February 27, 2025

DENVER – Western Energy Alliance today praised Congress for overturning the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Waste Emissions Charge rule that imposed a fee on methane emissions from oil and natural gas facilities. Following yesterday’s bipartisan vote in the House on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) bill introduced by Rep. August Pfluger (TX-11), the Senate today passed Sen. John Hoeven’s (R-ND) companion bill. The CRA allows Congress to reverse federal regulations within 60 legislative days of a new session of Congress.

“The new Congress is rightly reversing four years of President Biden’s ‘whole-of-government’ overreach by using powers under the CRA to claw back burdensome regulations. EPA’s rule incorrectly imposed an inflated methane tax by purposefully overestimating companies’ emissions by as much as 2.5 times,” said Aaron Johnson, vice president of public and legislative affairs at the Alliance. “We ask President Trump to quickly sign it, but the CRA is just a first step for unraveling the methane fee. While the Biden rule is overturned, Congress’s mandate for a methane waste emissions charge still remains in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). We urge Congress to take the next step and remove the methane tax when repealing parts of the IRA through the budget reconciliation process. If the IRA remains as-is, EPA still has the obligation to write a new rule to impose the tax, and a future anti-oil-and-gas president could likewise implement an equally burdensome rule.”

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