The Trump administration will propose relaxing federal methane regulations covering the U.S. oil and gas industry, according to a report published by The Hill. The proposal would revise Environmental Protection Agency standards governing emissions from production, gathering, processing, transmission, and storage operations across the supply chain.

The move would mark a directional reversal of the methane framework tightened under the Biden administration. EPA finalized tighter performance standards for new and existing sources in December 2023 and required regular leak detection and repair at well sites.

What does the proposal actually change?

EPA's notice will not publish specific provisions until the agency files a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register. The Hill report did not detail which subparts of the existing rule would be modified, what detection or repair thresholds would shift, or which operator categories would see revised requirements.

The current framework relies on Subpart W of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program for emissions measurement at production sites, and on Subpart OOOOc/OOOOa for new-source and existing-source performance standards. Industry petitioners have asked the agency to revisit both, citing compliance burden and overlap with state programs in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and North Dakota.

How does the rulemaking track run from here?

A proposed rulemaking typically opens a public comment window of 30 to 60 days. After comment closes, EPA reviews submissions and finalizes the rule, which then faces a standard judicial-review window in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

A second track runs through the Inflation Reduction Act's Methane Emissions Reduction Program, which established a federal waste-emissions charge that began at $900 per metric ton of methane in 2024 and is scheduled to rise to $1,500 per metric ton in 2025. Treasury and EPA implementation of that fee could move on a timeline independent of the rulemaking.

What is at stake for operators?

Methane is the principal component of natural gas and carries a global warming potential that federal climate accounting treats as more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year window. Operators face a recurring compliance bill for quarterly leak surveys, optical-gas-imaging inspections, component repair, and annual reporting under Subpart W.

For producers, captured gas has direct commodity value as sales-quality pipeline product. The economic case for capture depends on the price spread between methane and the cost of venting, flaring, or installing vapor-recovery control equipment.

What is the circular economy angle?

For readers in the recycling, biogas, and resource-recovery sectors, the rollback touches the economics of gas recovery at non-oil-and-gas sites. Landfill operators, agricultural projects, and biogas upgrading facilities have built project pipelines on the assumption that the regulatory direction was toward tighter methane control.

A reversal does not change the technical path to gas recovery. It changes the relative price of captured product against uncontrolled release. That shift will flow through project economics in landfill-gas-to-electricity, renewable natural gas upgrading, and flare-gas recovery at produced-water tanks and processing facilities.

What happens next?

The next milestone sits with the Federal Register. Publication of the proposed rule will set the comment deadline, assign a docket number, and trigger the comment clock. After that window closes, the schedule for any final rule — and the parallel implementation of the IRA methane fee — will decide how quickly the regulatory map redraws.