EPA proposes weakening leak and equipment rules for 700,000 stripper wells

Rollback is projected to save oil and gas companies $42 billion through 2050

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to drastically weaken requirements for leak inspections and equipment upgrades at more than 700,000 low-producing oil and gas wells known as stripper wells, under a draft rule now being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The draft defines stripper wells as those producing up to 15 barrels of oil per day; they tend to be old, poorly maintained, and prone to leaking. While these wells produce just 6% of the country’s oil and natural gas, studies show they account for roughly half of the sector’s methane pollution — a figure the EPA acknowledged in the draft.

The EPA argued in the draft that forcing the lowest-producing wells to comply with existing regulations would shut them down, which the agency characterized as “unreasonable.” Doing so would eliminate just 0.4% of U.S. oil and gas production, according to an industry estimate cited in the proposed rule. The proposal, which would also weaken methane controls in the wider oil industry, is expected to save companies $42 billion through 2050. An attached memo says the rollback will help to “unleash” American energy, one of President Donald Trump’s favorite slogans.

Environmental advocates said deregulating stripper wells will do little to boost energy output while significantly increasing climate pollution. “This is not about energy dominance,” said Darin Schroeder of the Clean Air Task Force, a climate advocacy group. “It’s about padding the pockets of oil and gas operators and saddling society with the costs.”

The proposed changes follow a campaign by a previously low-profile faction of the oil industry that has gained influence during Trump’s second term. In the draft, the EPA said it is deregulating stripper wells in response to petitions from the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the National Stripper Well Association, among other groups.

ProPublica reported in June that the IPAA has long enjoyed the support of Jeffery Hildebrand, the founder and owner of Hilcorp, a privately held company known for buying up old, poorly maintained stripper wells. Hildebrand became one of the oil industry’s largest Trump donors after the Biden administration imposed aggressive methane restrictions in 2024. Trump, back in office, appointed Aaron Szabo, a former Hilcorp lobbyist, to a top post at the EPA, putting him in charge of the effort to roll back the new methane rules.

Before joining the agency, Szabo helped draft a letter on behalf of the American Exploration and Production Council — which has Hilcorp’s CEO on its board — opposing the Biden-era methane rules. He also advised on climate regulations for Project 2025, the deregulatory roadmap for the current administration. Project 2025 recommended eliminating an EPA program that would track “super-emitter” events — enormous methane releases that have long plagued the oil industry — and oblige companies to respond to them. The current proposal would end that program as well, and the AXPC and the IPAA have also called for it to be terminated.

The EPA said in a statement that Szabo “had not done any work for AXPC for well over a year before he started working for the federal government” and that he had reviewed federal ethics rules with the agency’s ethics staff upon joining. The agency declined to comment on the substance of the methane rule revisions except to confirm that they were being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The OMB press office did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

The rules now being rolled back were a key component of former President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. They would have cut methane pollution from the oil industry by 80%, the EPA said at the time. Because methane is the main component of natural gas, the rules would also have prevented useful energy from being lost to the atmosphere through leaks and other releases. Methane accounts for one-third of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, and breaks down in the atmosphere in roughly a dozen years — making cuts to its emissions one of the few known ways to slow warming within a single lifetime.

Biden’s EPA had valued the climate, health and energy benefits of those rules at more than $7 billion a year, even after accounting for increased compliance costs. Breaking with precedent, Trump’s EPA did not include calculations of the environmental and health impacts of the new proposal. If it goes into effect, much of the public benefit will evaporate while oil and gas producers see increased profits.

An IPAA spokesperson declined to comment on the group’s influence in the Trump administration but said in an emailed statement that its lobbying “has focused on ensuring regulations are workable for low-production and marginal wells.” The NSWA and AXPC did not respond to emailed requests for comment. NSWA representatives previously told ProPublica that they had asked the EPA to soften restrictions on stripper wells because many of their members couldn’t afford the compliance costs. AXPC CEO Anne Bradbury previously told ProPublica that the group’s members were “committed to building on a legacy of world-leading methane emission reductions.” Hilcorp spokesperson Nick Piatek did not provide a comment but previously told ProPublica that the company was “proud” of recent efforts to reduce its emissions.