The Trump administration is looking to relax methane regulations established during Biden’s administration, which small oil companies argue make it economically unfeasible to operate older wells.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to simplify rules for low-producing wells and eliminate a program that relies on external groups to identify significant methane leaks, as stated in their documents. The agency anticipates that this move could result in a savings of approximately $45 billion.
This proposal is still in the works. The EPA will open the floor for public comments for a minimum of 45 days once the proposal is published in the Federal Register, which will also include a public hearing, as noted by the agency.
President Donald Trump is likely to unveil the initiative during a campaign rally in Lubbock, Texas, according to a White House source.
The EPA is “co-proposing two options to establish distinct categories and standards for well sites,” according to the agency.
One option would categorize sites by “production level, marginal or non-marginal,” while the other would differentiate them by “resource type, conventional or unconventional.”
Producers of all sizes conveyed to the agency that the 2024 rules were impractical and offered no flexibility for maintenance and repairs, an EPA spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation privately.
Of more than 990,000 oil and gas wells nationwide, roughly 783,000, or about 79 percent, are classified as marginal, according to the agency’s fact sheet.
The National Stripper Well Association, representing smaller producers, expressed in a position statement on September 29 that the regulations from the Biden era, “as they currently stand, will lead to the closure of many of these stripper wells.”
According to the association, the costs of complying with these regulations render the wells unprofitable to operate.
These stripper wells are responsible for about 8 percent of the U.S. oil supply and around 7 percent of its natural gas. They contribute “less than 0.2%” to the overall U.S. emissions, based on figures from the Department of Energy and the EPA.
Annual compliance costs for a stripper well range from $5,000 to $15,000, while the revenue from the wells is only between $5,000 and $10,000 a year, as indicated in a document prepared for a meeting that the association arranged with the White House Office of Management and Budget. Those cost figures were drawn from data from states with similar regulations.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America noted that about 750,000 of the roughly one million active oil and gas wells in the U.S. are low production, marginal wells.
“We should be making every effort to extend the operational life of these wells instead of shutting them down prematurely,” the association stated.
Daren Bakst, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, criticized the EPA’s past approach, stating that it is unacceptable for the agency to develop regulations that effectively force businesses to close.
Bakst emphasized that the stringent methane regulations from the Biden EPA had a detrimental effect on low-producing wells.
He also pointed out that methane emissions from oil and gas operations had been on a decline well before the Biden regulations were enacted, even with increased production levels, and that producers already have strong financial incentives to capture and monetize methane.
A spokesperson for Republican West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, expressed support for the administration’s initiative to enhance U.S. energy production by alleviating burdensome regulations.
David Doniger, a senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, responded on October 7 by arguing that “the Trump EPA is attempting to give a pass to the most irresponsible actors in the oil and gas industry,” as reported by The Hill.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hinted at the upcoming changes during the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting in Santa Fe on October 7, according to an agency press release.
“People need to be able to afford heating their homes in winter and filling up their cars to commute to work. This becomes unmanageable when energy producers are burdened by unnecessary regulations,” Zeldin commented in the release.
Relief for marginal wells responds to the concerns of smaller, independent oil producers, who claim that the cost of complying with the existing rules often overshadows the economics of maintaining older wells, Bloomberg News reported.
“These wells play a crucial role in household economics,” Zeldin added during his remarks in Santa Fe. “Many owners utilize oil and gas to fuel their homes or operate farm machinery, which helps to alleviate everyday expenses like groceries and fuel.”
The EPA also plans to eliminate the Super Emitter Program, which was designed to certify third-party monitors for identifying significant leak events.
These monitors could detect leaks exceeding “100 kg/hr of methane or more” through remote sensing, according to the Federal Register.
On October 7, the EPA expressed that it does not believe the program is “essential to fulfill the requirements of the Clean Air Act and lacks effectiveness.”
For gas released from oil wells, the new proposal would reinstate a flaring standard at 95 percent efficiency, or implement another form of control, as stated by the EPA.
The EPA described the 2024 rule as “mandating that all natural gas produced from oil wells must connect to a sales line,” which it admits “is not feasible in all production areas.”
According to estimates from the EPA, this proposal could unlock an additional 210 million barrels of oil and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
These projections cover the period from 2027 to 2050, as stated by the agency representative.
The Biden-era EPA finalized the methane regulations in December 2023, which became effective in May 2024, according to both the EPA and the Federal Register.
Zeldin’s EPA noted in its October 7 release that the existing rule imposed $18 billion in costs “without delivering the promised environmental benefits.”
The spokesperson further claimed that the Biden administration underestimated those costs by failing to account for wells that would be shut down or the increased costs transferred to consumers.
The $18 billion figure reflects the Biden administration’s internal estimate of net compliance costs at a 3 percent discount rate, according to the final rule, with projections that the regulations would reduce methane emissions by 58 million short tons from 2024 to 2038.
