(Bloomberg) – The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday finalized a rule granting oil and gas operators more than a year in additional time to comply with mandates set by former President Joe Biden to replace leaky equipment and routinely monitor for escaped methane.
The Trump administration said this rule will affect hundreds of oil and gas sources nationwide and save an estimated $750 million in compliance costs over roughly a decade.
“By finalizing compliance extensions, EPA is ensuring unrealistic regulations do not prevent America from unleashing energy dominance,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a statement.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet 80 times more than carbon dioxide in the short term. Oil and gas operations are the nation’s top industrial source of methane, and the Biden era rules were designed to reduce its emissions, as well as those of volatile organic compounds including benzene, a known carcinogen.
Environmental activists criticized the ruling. “This delay risks the health of millions of Americans living near oil and gas production and undermines progress by industry leaders,” said Rosalie Winn, lead counsel for methane and clean air policy at the Environmental Defense Fund.
The EPA first announced over the summer that it would be delaying pieces of the methane standards in an interim final rule, triggering a legal challenge by EDF and other green groups that is still pending.
Although the EPA’s update of the rule is limited to pushing back multiple compliance deadlines set in the original 2024 version, the agency has said it may reconsider more substantial parts of the rule later.
This is the latest example of President Donald Trump’s EPA rolling back industrial pollution controls set by the previous administration. In recent months, the agency has proposed giving coal-fired power plants more time to meet existing deadlines to regulate wastewater and delaying the phase-down of highly potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners.
