The EPA Is About to Hand Oil and Gas Companies a Huge Methane-Related Gift

Last week, less than a month after rolling back power plant pollution standards, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin addressed an audience of oil and gas executives at the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting in Santa Fe. The environmental agency was “within days,” he told them, of releasing the draft reconsideration of a major Biden-era oil and gas methane rule. The new proposal would weaken regulations on oil and gas operators to allow for additional leaking, venting, and flaring—a move that could significantly raise emissions of the greenhouse gas super-pollutant. 

Methane has 80 times more heat-trapping potential than carbon dioxide over a 20-year life span, and some scientists and policy experts say reducing the gas could help pull “the emergency brake” for climate change. The oil and gas sector is one of the largest sources of methane emissions in the United States and is responsible for one-third of global methane emissions. Previous regulations attempted to rein in those emissions, as well as other harmful air pollution emitted by oil and natural gas operations.

Zeldin said the new EPA measure would save taxpayers $45 billion. “Americans must be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter and fill up their car and drive to work,” Zeldin said in a press statement issued during the meeting. “They can’t do that when the people producing the energy are weighed down by unnecessary burdens. The Trump EPA is committed to fixing this so the US can reach its full energy potential.” 

In line with advancing the Trump administration’s determination to “[unleash] American energy,” the revisions would significantly weaken pollution controls for older and leakier oil and gas wells. It would also rescind the agency’s Methane Super Emitter Program, a third-party monitoring system designed to report major leaks and blowouts on oil and gas wells, and ease regulations for other operation components that work in tandem to capture, destroy, or recover methane.

Some environmental advocates argue that the EPA’s proposed regulatory rollback reflects a coordinated industry wish list. “Lee Zeldin’s EPA is giving oil and gas corporations exactly what they’ve long wanted,” said Julia Kane, a researcher with oil and gas watchdog Fieldnotes, “a toothless methane standard they can use to pretend they’re well-regulated, all while they continue to knowingly leak and flare dangerous amounts of the heat-trapping gas.” The EPA did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

According to a Fieldnotes report Kane published last month, industry communications, records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and statements from oil and gas executives revealed a coordinated industry strategy in which fossil fuel groups maneuvered behind the scenes to avoid regulatory accountability. Fieldnotes reached out to the named companies prior to publishing the report, and although several industry groups pushed back on Fieldnotes’ characterizations of their policy goals, none refuted the specific claims on which those characterizations were based.

The report also details how several oil and gas companies and trade associations worked with members of the second Trump administration’s EPA and congressional Republicans to eliminate the Waste Emissions Charge, the first direct fee the US government has ever used to penalize oil and gas producers for excess greenhouse gas emissions, and “eviscerate” the overarching methane regulatory program created by the Biden administration. The EPA met with oil and gas industry representatives at least three dozen times during President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term to discuss methane regulations, according to agency visitor logs. 

Following the 2023 Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration proposed key revisions to preexisting methane rules that crucially altered how companies were required to estimate their methane pollution, including a rule targeting leaking, venting, and flaring. This rule, known as OOOOb/c or “Quad O,” which Zeldin is now proposing to gut, regulated methane emitted from new and existing oil and gas operations and imposed a ban on routine flaring. When the rule was finalized in 2024, oil and gas groups promptly sued, but the lawsuit has been temporarily halted. 

Now, with the EPA’s expected overhaul of Quad O, methane emissions can potentially be deregulated entirely. According to reporting last week in E&E News, two sources briefed on the rule and granted anonymity said the agency’s move could likely “leave the door open for EPA to ultimately opt out of regulating methane from oil and gas operations.” 

Fracking billionaire Harold Hamm—described by Trump as a longtime friend and “amazing man”—has helped pushed for this outcome. Hamm is the founder and longtime executive chairman of the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), which is the only oil and gas trade group to publicly support the EPA’s February decision rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding, the landmark decision that allowed the agency to regulate greenhouse gases and link emissions to things like public health and human welfare. On the same day this action was taken, DEPA sent a letter to Zeldin encouraging the EPA to repeal or revise methane regulations dependent on the legal determination. In an internal newsletter, DEPA also argued that the EPA didn’t have the authority to regulate methane after the agency repealed the finding.

“Hamm has tremendous sway over Trump,” Kane told me. “If EPA’s proposal gives the agency the option to completely deregulate methane from the oil and gas industry, that’s likely Hamm’s influence.”

Other industry groups have taken a more subtle yet no less coordinated approach in pushing the administration to defang methane rules, according to Fieldnotes’ reporting. For example, a coalition led by the Independent Petroleum Association of America pushed the EPA to create a separate category for stripper wells—low-producing wells with disproportionately high methane emissions—to shield them from regulation. The American Petroleum Institute has been arguing since the Biden administration originally established the Super Emitter Program that companies should be notified of third-party monitoring plans ahead of time, allowing industry to avoid meaningful outside accountability. And in April, Continental Resources, Chord Energy, and Kraken Oil & Gas Partners LLC wrote letters to the EPA asking the agency to allow operators to continue routine flaring. 

These standards are still in review at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but Zeldin reassured his audience that the reconsideration would be published within days.  

“The oil and gas industry says it’s a ‘good-faith’ partner eager to help craft regulations, but time and time again, it’s worked behind the scenes to delay and weaken them,” Kane said. “As a result, the United States today emits more methane from its oil and gas sector than any other country in the world.”