The United States Environmental Protection Agency has said that up to US$1.55 billion dollars in funding will be distributed to monitor and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, as Reuters reports.

The funding, which will be provided both by the EPA and by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, will be available to tribal governments, companies, and communities, with a focus of deploying best practice technologies. Low-producing wells (probably the more inefficient facilities) will be one target of the funding, which is part of the overarching Inflation Reduction Act.

In relation to the news, a spokesperson at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation said that the “amount of methane emitted from oil and gas operations is enough to fuel millions of homes a year, and is a major driver of the climate crisis”.