Images by Paul Weaver/SOPA via ZUMA Press Wire

This story was originally published by Inside climate news and is reproduced here as part of the Climate office collaboration.

The American oil industry released his wish list for the new Trump administration on Tuesday, a five-point plan that would eliminate many of the Biden administration’s most ambitious efforts to reduce climate pollution and limit the warming that is driving increasingly extreme weather. more destructive and deadly.

The list, published by the American Petroleum Institute and coming on the second day of the United Nations global climate conference, does not mention the words “climate change.” The document argues that the industry group and its members agree on the need to reduce emissions. Yet his demands, if enacted, would remove many of the tools the United States has to achieve this goal.

Perhaps most importantly, the API called on the new administration to repeal the exhaust and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks that aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector, the country’s largest source of climate pollution. The list also includes revoking a waiver that allows California and 12 other states to set stricter rules for vehicles. Together, these rules are expected to accelerate the country’s transition to electric vehicles and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

API also called on the Trump administration to release a new five-year plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling leases and repeal rules adopted by the Biden administration that limited new drilling on public lands. The Biden administration had significantly reduced the number of new drilling on public lands and in offshore waters. The oil industry also wants the new administration to speed up the issuance of natural gas export permits, a process that the Biden administration had suspended to examine its climate impacts.

One of the main demands is the removal of a tax on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, which the Biden administration finalized Tuesday. Natural gas is largely made up of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas, and some of it is released into the atmosphere during oil and gas production.

API CEO Mike Sommers said his group will pressure Congress to pass a bill to make it easier to permit large energy projects before the end of this session, and that it would seek to make more changes to further speed up authorization next year.

The proposal also anticipates an imminent debate to extend or replace the 2017 tax cuts that expire next year, seeking to maintain the lower corporate tax rate adopted by the first Trump administration and the many benefits enjoyed by oil industry.

On a call with reporters, Sommers said voters elected Donald Trump with energy and the economy in mind and that the proposals would help increase the nation’s oil and gas production, which has increased significantly under President Joe Biden. The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

“It’s clear that energy was on the ballot, whether it was mandates for electric vehicles in Michigan or fracking in Pennsylvania,” Sommers said, referring to state policies. Biden administration aimed at encouraging the sale of electric vehicles.

Environmental groups reacted to the proposal with contempt.

“This is a toxic soup of reckless proposals that would benefit the oil and gas industry at the expense of the climate, frontline communities and future generations. We are prepared to fight them in court,” said Jason Rylander, legal director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The API Wish List demonstrates the existential threat the fossil fuel industry poses to life on Earth.”

Some demands seem difficult to reconcile with the stated goals of the API and many of its members to support the Paris Agreement and its goal of limiting warming.

Sommers said his industry supports federal regulation of methane, for example, and that some API members support the idea of ​​a methane tax. But the group is united, he said, in its opposition to the fees imposed by the Biden administration. Sommers did not specify what type of fees, if any, his group would support.

When asked whether the API would oppose Trump’s stated desire to withdraw the country from the Paris Agreement, Sommers declined to answer directly, saying the industry would continue to support reducing emissions while producing more oil and gas, whether or not the country remains in the global deal.

Darren Woods, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the nation’s largest oil company, on Tuesday called on the new Trump administration to stay in the Paris Agreement, comments given at COP29, the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan.

This year is expected to be the hottest on record. Scientists say that to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, governments must start cutting oil and gas production.

Kathy Harris, director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that car and truck efficiency standards would save Americans “billions of dollars at the pump, it is not so it’s not surprising that the oil industry wants to gut them.” » She added: “Drivers, car manufacturers and workers all benefit from these standards. For their sake, they must be preserved.

Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in an email: “This agenda sounds like something written in the 1900s.” Rolfes’ group has campaigned against the construction of new pipelines and construction projects. export along the Gulf Coast due to their impact on communities and the environment. “This does not reflect currently available technologies and loses U.S. leadership in many areas, including high-mileage vehicles and electric vehicles. He does everything possible to trap us in the fuels of bygone eras.

Oil executives were major donors to the Trump campaign, and the industry will likely find a partner in a new Trump administration on many fronts. Still, some signs of possible friction emerged during Tuesday’s call. Sommers said his industry could oppose efforts to implement new tariffs, for example if they restrict the free flow of oil and gas across national borders. Imposing new tariffs was one of Trump’s main campaign promises.

Many of the steps API seeks could be accomplished through administrative action, but some, including repealing fees on methane emissions from oil and gas equipment, would require congressional action. Regardless, they will be sure to face further lawsuits from environmental groups, which may have delayed or thwarted many similar efforts by the first Trump administration.