Flares burn methane and other hydrocarbons at an oil and gas facility in Lenorah, Texas, October 15, 2021.
David Goldman/AP
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David Goldman/AP
The Trump administration is proposing to significantly scale back a Biden-era rule that aimed to reduce the oil and gas industry’s methane emissions at drilling sites nationwide.
Methane is a major contributor to climate change and is estimated to warm the planet 80 times more than carbon dioxide over a twenty year period. In 2023, the Biden administration finalized rules intended to limit methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
President Trump made the announcement Tuesday while campaigning in Lubbock, Texas, saying his administration’s overhaul of the Clean Air Act would save the industry billions in production costs and spur more domestic drilling. The proposal comes as Republicans face a voter backlash over high gas prices ahead of the midterm elections.
“Behind every barrel of oil and cubic foot of natural gas produced in the United States are millions of workers, businesses, and the heart of this country’s economy. The Biden EPA has targeted all of this in destructive ways,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release.
The oil and gas industry, which has vigorously opposed the 2023 rules, said the EPA’s proposed rollback would address some of the challenges companies face in trying to comply with the regulations.
“We look forward to working with the Trump administration on a more feasible approach that supports U.S. energy production, provides greater regulatory certainty, and promotes continued emissions reductions,” Dustin Meyer, vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for the U.S. oil and gas industry, said in a statement.
But environmentalists say it could end up costing the industry more.
“Methane is natural gas, or natural gas is methane,” says Jon Goldstein, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “And so if you capture more natural gas, you don’t allow it to escape, you don’t allow it to be flared, you have more product that you can sell. And that offsets a lot of the costs.”
“It hurts our energy security, and it hurts taxpayers who should see royalties and tax revenue collected on this gas that’s going to waste,” Goldstein adds.
One of the regulations the EPA wants to eliminate is the “Super Methane Emitter Program.” In the United States, oil and gas pipelines, refineries and other energy facilities sometimes experience huge methane leaks. But methane is invisible and difficult, even expensive, to detect. The super emitter program is scheduled to take effect in January 2027. It would allow the government to delegate monitoring of large methane leaks to certified third parties, including private and nonprofit methane satellite programs.
“The simplest way to think about it is if the government is alerted to a large leak, then if it’s reported by certified third parties, then they could use that information,” says Paasha Mahdavi, a political science professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies the oil industry.
“(The government) needs help from other people to say, ‘Hey! You’re breaking the law!’ so they can take legal action,” adds Mahdavi.
If this program disappears, Mahdavi says it will be more difficult for the government to detect large leaks of planet-heating gases from oil and gas facilities. “And we need it because it’s really hard to see this stuff,” he says.
The EPA’s announcement would also ease regulations on methane leaks from low-volume “marginal” oil wells that are considered “marginally economic,” meaning they don’t make a lot of money.
“People assume that a marginal sink must equal small emissions,” Goldstein says. But he says satellites and new technologies are discovering that’s not true. “These old, end-of-life wells, which are nearing the end of their lifespan, are actually responsible for the lion’s share of methane pollution from the (oil and gas) production sector,” Goldstein says.
EPA plans to hold a public comment period of at least 45 days, including a public hearing, once the proposed rule changes are published in the Federal Register.
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