Congress is getting ready to use an ax where it needs a scalpel by attempting to repeal federal methane rules that took years to develop and could be destroyed in mere weeks.

The Bureau of Land Management issued rules in November limiting the amount of natural gas, mostly methane, that can be vented or flared into the atmosphere instead of being captured and sent to a processing plant to become part of our nation’s fossil fuel production chain.

That portion of the methane rule could curtail oil and gas development on federal and tribal lands where the infrastructure to capture gas is not only expensive but takes months in regulatory approval. Many of those wells were originally drilled seeking oil, and there aren’t pipelines or processing plants in place to handle the gas that escapes at the same time.

Read more at The Denver Post