The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday issued the first-ever federal standards aimed at curbing methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry, the latest in a series of regulations the Obama administration is pursuing in an effort to clamp down on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. The final regulations, which the EPA initially proposed last year , are part of a broader Obama administration goal to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by as much as 45% from 2012 levels over the next decade. The rules, which affect new oil and natural gas wells only, will require companies to install technologies that monitor and limit inadvertent emission of methane during the production and transmission process of natural gas, whose primary component is methane, and require new practices, such as regular […]