The Trump administration is expected to announce plans on Tuesday to weaken federal rules meant to prevent methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure, a move that would ease requirements on fossil fuel companies.
The Environmental Protection Agency intends to undo Biden-era standards that were projected to reduce methane emissions by 80 percent over 14 years. The change is part of President Donald Trump's broader deregulatory agenda and reverses the agency's earlier push to plug leaks from wells and pipelines.
Methane is a smog-forming pollutant and a potent greenhouse gas, up to 80 times as powerful as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. It is the main component of what the industry calls natural gas, and it routinely escapes from wells and pipelines. Methane has driven about 30 percent of global warming so far. Unlike carbon dioxide, which can persist for hundreds or thousands of years, methane breaks down in a little over a decade, which makes cutting leaks one of the quickest and most direct ways to slow rising temperatures.
The EPA signaled the change earlier this month. In an October 7 press release, the agency said it was "days away" from making the proposal. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the rollbacks would save oil and gas companies $45 billion, compared with $18 billion in regulatory costs that the earlier rules would have imposed. "This proposal takes on many of the problems American [oil and gas] producers and operators have raised with us," Zeldin said.
The agency is expected to relax standards for so-called marginal wells, which are older wells that yield little fuel but release a disproportionate amount of methane. According to ProPublica, these wells account for half of the industry's methane emissions while producing only 6 percent of US oil and gas. The EPA is also expected to end the Super Emitter Program, which alerted operators of oil and gas infrastructure to large releases of methane, defined as 100 kilograms per hour or more.
Bloomberg reports that Trump plans to make the announcement at a campaign rally in Lubbock, Texas. Texas is the nation's top oil and gas producer and also the world's largest data center market. With more data center capacity under construction than any other state, it has become a symbol of the challenges posed by energy-intensive AI models. A recent report by the Houston Advanced Research Center found that within five years, data centers could erase decades of air quality gains in the state.
Health and environmental advocates reacted angrily. Celerah Hewes, a senior manager for state field campaigns at Moms Clean Air Force, said in an email ahead of the expected announcement: "Any proposed rollback to the federal methane rule is a slap in the face to families who are exposed to oil and gas pollution where they live, work, and play." She added that her group has fought for methane protections for over a decade and had been making progress, calling the announcement "a massive blow to the efforts to safeguard our children's health and our climate."
The Biden-era rules were estimated to deliver up to $98 billion in benefits through reduced climate risks and lower health costs from air pollution, even after accounting for compliance costs. Capturing leaks was also expected to recover as much as $13 billion worth of natural gas.
