SEEC Blasts Trump Action to Gut Cost-Saving, Common-Sense Methane Standards

Washington, D.C. – The leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), including Co-Chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, and Paul Tonko and Vice Chairs Reps. Don Beyer, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin, and Chellie Pingree, released the following statement in response to the Trump Administration’s proposal to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2024 Methane Rule that cuts methane pollution and other harmful air pollutants from the oil and gas sector.  

“While energy prices keep rising and everyday life continues to be unaffordable here in America, the Trump Administration decided that today would be a good day to roll back our federal methane standards and let the oil and gas industry continue to waste billions of dollars-worth of extremely potent methane. 

“EPA’s common-sense 2024 Methane Rule is designed to save money, protect the health of our families and communities, eliminate unnecessary methane waste, and mitigate the superpollutant’s impact to our climate. Instead of strengthening these necessary protections, the Trump Administration chose to create huge loopholes for low-producing, high-polluting well sites and even rescind EPA’s Methane Super Emitter Program that holds the worst polluters accountable. The numbers already show what happens when we let oil and gas companies release harmful methane pollution into the air. Since EPA stopped enforcing oil and gas methane regulations under the Trump Administration, the fossil fuel industry leaked, vented, and flared more than $7 billion-worth of planet-warming natural gas, and counting.  

“No matter where we live or who we voted for, we all want the same things: clean air to breathe, affordable energy, a stable climate, and a safe and prosperous future for our children. Rolling back our methane pollution protections pushes us in the wrong direction on every one of those metrics.”