Company: OXY-WT
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000797468-25-000029
Chunk: 141

Company: OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM CORP /DE/
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 141
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 under the Paris Agreement, guidance on environmental and social analysis of GHG emissions, moratoria on certain oil and gas permitting and infrastructure, and new and expanded regulations on emissions from oil and gas, chemical and midstream operations seeking to prohibit or restrict oil and gas development activities in certain areas, reduce the use of petroleum products in transportation, electricity generation and other sectors, expand renewable energy sources, and reduce GHG emissions.

Significantly expanding upon the EPA’s 2012 and 2016 regulations of methane emissions from certain new oil and gas operations, the EPA developed a methane emissions reduction program under the Clean Air Act and the IRA with three key components: (i) direct regulations issued in December 2023 for methane and VOC emissions from nearly all U.S. onshore oil and gas wells and facilities, with the EPA directly enforcing federal New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) starting in 2024 that collectively expand leak detection and reporting, identify larger sources the EPA calls “super emitters,” phase out routine flaring and gas-driven pneumatic devices and pumps, and require advanced methane detection technology, and the states applying EPA-approved Emissions Guidelines (EG) for existing operations no later than 2029; (ii) significant amendments to the EPA’s GHG Reporting Rule that the EPA issued in April 2024 for most U.S. oil and gas facilities to incorporate more oil and gas equipment and sources, add a source category of “other large release events,” require greater use of measurements instead of emission factors, revise emissions estimation methods and calculations, and add reporting categories for use and sequestration of captured CO2; and (iii) an escalating “methane waste emissions charge” under the IRA, for which the EPA issued final regulations in November 2024 to collect on reported upstream and midstream methane emissions from oil and gas facilities above specified intensity thresholds for applicable sectors of the oil and gas industry, starting at $900 per metric ton of methane emitted in 2024 above applicable thresholds, and increasing to $1,200 per ton in 2025, and $1,500 per ton in 2026 and thereafter. 

Supplementing the EPA’s methane emissions reduction program, the BLM issued final regulations in April 2024 to restrict venting and flaring from oil and gas operations on federal lands. The EPA finalized several other regulations of GHG emissions in 2024, including NSPS and EG for electric generating units, multi-pollutant emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles and GHG