'When Big Oil Says Jump, Republicans Ask How High?' GOP Sends Climate-Killing Bill to Trump's Desk
"It's a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry," said one critic.
Climate advocates are blasting congressional Republicans this week for their latest gift to fossil fuel industry: sending a resolution to kill the federal Methane Emissions Reduction Program to the desk of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Big Oil-backed Trump is expected to sign the Congressional Review Act resolution, which senators passed along party lines on Thursday. That followed a Wednesday vote in the House of Representatives, where Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vincente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), Kristen Donald Rivet (Mich.), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) supported the measure alongside all Republicans present except Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
Methane has more than 80 times as much warming power as carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere. The pollution program was established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last November. The Associated Press reported Thursday that "most major oil and gas companies do not release enough methane to trigger the fee, which is $900 per ton, an amount that would increase to $1,500 by 2026."
The GOP resolution will end the program, but not the mandate from the 2022 law. Mahyar Sorour, Sierra Club's director of beyond fossil fuels policy, declared that "this attack on EPA's implementation of the methane waste emissions charge is short-sighted and harmful. It remains a legal requirement for EPA to hold the biggest methane polluters accountable for their negligence."
"Forcing the agency to implement the charge some other way after conducting a thorough, well-researched process is as wasteful of taxpayer resources as these oil and gas operators are wasteful of harmful methane," Sorour argued. "Technology to monitor and stop leaks is readily available and easy to implement, so only wasteful, careless corporations will face a fee for excessive methane pollution. Despite this setback, Sierra Club will not stop fighting to make polluters pay for their egregious actions."
The resolution hit Trump's desk just over a month after his return to office. Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said that "it's a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry. Congress is showing its hypocrisy by claiming to seek to rein in government spending, while voting to repeal a revenue-raising fee that only applies to wasteful oil and gas companies."
"The methane fee was paired with a $1.5 billion government spending program to help oil and gas companies reduce harmful emissions," noted Slocum, who then took aim at Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency. "Voting to repeal the fee while allowing profitable corporations to pocket hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is an affront to the millions of working Americans disrupted by indiscriminate DOGE cost-cutting."
"It should not be too much to ask fossil fuel producers to do the bare minimum to capture leaking methane," he added. "Any child knows that when you make a mess, you should clean it up. The fee was intended to be a key part of enforcing standards on an industry that has repeatedly cut corners in its endless drive to extract more fossil fuels."
Critics highlighted how the rollback is expected to affect not only the warming planet but also public health. Moms Clean Air Force national field director Patrice Tomcik said that "as a mother living with oil and gas operations in my neighborhood, I have concerns about the impact of oil and gas pollution on the health of my children and neighbors."
"Polling shows that support for stronger standards on oil and gas operations is widespread across the country, including in oil and gas states, such as Pennsylvania, where my family lives," Tomcik pointed out. "Protecting the air our children breathe and combating the global heating fueling extreme weather should be nonnegotiable."
