EPA Loosens the Lid on Methane as Rollback Rolls On

The Environmental Protection Agency sent a finalized technical amendment to federal oil and gas methane regulations to the White House for review on Feb. 24, 2026, the latest step in a sustained effort by the current administration to ease emissions standards across the sector.

The rule, forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget, is a finalized version of a proposal introduced in January 2025 following industry petitions for reconsideration. It targets two specific provisions of the 2024 NSPS OOOOb methane rule: requirements for continuous net heating value monitoring of flares and enclosed combustion devices, and temporary flaring allowances for associated gas. EPA had already extended the compliance deadline for those provisions to June 2026 under a November 2025 final rule, pending the outcome of the reconsideration.

The underlying 2024 OOOOb and OOOOc rules, published in the Federal Register on March 8, 2024, established sweeping new requirements for leak detection, emissions monitoring, and methane control across hundreds of thousands of oil and gas facilities, and were among the most comprehensive federal methane standards ever finalized. The current administration has moved systematically to ease compliance timelines, suspend enforcement, and reexamine the standards themselves, with a broader reconsideration of OOOOb and OOOOc announced in March 2025 still unresolved.

The cumulative costs of those delays are not abstract. EPA's own analysis estimated that the combined postponements would prevent the reduction of 3.8 million tons of methane between 2028 and 2038. States that originally faced a March 2026 deadline to submit compliance plans for existing sources under OOOOc now have until January 22, 2027. The Environmental Defense Fund has challenged the delay rules in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, with litigation ongoing.

Once OMB completes its review, EPA may publish a final version in the Federal Register. For operators planning monitoring infrastructure and leak detection programs, the regulatory direction is clear, even as its ultimate destination remains unsettled.