Trump’s promise to unravel Biden's climate policies could take years to fulfill

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On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to unchain the oil and gas industry from federal regulations aimed at slowing climate change.

Last week, the President-elect once again promised to follow through, saying the U.S. would “have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” a promise that climate policy experts and advocates say will also mean weakening or eliminating federal rules aimed at slowing climate change.

Trump, who has falsely said that climate change is a hoax, will have allies in Texas. The state supplies more than 40% of the nation’s oil, and Republicans preside over the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator. It’s also where Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed dozens of lawsuits against the federal government, challenging federal environmental regulations by the Biden administration.

Already, climate advocates are preparing to defend existing federal environmental safeguards that curb harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gasses.

“Most of what we can credit the Biden administration [on environmental policy] … was done through his executive authority or rulemakings, and those rules can be undone,” said Adrian Shelley, the Texas director of the government watchdog group Public Citizen. “I can't read the tea leaves on individual rules, but I think the Trump administration will move quickly to rescind as many rules as possible.”

Meanwhile, oil and gas industry leaders expect the administration to favor policies that accelerate and promote fossil fuel production. Industry leaders said they would continue to adhere to air pollution rules, but added that methane reporting requirements need to be eased.

“It's no secret that we've had our number of disagreements with the Biden administration's energy policies over the last three and a half years,” said Dustin Meyers, senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American Petroleum Institute. “There have been times where it's felt as if the energy is under a real regulatory barrage, and so our message for the incoming administration centers around our key priorities.”

Shelley said the switch to a second Trump administration will again bring "regulatory whiplash" as the new president is expected to wipe out more of his predecessor’s environmental regulations.

These are the key climate initiatives that industry and advocates expect to change after Trump takes office.

Methane reduction

Pro-oil and gas groups said they hope to see changes to rules related to methane emissions, which they said were contradictory and confusing.

The Biden administration approved a rule to reduce the amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that acts like a blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat and preventing the atmosphere from cooling. The first-of-their-kind rules, written with input from industry, call for operators to identify and fix equipment leaking methane. The effort accounts for new and orphaned oil and gas wells and is also meant to curb the practice of flaring or burning excess natural gas. It is meant to prevent 58 million tons of methane emissions from being released into the atmosphere from 2024 to 2038.

Another rule is the Wasteful Emissions Charge, passed under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which imposes a monetary penalty on certain oil and gas facilities that exceed the EPA’s prescribed threshold to discourage what’s known as super emitters — or operators that emit high volumes of methane. The penalty starts at $900 per metric ton of methane this year and jumps to $1,500 per metric ton of methane by 2026.

Also included in the Inflation Reduction Act was an effort to expand methane emission reporting requirements as part of a program called Subpart W.

Jon Goldstein, associate vice president of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the rules were designed to ensure that operators followed federal rules.

“If you're concerned about the fee and don’t want exposure to the fee, it makes sense to get yourself in compliance,” he said.

Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, said the reporting requirements changed with each rule, making it difficult for operators to understand the kind of information they needed to submit and to which agency. He said the rules also affect smaller operators that don’t have the same resources as larger energy firms.

“I think the agency went further than was originally intended,” Sheppard said. “And it impacts … small producers. It creates a major economic impediment and will have, if left in place, a real dampening effect on a large segment of the industry.”

It would take years to undo the rules, whether they were passed by executive authority or Congress. For example, the federal methane rule would need to be reviewed again by federal regulators to determine what parts to keep or repeal. Undoing a federal rule would also require input from the public. Anything passed via legislation has to be revisited by Congress, environmental policy experts said.

Liquefied natural gas

In January, the Biden administration announced it would temporarily pause exports of liquefied natural gas until it could update authorization requirements that were more than five years old. The decision came as Biden ramped up efforts to phase out the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

This was a win for environmental groups in Texas — especially those on the Gulf Coast that had been fighting the expansion of LNG plants, which emit carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. Studies have shown that these pollutants can cause headaches, coughing, dizziness, and other respiratory illnesses.

The pause drew the ire of the oil and gas industry, which said it was another way the president undermined international energy security. Industry leaders said they hope to see the Trump administration lift the pause.

“We thought from the get-go that was both political and incredibly misguided,” Meyers of the Petroleum Institute said. “And so absolutely, we would ask the incoming administration to repeal that pause and start processing those applications as swiftly as possible.”

A study by Cornell University found that the extraction, processing and transportation of liquefied natural gas accounts for half of the greenhouse gasses released from natural gas.

Permitting overhaul

The oil and gas industry will also lobby for an overhaul of permitting and environmental review to shorten the time it takes to approve permits and expedite timelines to encourage more fossil fuel production.

“We are hopeful that this Congress will take on a robust, comprehensive permitting reform legislation, which would include streamlining in the National Environmental Policy Act,” Sheppard said. “And streamlining those processes and trying to shorten the timeline so that current applications can't be just delayed for years.”

In particular, industry groups said their key priorities included set periods for environmental reviews, clarity on the ability to file legal challenges and reforming the Clean Water Act to ensure it is not used to scuttle energy projects.

Complying with the National Environmental Policy Act, which federal agencies consider and evaluate as part of a larger permitting process that includes public testimony, can last several years.

Under the act, energy projects can be legally challenged up to three years after federal environmental regulators complete the review. Industry groups want to shorten that window to 180 days.

Disclosure: The Environmental Defense Fund and Permian Basin Petroleum Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.