Trump Administration Expected to Loosen Biden-Era Oil Methane Rule

The Trump administration was expected on October 27, 2026 to announce plans to loosen a Biden-era rule aimed at cutting methane emissions from oil operations, according to the Associated Press. Multiple outlets reported the same day that the administration planned to announce weakened methane rules for oil and gas companies.

The rule at the center of the dispute is EPA's 2024 final rule to sharply reduce emissions of methane and other harmful air pollution from oil and natural gas operations. Methane is the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas. It escapes from wells, pipelines, and processing equipment. EPA developed a Super Emitter Program as part of that final rule. A separate effort, the Methane Emissions Reduction Program, was created under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the federal climate and energy law, to address the same sector. Federal methane policy for oil and gas therefore rests on more than one program.

The most concrete change reported so far concerns flaring, the practice of burning off gas instead of capturing it. According to The Washington Post, the Trump EPA proposal was expected to reverse the rule's ban on routine flaring, which would allow companies to burn off excess gas. For an operator, flaring or capturing gas is partly an economic decision. Captured gas can be sold, so think of it as product you can keep, versus product poured down the drain. A flaring allowance changes that math most for producers that lack pipeline access or the equipment to capture gas on site.

The EPA has put a price tag on the proposal. In October, the agency said its plan to rescind the Biden-era policy targeting methane leaks would save $45 billion a year, according to Reuters. Biden administration officials argued the opposite side of the ledger. They said the rule would prevent an estimated 58 million tons (52.6 million metric tonnes) of methane emissions by 2038, as Yahoo Finance reported.

The EPA figure is an annual dollar amount attributed to the rescission. The Biden-era figure is a cumulative tonnage estimate running through 2038.

In my view, those two figures cannot be netted against each other, and placed side by side they show which party is making which argument, not which estimate is sound. The useful test, once the text is public, is whether the savings and emissions projections rest on the same assumptions about production volumes, leak rates, and gas prices. If they do not, the gap between $45 billion a year and 52.6 million metric tonnes is largely a difference in method.

The administration was expected to make an announcement, not a finished rule. A proposal typically opens a public comment period before anything is finalized, and the final text will determine how much of the 2024 rule, including the flaring restriction, survives in practice.

In my view, the status matters as much as the substance for readers tracking the sector. Anyone modeling operator costs or gas volumes should wait for the proposed language.