At a campaign rally on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said his administration is going to dismantle restrictions on methane, one of the most common and potent planet-warming greenhouse gases.
The new rule, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to complaints from the oil and gas industry, revises a Biden-era rule targeting methane leaks and would relax methane monitoring and emission-control requirements.
The agency has planned to repeal these rules for months, saying that they posed a “monumental threat” to the economy and an “undue burden” on the oil and gas industry. But it wasn’t until the rally on Tuesday night in Lubbock, Texas, where Trump was campaigning for Ken Paxton’s bid for the Senate, that the president announced the long-awaited changes.
“Tonight I’m officially terminating Biden’s expensive and unnecessary methane regulations to save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas, and produce 210 million barrels of oil,” Trump said in between rants in which he described praise from Chinese President Xi Jinping and claimed to have more “Indian blood” than Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
The EPA’s proposal follows other sweeping reversals of Biden-era environmental policies that are also likely to exacerbate global warming, pushing the planet closer to a climate hotter than any humans have experienced before. Just last month, the EPA repealed a rule that limits carbon emissions from power plants, a move which is likely to extend the lifespan of coal-fired power plants. Environmental groups say weaker restrictions on methane would also worsen air pollution in communities that live near oil and gas operations across the country.
“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,” said Celerah Hewes, a campaign manager at Moms Clean Air Force, a nonprofit. Hewes recently protested alongside other environmental activists outside of an industry conference in New Mexico where Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA, spoke about the agency’s plan earlier this month.
Methane, the greenhouse gas at the center of the EPA’s new proposal, is emitted by oil and gas operations, landfills, and cattle farms. It’s also the primary component of natural gas used to heat homes. Methane emissions make up about 12 percent of the greenhouse gasses released by the United States every year and are roughly 80 times more potent at warming the planet than carbon dioxide over a period of 20 years.
“Cutting methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is the fastest way to fight climate change,” said Tsion Amare, a policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit. “This rule could severely set back the advances we’ve made over the years.”
The earlier methane rule, finalized at the end of 2023 under the Clean Air Act, was among the Biden administration’s most ambitious attempts to reform the oil and gas industry. It required operators to monitor their overall emissions, inspect their wells and pipelines for leaks, and upgrade their equipment to prevent escaping gas. They were also required to phase out or sharply cut back the routine practice of flaring, in which excess methane is burned off rather than being captured for use as natural gas.
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Amare said these limits were some of the “strongest in the world“ and positioned the United States as an international leader in curbing the climate pollutant. The EPA estimated the rule would prevent 58 million tons of methane from being emitted in the next 15 years, as well as prevent 400 billion cubic feet of natural gas – enough to heat nearly 8 million American homes during winter – from being wasted every year.
In March 2025, Trump’s EPA said it would no longer enforce the methane rule and began the process of formally rescinding it. The newly released proposal would cancel the Biden administration’s Super Emitter Program, which used satellite imagery and other remote-sensing methods to catch large leaks and required operators to investigate and address them. It also reverses Biden-era limits on routine flaring, loosens requirements on certain types of wells, and gives operators a 30-day window to repair a leak.
The recent changes are all part of President Donald Trump’s so-called “energy dominance” agenda, a catchphrase used to justify similar rollbacks since the first hours of his second term in office. In a recent action proclaiming this October as “National Energy Dominance Month,” the president boasted that his administration has “unleashed” millions of acres for oil, gas, and coal, approved thousands of drilling permits, “saved” more than 100 coal plants, and pulled out of international climate agreements.
“The Trump EPA is committed to fixing this so the U.S. can reach its full energy potential,” Zeldin said in a statement about the Biden administration’s methane regulations earlier this month.
The weakened methane restrictions will especially benefit companies that run low-producing “stripper” wells by allowing them to pollute more. These wells account for just 5 percent of the country’s oil and gas but more than half of the industry’s emissions. According to reporting in ProPublica, lobbyists from this industry have gained “unprecedented influence” during the second Trump administration. One owner of a company that buys up stripper wells, Jeffery Hildebrand, is also one of the oil industry’s biggest donors to Trump’s political campaigns.
“Under crooked Joe Biden, Democrats crushed the small oil and gas operators,” Trump said while announcing the changes. “They’re great operators too.”
The president’s statement leans into a false narrative about these operators, experts say. Stripper-wells are often discussed as if they’re run by small, “mom-and-pop” companies that don’t have the financial means to comply with the stricter regulations. But in reality, more than half of them are owned by large companies that operate more than a thousand wells, said Darin Schroeder, the methane legal and regulatory director at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental nonprofit. Hildebrand’s Hilcorp Energy Company, for instance, is thought to own nearly 19,000 low-producing wells. Another company, Diversified Energy, owns more than 50,000 of them. “Just because they’re a marginal producer doesn’t mean they’re a marginal polluter,” Schroeder said.
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Because these stripper wells make up more than half of the oil and gas industry’s emissions, letting them off the hook is going to have a significant climate impact, Schroeder said. Allowing more of these emissions gives the world less time to tackle climate change before the worst consequences take hold. “Reducing methane in the short term really gives you a big bang for your buck, and gives us more of an on-ramp to address carbon dioxide,” he said.
Pollutants released alongside methane also pose a health risk to people living in oil producing regions by contributing to the build up of ground-level ozone, which can damage lungs and worsen asthma. The Biden-era rule would have incidentally filtered out these toxins, such as benzene, a known carcinogen, and other volatile organic compounds, which can also cause ozone to form, along with methane.
Nearly one in ten Americans live in a county with more than 1,000 stripper wells. And Texans may have the most to lose, said Amare, who is based in Dallas and specializes in the state’s energy and environmental issues. The state has more oil and gas than any other and an estimated 136,000 stripper wells. The public health consequences tend to disproportionately affect people of color who live near wells in places such as Texas’s Eagle Ford, she said.
The Biden administration had tasked states with implementing its regulations. But Texas has repeatedly delayed creating and adopting the necessary plans. Now, experts like Amara say that without pressure from the federal government the state is unlikely to curb its methane emissions, which amount to 19 percent of the U.S. total.
Other states, like Colorado and New Mexico, already have more stringent methane regulations on the books, and some, like Pennsylvania, are making plans to comply with the Biden’s administration’s rule. Experts say that makes them less likely to lower their standards just because the federal government has.
And states may be financially motivated to capture methane anyway. An Environmental Defense Fund analysis found that New Mexico has saved an estimated $125 million worth of natural gas each year that would have otherwise been leaked, vented or flared. The nonprofit also estimates that the entire industry has lost some $7 billion worth of natural gas since the Trump administration stopped enforcing the methane rule last year. “All of this waste of gas is something that definitely needs to be discussed more,” Amare said.
