Trump set to roll back oil and gas methane rules

President Donald Trump is set to announce on Tuesday a rollback of rules limiting methane emissions from oil and gas producers, a White House official said.

The announcement is expected at a rally supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for Senate. Texas is the United States' leading fossil fuel producing state.

An Environmental Protection Agency statement earlier this month said undoing regulations put in place under former president Joe Biden would bring $45 billion in cost savings. The statement did not provide a detailed breakdown of that figure.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said Americans needed affordable home heating and fuel and that energy producers were being weighed down by unnecessary burdens.

Methane is the main component of natural gas. It is the second-largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide and is responsible for about a third, or 0.5C, of total planetary heating since the pre-industrial era. Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide molecule for molecule, but remains in the atmosphere for a shorter time.

The planned changes target rules covering methane emissions from oil and gas operations, where emissions occur during extraction, processing, transmission and distribution. They include a proposal to scrap the Super Emitter Program, which allows EPA-approved observers to report major leaks of more than 100 kilograms per hour.

Other changes would weaken rules for “marginal wells” producing 15 barrels or less of oil equivalent a day and relax rules on routine flaring of “associated gas.”

Julia Kane, a researcher at oil and gas watchdog Fieldnotes, criticised the move and said the EPA was giving oil and gas companies a weak methane standard. The International Energy Agency says the United States is the world's leading emitter of methane from its oil and gas sector, followed by Russia.