LUBBOCK, Texas (Diya TV) — The Trump administration has proposed major changes to federal methane rules for oil and gas producers, including scrapping the EPA program that uses certified outside monitors to report large leaks. The announcement came two weeks after satellites detected a methane plume over an oil and gas site in the Permian Basin and confirmed it was still emitting gas on a second pass.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposal in Lubbock on Oct. 27. The EPA says the changes could save consumers and businesses $45 billion and lead to production of an additional 210 million barrels of oil and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Those are agency projections, not realized savings or production. The proposal must go through rulemaking before it can replace existing requirements.
The proposal would revise standards the Biden administration finalized in 2024 for new and existing oil and gas facilities. It targets five areas: well-site categories, the Super Emitter Program, covers and closed-vent systems, associated gas and emissions-control equipment.
For well sites, the EPA is considering separate standards based either on production level or on whether the well is conventional or unconventional. The agency also wants to allow operators to use flares or other equipment that destroys 95% of emissions to manage associated gas from oil wells, instead of requiring them to send all of that gas to a sales line. It proposes changes to equipment testing and maintenance requirements as well.
The proposed change to the Super Emitter Program would end EPA certification of third-party monitors that report major leak events. Under the existing program, certified monitors can report releases of at least 100 kilograms of methane per hour, detected with approved tools such as satellites, aircraft and mobile sensors. When the program applies, operators must begin an investigation within five days and report their findings to the EPA within 15 days. The EPA has already delayed the program’s implementation until Jan. 22, 2027.
The agency says other monitoring requirements can give operators timely information to find and fix major releases. The 2024 rule, by contrast, required operators to investigate reported events and repair leaks covered by its standards. The EPA’s proposal would remove the certified third-party notification system; it does not, by itself, eliminate every methane-monitoring or repair requirement.
The debate has direct relevance in the Permian Basin, a major oil and gas producing region in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Carbon Mapper said its Tanager-1 satellite detected a large methane plume there on Oct. 10. Tanager-2 observed the same source two days later, indicating that emissions continued between the satellite passes. Carbon Mapper has not said the detection prompted a repair.
That distinction matters: satellites can locate an emissions source, but they cannot make an operator repair it. Carbon Mapper says it has supported more than 460 methane notifications across the United States since 2025, with 68 confirmed mitigations and many other cases still under review. The organization’s figure includes both direct notifications and support for state programs.
A recent yearlong blind test published in Nature assessed 12 satellite systems against 481 controlled methane releases and 265 blank observations in Arizona. Satellites designed specifically to detect methane identified 92% to 100% of test plumes under clear conditions. Performance varied by sensor: repurposed instruments detected 62% to 88%, while broad land-scanning instruments detected fewer plumes at the tested release rates. Cloud cover above 20% reduced performance, and the researchers cautioned that results depend partly on knowing where to look.
The EPA’s 2024 rule projected that its requirements would prevent 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 through 2038. The agency estimated net benefits of $97 billion to $98 billion over that period, including climate and health benefits and the value of recovered gas. The Trump administration disputes the earlier rule’s costs and says its proposed revisions would reduce compliance expenses.
The policy shift comes as countries struggle to turn methane pledges into repairs and measurable cuts. The International Energy Agency estimates that existing policies would reduce oil and gas methane emissions by about 20% by 2030—short of the Global Methane Pledge’s goal of cutting human-caused methane emissions 30% below 2020 levels by that year. The IEA also found that only about 12% of alerts from the U.N.’s Methane Alert and Response System received a response in 2025.
Methane is the main component of natural gas and traps more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. Capturing leaked gas can therefore reduce pollution while preserving fuel that producers can sell. Whether the EPA’s proposed revisions encourage more production without weakening leak detection will depend on the final rule and how operators respond to emissions they find.
