The Trump Administration is set to announce easing of the federal methane regulations for oil and gas production in a bid to boost U.S. domestic energy production and lower costs for producers and consumers.
President Donald Trump is set to unveil the proposal at a campaign rally in Lubbock, Texas, America’s biggest-oil producing state.
The top U.S. oil industry lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and many oil and gas companies have long called for changes to the Biden administration’s 2024 methane emissions standards, arguing that the rules impose excessive compliance costs on producers.
The new rule would provide regulatory relief to small marginal wells producing below 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day, after many small producers have complained that the regulatory burden for complying with the methane rule is busting their economic rationale to keep producing from many of these marginal wells.
As much as 79% of all oil and gas wells in the United States are considered marginal, according to Bloomberg.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also expected to scrap the so-called Methane Super Emitter Program, an Administration official told Bloomberg ahead of the official announcement of the new methane rule.
The program, which the EPA had already halted last year, encouraged government-approved third-party groups to help find and report large methane releases.
Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Trump EPA would soon propose the next part of the agency’s comprehensive reconsideration of the Biden Administration’s 2024 oil and natural gas rules.
EPA is looking to address “widespread concerns from American energy producers and operators that the 2024 Rule is unworkable and is holding back American energy dominance,” the agency said.
“This proposal takes on many of the problems American producers and operators have raised with us. That includes the burden on marginal wells and oil and gas operators in general, the Super Emitter Program, associated gas, and control device requirements,” Zeldin said.
“Americans must be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter and fill up their car and drive to work. They can’t do that when the people producing the energy are weighed down by unnecessary burdens.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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