Shell to push Biden for carbon pricing, more methane emissions rules

David Wethe 11/11/2020

HOUSTON (Bloomberg) --Royal Dutch Shell Plc will push for the reversal of President Donald Trump’s rollback of methane emissions rules and the introduction of carbon pricing when Joe Biden moves into the White House next year.

“Some of the regulatory rollbacks that we’ve seen under the current administration haven’t actually benefited our industry,” Shell U.S. President Gretchen Watkins said Tuesday on a webcast hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership.

The easing of direct regulation of methane emissions put the energy industry in a “backwards-facing position,” while the absence of carbon pricing makes it harder to incentivize new technologies like carbon capture, Watkins said.

“Whoever is in the White House, we will work constructively with them and are actually very much looking forward to building that relationship with the new administration that’s coming in in January,” she added.

The oil and gas industry, which has long been the target of environmental groups, faces increasing pressure from shareholders managing trillions of dollars to address greenhouse-gas emissions such as methane. Shell joined BP Plc in September in calling for Texas regulators to end the routine flaring of natural gas, a by-product of the oil boom in the shale patch.

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