President Donald Trump is set to unveil a plan to dial back federal requirements designed to slash methane emissions from oil and gas operations, casting the proposal as a way to encourage more domestic energy production and lower costs.
Trump is expected to announce the proposed rule during a campaign rally in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday, as he tries to bolster the prospects of Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton in next week’s midterm elections, according to an administration official who asked not to be named before a formal announcement.
Texas is the No. 1 oil-producing state in the US — and the petroleum industry has lobbied the White House to ease some of the mandates meant to keep a lid on releases of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
The proposal comes as Trump seeks to assuage voter concerns about higher costs for oil, gasoline and diesel stoked by Russia’s war on Ukraine and the US war against Iran. During a pre-election campaign blitz to keep Republican control of Congress, Trump has also championed initiatives tailor-made for his rally audiences — from plans for Volkswagen AG to build a $4.2 billion Audi plant in Georgia to an $8 billion fuel-relief program pitched to farmers in Kansas.
The Environmental Protection Agency proposal takes aim at Biden administration requirements that forced energy companies to replace leak-prone equipment and regularly search for escaping gas from wells and other hardware. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, at an industry conference in Santa Fe earlier this month, said the planned measure would lift “unnecessary burdens” constraining oil and gas production and make it less costly for Americans to heat their homes and drive their cars.
In a major shift, the agency will propose to effectively single out so-called marginal, low-output wells for additional regulatory relief. The treatment would extend to wells that produce no more than 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
The approach responds to pleas from some smaller, independent oil producers that say the cost of complying with the requirements can overwhelm the economics of operating older wells, effectively forcing them to shut production at the sites.
The bulk of the roughly 1 million oil and gas wells in the US — about 79% — are considered marginal because of their relatively low production. But former EPA officials and environmental activists have warned that wells with low oil and gas production can be a major source of methane — and any retreat from the federal requirements would translate to more of that potent planet-warming pollution at a time when climate impacts are intensifying.
Methane is a key component of natural gas, making it a valuable source of energy in its own right. Compared to carbon dioxide, methane has a roughly 80 times higher warming potential in the first 20 years after its release into the atmosphere. It’s also become a major driver of modern global warming, as atmospheric concentrations of methane have more than doubled compared with pre-industrial times.
In the US, the oil and gas sector represents the largest industrial source of methane — which can leak from wells, pipelines and processing equipment and is sometimes flared or vented intentionally.
Under the EPA plan Trump is set to release on Tuesday, the agency would also end the so-called Methane Super Emitter Program, which encouraged government-approved third-party groups, including companies as well as not-for-profit organizations, to help find and report large methane releases. The agency, which already paused the program’s implementation last year, is set to justify the proposed change by questioning its necessity and highlighting legal concerns with the initiative.
The measure also will seek to ease Biden-era requirements phasing out some routine flaring, targeting the practice of energy companies burning off natural gas from oil wells. Under President Joe Biden, the EPA estimated that would collectively avoid some 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038 and yield net climate and ozone health benefits of $98 billion over the same period.
The Trump EPA now estimates its proposal overall would yield some $45 billion in savings while enabling production of an additional 210 million barrels of oil and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas between 2027 and 2050.
Burning natural gas generates carbon dioxide, and inconsistent flares can result in methane discharges too. But getting associated gas from oil wells to market is also not always possible or practical, Trump’s EPA will say in justifying the shift. Instead, the EPA will propose to make 95% efficient flaring — or other control devices — the best system of emission reduction, a legal standard under the Clean Air Act, the official said.
Oil industry leaders have urged the Trump administration against a wholesale repeal of methane mandates in favor of more modest recalibrations, arguing the Biden-era requirements at times were technologically infeasible, inefficient and costly.
For more than a decade, a growing number of energy companies worldwide have voluntarily taken steps to rein in their methane emissions. Some larger producers also have prized the work as a competitive advantage, particularly as other nations crack down on methane-intense gas imports.
Since reentering the White House last year, Trump has sought to lift regulatory requirements on the oil and gas industry, effectively lowering the cost of domestic energy production while repealing pollution curbs on power plants and vehicles that burn the fossil fuels. Trump’s EPA has already taken multiple steps to delay the enforcement of the methane requirements.
