In the waning days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doubled down on Joe Biden’s disastrous energy policies, imposing a burdensome and harmful tax on oil and natural gas facilities — called the Waste Emissions Charge (WEC), also commonly referred to as the “natural gas tax” or the “methane tax.”
This ill-conceived tax was a blatant abuse of power and the first time the federal government had ever directly levied a tax on emissions, creating a duplicative layer of red tape that would devastate American energy if continued.
Today, the House of Representatives will vote on my Congressional Rule Act (CRA) to overturn this rule as a necessary first step to fully terminate the natural gas tax and restore American energy dominance. Ahead of this vote, it is important to demystify and explain the CRA and how it works.
The CRA is a tool that Congress uses to overturn federal agency actions — a direct example of congressional checks and balances on the executive branch and one of Congress’ most important duties. The CRA was enacted through the 1996 Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act.
It requires that agencies both report the issuance of “rules” to Congress and provide Congress with a special procedure for overturning those rules. If a CRA is approved by both the House and the Senate and signed by the president, the rule will not go into effect or continue in effect. The natural gas tax is already in effect, which creates a larger sense of urgency for Congress to act today and overturn this overbearing rule through my CRA.
This rule completely ignores the significant progress that the U.S.’ private sector has made over the past two decades following the shale revolution, where we simultaneously had record energy production levels while drastically reducing methane emissions. According to AXPC, the leading voice of independent U.S. energy producers, U.S. emissions decreased by 18% between 2005 and 2022, making the U.S. the world leader in emissions reductions.
During that time, U.S. oil and natural gas production increased significantly. It is a common misconception that oil and natural gas production conflicts with reducing methane emissions, but in reality, these two objectives go hand in hand.
Additionally, the way the natural gas tax is structured is flawed at its core. This costly tax would start at $900 per metric ton of methane emissions in 2024, increasing to $1,200 for 2025 emissions and $1,500 for emissions years 2026 and later.
While the statute directs the EPA to develop a formula to impose and collect a tax based on methane intensity, Biden’s EPA did so by ignoring well-established international standards to create such a formula. The tax raises energy production costs, discourages investment and ultimately increases consumer energy prices across America without a straightforward way to calculate it.
My CRA on the House floor today will not eliminate the program that collects this tax, but it will remove the EPA’s ability to collect it. That is why this CRA is an essential first step in eliminating this tax, but not the final solution.
It is critical to negate these punitive regulatory requirements now, while we work to undo the underlying statute — killing the natural gas tax once and for all.
August Pfluger represents Texas’ 11th Congressional District.
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