ExxonKnews
August 15, 2025
As part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul climate and environmental oversight, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has promised to reconsider methane rules he claims are “throttling the oil and gas industry.”
For years, however, oil majors and their trade associations have publicly claimed to support federal methane regulation — even as they’ve worked to weaken specific measures that would hold them accountable for pollution from the powerful greenhouse gas.
Now, as the EPA moves to repeal the scientific basis of all greenhouse gas regulation, potentially allowing the agency to do away with methane and other climate rules completely, Big Oil may be getting more than it asked for. Inside Climate News reported that, according to an inside source, the oil and gas industry prefers that the Trump administration not get rid of methane regulations entirely. Before Trump took office, the CEOs of Exxon and TotalEnergies made the same plea.
