set to go into effect on Jan. 17.

On Thursday, January 16th Wyoming joined a multi-state coalition and sued the EPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia petitioning the court to declare the rule unlawful.

The states argue that the new rule exceeds the EPA’s statutory authority, is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with the law.

It affects:

“certain owners or operators of facilities in certain segments of the petroleum and natural gas systems industry that report more than 25,000 metric tons (mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).”

 

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It lists impacted industry segments as:

“offshore petroleum and natural gas production, onshore petroleum and natural gas production, onshore natural gas processing, onshore gas transmission compression, underground natural gas storage, liquefied natural gas storage, liquefied natural gas import and export equipment, onshore petroleum and natural gas gathering and boosting, and onshore natural gas transmission pipeline."

With the new Trump Administration and a new EPA Administrator, hand-picked by Trump, the states might receive the relief they seek in courts.

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