HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) on Wednesday adopted an emergency rule limiting volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and, as a co-benefit, methane emissions from existing conventional oil and gas sources, which will lower air pollution from conventional oil and gas sources in the commonwealth.

The regulation mirrors a final-omitted regulation that the EQB adopted on Oct. 12, and that the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) approved on Nov. 17.

Under the federal Clean Air Act (CAA), Pennsylvania has until Dec. 16, to submit to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a State Implementation Plan, including regulations covering VOC emissions for all required oil and gas sources.

Gov. Tom Wolf determined that this emergency certified final-omitted rulemaking is necessary to ensure the commonwealth complies with the CAA and with Pennsylvania’s Air Pollution Control Act. The emergency rulemaking was undertaken after the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee voted to review the final-omitted version of the regulation, causing a delay in the regulatory process that would extend beyond the Dec. 16 deadline.

Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Marty Causer, R-Turtlepoint, and Rep. Mike Armanini, spoke out against this action by the EQB last week, saying it was another example of overreach on the part of the Wolf administration and the non-elected officials in the state Department of Environmental Protection. Causer said the board’s passage of this may lead to litigation.

According to the Wolf administration, if the commonwealth does not submit this rulemaking to the EPA as a State Implementation Plan revision by Dec. 16, federal highway funding will be withheld until the submission is made. For the upcoming fiscal year, federal highway funds subject to these sanctions are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars in “nonattainment areas” – regions that have not met air quality standards for ozone – in the commonwealth. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration and the EPA have identified several hundred projects in nonattainment areas that would not receive funding and would therefore not be completed or would be subject to delay.

The emergency rulemaking establishes the VOC emission limitations for existing conventional oil and gas sources based on Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) requirements consistent with the EPA’s recommendations. The EPA defines RACT as “the lowest emission limitation that a particular source is capable of meeting by the application of control technology that is reasonably available considering technological and economic feasibility.”