US EPA Proposes Overhaul of Biden-Era Oil and Gas Rules, Zeldin Claims $45 Billion in Savings

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced a proposal to overhaul Biden-era oil and gas rules. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the announcement in Lubbock, Texas, alongside President Donald Trump. He claimed the proposal would save Americans $45 billion.

By Zeldin's estimate, the proposal would also unleash an estimated 210 million more barrels of American oil and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

He said much of America runs on oil and gas—the fuel in vehicles and heat in homes, the diesel in the tractor that grows food and the truck that hauls it to the grocery store. When it costs more to produce and supply goes down, consumers pay more for almost everything, he argued.

Zeldin alleged that in 2024 the Biden EPA imposed one-size-fits-all mandates on oil and gas producers, from the biggest companies to families with a single well. By its own estimate, he said, the rule would cost $18 billion and push natural gas prices higher, and even those estimates were too low.

He claimed the rule would have shut down existing wells and kept new ones from ever opening—something, he said, producers told the agency again and again while the Biden EPA refused to admit it.

America's marginal well owners would have been hit hardest, Zeldin said. By his figures, about 783,000 of the nation's oil and gas wells, roughly 79 percent, are small, low-producing wells, many on family land.

The new proposal would set separate, workable standards for different kinds of well sites, so a family's stripper well is not treated like a major operation.

The proposal would also end the so-called super emitter programme, which Zeldin described as unnecessary, ineffective and built on shaky legal ground.

For natural gas produced alongside oil, the proposal would restore a standard of 95 percent efficient flaring or other controls, instead of a mandate that all of it reach a sales line—something that, he noted, simply does not exist in many producing areas.

Zeldin said protecting human health and the environment is the EPA's core mission and that is not changing. In his words, the Clean Air Act requires standards that sources can actually achieve.