On April 6, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized changes to its 2024 methane rule that expand exemptions, reduce monitoring requirements, and may increase emissions. These changes are in response to petitions submitted by the oil and gas industry after the 2024 rule was finalized.

The oil and gas industry vents, leaks, and flares billions of cubic feet of methane every year. Between FY2012 and FY2021, operators vented or flared roughly 3,170 billion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. This lost gas squanders a valuable energy resource, costs federal and state budgets millions in foregone revenue, and exposes nearby communities to avoidable health and safety risks.

In March 2024, EPA published New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for facilities built or modified after December 6, 2022, and Emission Guidelines (EG) for existing sources that states must incorporate into their State Implementation Plans (SIPs). These commonsense measures included:

• Routine Well Monitoring: Operators must regularly check for and repair leaks at well pads.
• Enhanced Leak Detection and Reporting: Detected leaks must be repaired within 60 days, with limited extensions of up to two years.
• Phasing Out Routine Flaring: Flaring is restricted to 24 hours to 30 days for safety, depending on well construction date, with certain exemptions for existing wells.
• Limits on Venting: Temporary venting is capped at 30 minutes for monitoring or tests and 12 hours during emergencies.
• Super-Emitter Response: EPA-certified third parties may use approved remote sensing technologies (e.g., satellites) to identify large methane releases of 100 kg/hr or more. Operators must investigate within five days and report findings to EPA within fifteen.

In July 2025, EPA issued an interim final rule (IFR) delaying compliance deadlines for the 2024 methane and VOC standards. EPA estimated the delay would lead to an additional 3.8 million tons of natural gas being flared, vented, or leaked—worth about $170 million—rather than captured and sold. The agency finalized the delay in November 2025.

This week’s final rule weakens those safeguards in two key ways:

1. Increases Temporary Flaring: The final rule extends the maximum amount of time operators can flare associated gas from 24 hours to 72 hours for maintenance, repairs, or safety issues. The rule also allows for an “exigent circumstance” that restricts an owner’s or operator’s ability to reasonably access a site, under which operators can flare gas for more than 72 hours. The January proposed rule would have extended the maximum flaring period to just 48 hours for safety issues.
2. Eliminates Continuous Monitoring for Flares and ECDs: The final rule removes a requirement for operators to continuously monitor the net heating value (NHV)—a measure of a device’s efficiency—of gas from flares and enclosed combustion devices, along with other changes that loosen monitoring and testing requirements.

EPA does not estimate the increased emissions—and resulting taxpayer costs—from these changes. In fact, the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), acknowledges it cannot “quantify the emissions from temporary flaring events due to data limitation” and “is unable to quantify any emissions or environmental or health benefits impacts” associated with the NHV provision. The RIA does include estimated industry compliance cost reductions of $208 million annually.

In its press release about the changes, EPA celebrates how reducing compliance costs for industry “will help lower gasoline and energy costs across the board and benefit American families.” This trickle-down is uncertain at best and, even if it occurs, likely marginal. By contrast, the downsides are immediate and real. Allowing more flaring and reducing monitoring requirements means more methane is likely to be vented, leaked, or burned without oversight—wasting resources, reducing state and federal revenues, and increasing risks to nearby communities. Whatever hypothetical savings might eventually reach consumers are speculative; the costs of increased waste and pollution are not.

Methane waste is a lose-lose-lose. It squanders a valuable energy resource, drains revenue from public coffers, and adds to health and safety risks for nearby communities. Expanding exemptions and reducing oversight does not solve that problem—it makes it harder to measure, harder to manage, and more likely to continue.