For Immediate Release
May 12, 2025
Contact: Antoinette Reyes, (575) 342-1727, Antoinette.Reyes@sierraclub.org
House Budget Bill Would Repeal Critical Program to Reduce Methane Pollution Impacting New Mexico and Other Oil and Gas Producing States
Albuquerque, N.M – The House Energy and Commerce Committee released its portion of the federal budget reconciliation bill that will harm Americans in a variety of ways from gutting Medicaid to slashing programs that protect clean air and water. The legislation will be marked up in a committee meeting tomorrow.
This legislation includes a repeal of the Methane Emissions Reduction Program’s (MERP) funding and delays the implementation of its Waste Emissions Charge for 10 years. Created by the Inflation Reduction Act, MERP is designed to reduce methane waste and pollution from the oil and gas industry and acts as a complement to EPA’s methane standards. The waste emissions charge, a key component of MERP, is a commonsense fee to hold the nation’s largest oil and gas polluters accountable for excessive climate pollution while incentivizing the reduction of methane emissions by the largest polluters using both a carrot and a stick. If these critical and enforceable safeguards are allowed to stay in place and work as designed, they are meant to secure American energy, protect the health and safety of communities, and create jobs.
The funds from the MERP program have helped states, like New Mexico, monitor more leaks with advanced monitoring systems, incentivize and increase the use of zero-emitting controllers already being used cost-effectively by many operators, and plug 140 polluting orphaned oil and gas wells that continuously leaked for many years and in some cases decades. In New Mexico, Eddy County is one of two rural counties that year after year appear in the American Lung Association’s national list of the 25 most smog polluted counties. Keeping the program protects the environment and public health.
In response, Southern NM Organizer of the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, Antoinette Reyes, released the following statement:
Federal and state oil and gas methane safeguards work hand in hand to protect our communities and their air. Now Congress wants to pull the rug out from our environmental justice communities before they even have a chance to realize any benefits. Ensuring dangerous oil and gas pollutants no longer jeopardize the health and safety of those living and working closest to extraction with the added benefit of many new, good-paying jobs anticipated in manufacturing, construction, operations, and much more. These safeguards have huge benefits like slowing climate change by reducing methane pollution is the fastest, most cost-effective way to do this. Oil and gas companies are the largest industrial source of methane, gutting MERP and delaying the waste emissions charge only serves to line the pockets of corporate polluters at the expense of protecting the health of New Mexicans.