The Senate voted Thursday to overturn a Biden-era rule that required oil companies to pay a fine for emitting methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that has significantly contributed to climate change.
The vote was 52-47. The House on Wednesday passed a similar resolution scrapping the Environmental Protection Agency rule, and President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure into law.
Overturning the methane rule does not eliminate the EPA’s obligation to levy a fee on methane emissions from large oil and gas facilities. That obligation was written into Biden’s signature 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and fully undoing it would require additional legislation.
The EPA estimated the regulation would prevent 1.2 million metric tons of methane from entering Earth’s atmosphere. That is roughly the equivalent of taking nearly 8 million gas cars off the nation’s roads for a year.
Methane is responsible for nearly a third of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution began, according to the International Energy Agency. Although it breaks down much faster than carbon dioxide, it traps about 80 times as much heat in the Earth’s atmosphere in the short term.
The oil and gas industry ranks as the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the United States. The gas can leak from wells, pipelines, storage tanks and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Large amounts of methane can also escape from microbes — the tiny organisms that live in cows’ stomachs, as well as in agricultural fields and wetlands.
The Senate is also expected to vote soon on a resolution repealing energy-efficiency standards for tankless gas water heaters. The House passed the measure Thursday.