One of only three bills the Republican-controlled Congress has passed so far in 2025 is a measure repealing a Biden-era fee on excessive emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas responsible for nearly a third of the planetary warming seen so far.  

On Feb. 27, Congress passed legislation killing a charge on waste methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. At a time when the Trump Administration is firing thousands of federal workers, allegedly to save taxpayer money, eliminating the pollution control fee will cost taxpayers $7.2 billion in uncollected revenue from the oil & gas industry over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  

Autumn Hanna, vice president of fiscal watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said in a statement that the fee benefitted taxpayers and the public by “discouraging the waste of a valuable domestic energy source, creating jobs in methane mitigation, and reducing pollution.”  

“Repealing this modest fee on excess waste in the oil and natural gas industry is fiscally irresponsible,” Hanna said.  

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with 30 times the potential to warm the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Methane is responsible for around 30 percent of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.  

Oil and natural gas systems are the largest source of methane in the U.S., accounting for 28 percent of emissions, according to the EPA. The Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the largest oil-producing region in the U.S., is also the country’s largest source of methane and is estimated to emit 1.4 million metric tons per year.  

Oil and gas industry lobbyists, such as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, praised the fee’s repeal. API said in a statement that the industry is “already regulated under EPA methane standards,” published in March 2024.  

However, those standards that require companies to use modern equipment and detect and fix methane leaks only apply to new facilities, not older equipment that has been in place for years, or sometimes decades.  

For existing methane sources, the EPA only required states to submit plans “limiting methane from oil and gas operations in a timely manner,” according to a Biden EPA press release from November 2024. The methane fee was meant as an incentive for oil and gas operators to comply with these state plans.  

“The Waste Emissions Charge will apply until oil and gas operators achieve full compliance with state plans, helping to incentivize better performance,” the EPA’s press release stated.  

Oil and gas companies often vent methane directly to the atmosphere during breakdowns and malfunctions. Methane can also leak from oil and gas wells, pipelines, processing plants, and other facilities via faulty seals and other malfunctioning equipment. Older pneumatic devices used in the natural gas industry – including liquid level controllers, pressure regulators, and valves – release small puffs of methane every time they operate.  

With so many leaky sites spread across vast areas, governments have a poor track record of understanding how much methane is actually leaking from oil and gas fields. One 2024 study that examined approximately a million measurements by planes flying over oil and gas fields estimated that methane emissions make up 3 percent of the gas in an oil or gas field, on average – roughly three times the federal government’s estimate. This gas would be worth roughly $1 billion if captured and sold.  

“Methane leaks from the oil and gas industry are a huge waste of valuable energy resources,” Jon Goldstein, associate vice president with Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Feb. 27 statement.  “The methane polluter fee is a well-designed, practical, cost-effective solution to reduce wasted natural gas.”

In oil fields like the Permian Basin, oil and gas companies will often deliberately waste methane – the key component of natural gas used to fuel power plants and heat homes – by burning it in flares or venting it directly to the atmosphere. States like Texas and North Dakota allow flaring of natural gas from oil wells when there are no natural gas pipelines nearby to receive the less valuable gas.  

The Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s oil and gas regulator, is on track to allow the flaring of 3.5 trillion cubic feet of gas by the end of this decade, according to a September report by Commission Shift, the Rio Grande International Study Center, and Texans for Public Justice. That is enough to fuel every Texas household that uses natural gas for more than 15 years.  

The methane fee is a component of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, former President Joe Biden’s signature climate law. The fee was set to rise from $900 per metric ton of methane emitted in 2024 to $1,500 per metric ton starting in 2026.  

The EPA estimated that its fee on waste methane emissions would reduce methane emissions by 1.2 million metric tons over a decade – equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of nine coal-burning power plants or 7.8 million cars and trucks over one year. The rule would also avoid 170,000 metric tons of volatile organic compounds, which contribute to smog, and 6,000 metric tons of hazardous air pollution.

But many smaller methane emitters would have avoided paying fees. Because it only applies to oil and gas facilities that emit massive amounts of methane – 25,000 metric tons per year or more – the EPA estimated that that it would affect about 250 companies operating less than 400 facilities nationwide.  

After publication in November 2024, the fee took effect on Jan. 17. It’s not clear whether the EPA has actually collected any fees from companies for generating waste methane. The agency did not respond to questions from Oil & Gas Watch News.  

The bill passed the House 220-206 on Feb. 26. The vote was mostly along party lines, though six Democrats voted to end the methane fee – Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Maine’s Jared Golden, Adam Gray of California, Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, and Texans Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania was the only House Republican to vote to keep the fee.  

The following day, the Senate passed the bill on a strict party-line vote. It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk to sign into law.  

Lead photo: A natural gas drilling site in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Photo by Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2021.