Trump Methane Rule Proposal: EPA Loosens Oil and Gas Standards in Federal Register Publication on October 29

President Donald Trump has not yet ended the federal methane rule for oil and gas drilling, despite the language used at a campaign rally in Texas. What the administration has done is propose a broad revision of that rule, and the proposal reached a formal milestone on 29 October 2026 when it was published in the Federal Register. That distinction, between a proposal and a final rule, is the most important fact in this story. Until the Environmental Protection Agency considers public comments and issues a final action, the 2024 standards remain on the books, even though the administration has made clear that it intends to change them substantially.

The proposal was signed by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on 27 October and announced the same evening by Trump at a rally in Lubbock, Texas, for the Texas Republican Senate candidate. At that rally, Trump said he was officially terminating the Biden administration’s methane regulations and cited 45 billion dollars in savings. The EPA’s own signed document, however, calls the action a proposed rule. The agency’s fact sheet and the proposal itself describe revisions to the 2024 oil and natural gas standards, not an immediate repeal. Readers should therefore treat the rally language as political shorthand and the proposal document as the legal reality: a draft that invites comment, argument and possible revision before anything becomes final.

The timing matters for a second reason. The midterm elections are scheduled for 3 November 2026, and polls ahead of that vote are polls, not results. The methane proposal cannot become a final rule before polling day because the comment process is still open. That does not mean the proposal has no political effect before the election. It signals the administration’s direction on energy costs, drilling and regulation, and it gives voters, industry groups and environmental groups a concrete document to debate. It does mean, however, that no producer, state regulator or community can yet rely on the new standards as law. The old standards, and the legal questions around them, still govern while the proposal is considered.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and the oil and gas industry is a major source of leaks from wells, pipelines, processing equipment and storage. Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide over a short period, even though it lasts for a shorter time in the atmosphere. That is why regulators, satellite monitoring groups and many energy companies themselves have paid increasing attention to finding and fixing large leaks. The 2024 rule set standards for new and existing oil and natural gas operations, including requirements to detect leaks, repair them and limit flaring and venting. The Biden administration presented those standards as a way to cut a large share of methane emissions from the sector over the following decade and a half, and analysts have cited a projection that the 2024 rule could prevent tens of millions of tons of methane emissions between 2024 and 2038.

What the Trump methane rule proposal would change

The EPA proposal outlines five main areas of change, and each one deserves separate attention because they affect different kinds of wells, equipment and monitoring. The first concerns well sites. The agency proposes two options for creating separate categories and standards for well sites: one option would categorise sites by production level, distinguishing marginal wells from non-marginal wells, and the other would categorise them by resource type, distinguishing conventional from unconventional production. Marginal wells produce relatively little fuel but can still leak a disproportionate amount of methane, and small producers have long argued that applying the same monitoring and repair requirements to a low-output well as to a large facility is economically unworkable. Environmental groups argue the opposite: that exempting or loosening standards for low-output wells leaves a large number of leaking sites with less oversight, even if each site produces little oil or gas.

The second change is the most visible. The proposal would rescind the Super Emitter Program, which was designed to use certified third parties, including satellite and remote-sensing monitors, to identify unusually large methane releases and require operators to investigate them. The programme was due to take effect in January 2027. The EPA had already halted aspects of the programme, and Zeldin has described it as unnecessary and ineffective. Industry supporters say third-party reporting created uncertainty and duplicative obligations. Critics say removing independent detection removes one of the few tools that can spot a very large leak quickly, before it continues for weeks or months. The debate is therefore not only about a programme’s name, but about who gets to detect a leak and how quickly an operator must act once a leak is found.

The third area concerns covers and closed vent systems, which are meant to capture vapours rather than allowing them to escape. The proposal would split the no identifiable emissions aspect of those systems into design requirements and operational requirements. Supporters present that as a clarification that makes compliance more practical. Critics will test, in comments, whether the split weakens the overall standard in practice, because a system can be designed correctly on paper while still leaking in operation if inspection and maintenance are less strict. The fourth area concerns associated gas, the natural gas that comes out of an oil well alongside oil. The proposal would restore 95 percent efficient flaring or other control devices as the best system of emission reduction, rather than requiring all associated gas from oil wells to reach a sales line. That change matters in areas where pipeline capacity is limited, because operators argue that requiring a sales line for every well is not always feasible, while critics argue that flaring still wastes gas and releases emissions that could be captured.

The fifth area is a request for comment on whether to repeal additional parts of the 2024 rule, including certain monitoring, recordkeeping and reporting provisions. That invitation is important because it means the final rule could go further than the five headline changes, or could be narrowed, depending on what commenters argue and what the EPA decides it can defend in court. The proposal also follows earlier steps in the administration’s reconsideration of the 2024 rule, which began in March 2025, included interim delays to deadlines, and produced earlier revisions in April 2026. The October proposal is therefore best understood as the latest, and broadest, step in a longer reconsideration, not as a sudden decision taken in isolation.

The 45 billion dollar figure, explained carefully

The headline figure in the administration’s announcement is 45 billion dollars in savings, and it needs careful explanation because it is not a cheque to households and it is not a guaranteed reduction in fuel bills. According to the EPA’s own economic analysis, the proposed reconsideration would raise economic surplus by 45 billion dollars in present value over 2027 to 2050, in 2024 dollars and using a 3 percent discount rate. About 42 billion dollars of that figure comes from lower compliance spending, and about 3 billion dollars comes from energy-market effects. At a higher discount rate of 7 percent, the estimate falls to 32 billion dollars. Those are modelled projections, not measured results, and they depend on assumptions about production, prices, compliance costs and how the rule would otherwise have operated over more than two decades.

The same analysis projects additional production and additional emissions, and both sides of that ledger should be reported together. The EPA projects an additional 210 million barrels of domestic oil production and more than 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the same period to 2050. It also projects about 60 million additional short tons of methane over that period, along with about 17 million tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds and about 2.3 million tons of hazardous air pollutants. Supporters focus on the production and savings side of the ledger, arguing that lower compliance costs will keep marginal wells operating, support jobs and increase domestic energy supply. Critics focus on the emissions side, arguing that the additional methane and other pollutants will impose health and climate costs that are not fully captured in a headline savings figure. Neither side can prove, today, what the actual outcome will be, because the proposal has not yet become a final rule and its real-world effects will depend on prices, technology and enforcement.

The administration has also linked the proposal to affordability. Trump and Zeldin have argued that the 2024 rule was unworkable, imposed about 18 billion dollars in regulatory costs in the EPA’s earlier framing, and held back American energy production. The industry, including the American Petroleum Institute and many producers, has welcomed the proposal as addressing compliance problems it raised for years. Small producers, in particular, have argued that the cost of monitoring and repairing low-output wells threatened the economic case for keeping those wells in production at all. Those arguments are strongest where a well produces little revenue but still faces fixed monitoring costs. They are weakest, critics say, where a company operates many wells and can spread monitoring costs across a large portfolio, or where satellite detection has made leak detection cheaper than it was when the 2024 rule was written.

Supporters, critics and the legal road ahead

Environmental groups, public health advocates and many state officials who supported the 2024 rule have criticised the proposal as a step backwards for climate and air quality. Their core argument is that methane leaks are often invisible, that large leaks can be fixed quickly once they are found, and that loosening detection, reporting and repair requirements will allow more gas to escape for longer. They also point to the Super Emitter Program’s role in using independent data, arguing that self-reporting alone has historically missed large releases. Some critics have also noted the political calendar, arguing that announcing a broad rollback a week before the midterms is designed to signal support for domestic drilling at a time when voters are concerned about energy prices. The administration rejects that characterisation and presents the proposal as a long-planned regulatory reconsideration that began in early 2025.

The legal road ahead will be long, and it will not end with the comment period. After the EPA considers comments and holds a hearing, it must publish a final rule with a reasoned explanation for its choices, including why it is changing course from the 2024 rule and how it has addressed the evidence and comments before it. Courts reviewing a final rule will ask whether the agency followed the Clean Air Act, whether it considered important aspects of the problem, and whether its explanation is consistent with the record. That review has constrained both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past, and it is likely to do so again here. Litigation from environmental groups, states or industry groups is therefore a realistic prospect, whichever direction the final rule takes, and a court could delay or vacate parts of a final rule if it finds the agency’s reasoning inadequate.

States also matter, because federal standards are not the only rules that apply to oil and gas operations. Some states have their own methane and air quality programmes, and operators in those states may still face state requirements even if federal requirements are loosened. Other states have fewer requirements and may see a larger practical change from a federal rollback. Companies that operate across state lines will therefore face a patchwork, not a single national standard, at least until the federal process is complete and any litigation is resolved. That patchwork is one reason why industry groups have sometimes asked for clearer, more uniform rules rather than simply for fewer rules, even when they welcome a particular rollback.

For communities near oil and gas operations, the practical questions are more immediate than the legal ones. They include whether leaks near homes, schools and workplaces are detected quickly, whether flaring increases, whether air quality monitoring remains in place, and whether operators report releases in a way that residents and local officials can understand. Those questions will be answered less by a rally speech than by the final rule’s monitoring, recordkeeping and repair provisions, by state enforcement, and by whether independent satellite data continues to be used, formally or informally, to identify large releases. Residents who want to influence the outcome still have a formal route: submitting comments to the EPA during the comment period and attending the public hearing that the agency plans after Federal Register publication.

What happens next

The next step is public comment. The EPA has invited comments on the proposal, including on its options for well-site categories and on whether to repeal additional monitoring and reporting provisions, and it plans a public hearing after publication. Commenters will include oil and gas companies, small producers, environmental groups, health researchers, state regulators, tribal governments and residents of producing regions. The agency must consider those comments before it issues a final rule, and it may change the proposal in response. A final rule that simply repeats the proposal without addressing significant comments would be vulnerable in court, while a final rule that narrows or widens the proposal would create a new set of winners and losers to debate.

After a final rule, the timeline extends further. Implementation dates, compliance deadlines and any legal challenges will determine when, and whether, the new standards actually affect operations on the ground. The Super Emitter Program’s planned January 2027 start date, for example, will be overtaken by the proposal process if the final rule rescinds the programme, but a court challenge could still leave the programme’s future uncertain for months. Similarly, the production and emissions projections to 2050 assume a particular final rule and a particular energy market over decades. They should be read as a model of one possible future, not as a forecast that will unfold exactly as written.

For voters ahead of the 3 November midterms, the proposal offers a clear choice to consider, but not a completed policy to judge by its results. Supporters will ask voters to judge the administration’s intent: lower costs, more domestic production and less regulatory burden. Critics will ask voters to judge the projected emissions and the loss of independent leak detection. Both arguments are, at this stage, arguments about a proposal. The final rule, the courts and the actual pattern of leaks and production in the years that follow will provide the evidence that can settle, or at least narrow, that debate. Until then, the accurate headline is the careful one: the administration has proposed to loosen the methane rule, published that proposal on 29 October, and opened it to comment. It has not yet repealed the rule, and the process that could do so is still under way.

Sources

USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Spencer Fane and Montana Public Radio.