Trump donor fined for pollution leads a fight to end methane emission penalties

Detailed plans from 30 oil and gas producers come amid historic levels of potent planet-heating emissions

A powerful US oil and gas industry lobby group has drawn up detailed plans to kill off penalties for emitting methane, a potent planet-heating gas that’s increasing at the fastest rate in decades, with this effort led by a major donor to Donald Trump whose company has just been fined for methane pollution.

Leaked internal documents from the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC), a group of 30 oil and gas producers, outline a push to repeal a fee levied on methane emissions should the former US president win this week’s election and Republicans gain control of Congress.

The plan, coming as scientists warn that methane emissions are rising at a rate that imperils a livable climate, is being spearheaded by an AXPC board that includes the chief executive of Hilcorp, a Texas-based firm whose founder Jeff Hildebrand has, along with his wife, Melinda, been a leading donor to Trump’s election campaign, holding multiple fundraisers for the former president.

The Hildebrands have donated more than $3m, almost all to Republicans, in this election cycle amid a record glut of oil and gas industry contributions to Trump. Methane regulations are of particular interest to Hildebrand – this month, Hilcorp agreed to pay a $9.4m civil penalty for violations in its emission of methane, among other pollutants, from its New Mexico operations.

Hilcorp was revealed in 2021 to be the US’s leading methane emitter among energy businesses, releasing nearly 50% more methane from its operations than the country’s largest fossil fuel producer, ExxonMobil, despite drilling for far less oil and gas.

Another AXPC board member is Lee Tillman, chief executive of Marathon Oil, which in July had to pay $241.5m to resolve federal allegations that it unlawfully emitted methane in North Dakota. The lobby group’s plan envisions “advocating with R’s [Republicans]” to repeal a methane fee the documents complain “disproportionately penalizes oil-heavy operators”.

The documents outline hopes for a Republican reconciliation bill to kill off the methane fee, as well as further legal action and “additional pressure on EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) politicals” to achieve industry-friendly policies.

Climate campaigners said the plan is evidence big oil will exert an outsized influence over Trump after he directly asked oil executives for $1bn in campaign donations during a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in April. Industry figures such as Hildebrand are “writing his marching orders for him ahead of time”, said Pete Jones, rapid response director of Climate Power.

“Trump promised a room full of fossil fuel billionaires that he’d let them pollute our air and water, let them off the hook for dangerous spills, and fight to make them a fortune, even if it means forfeiting critical health protections,” Jones said.

The leaked documents, obtained by the research group Fieldnotes and first reported upon by the Washington Post, outline a comprehensive blueprint to overturn climate policies put in place during Joe Biden’s presidency. Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax”, attacked a major climate bill signed by Biden as “one of the great scams of all time” and vowed to undo it if elected, with the aid of Republicans in Congress.

A primary target for the industry is the charge of $900 per metric ton of emitted methane that was introduced as the first ever penalty for a greenhouse gas in the bill, called the Inflation Reduction Act. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and is regularly leaked in oil and gas production or is flared, a process that intentionally burns off excess methane that can’t be captured.

Although it lingers in the atmosphere for just a decade, methane is a major cause of the climate crisis, being 80 times more powerful as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide. Methane is responsible for about a third of global heating since industrial times and the US is one of 158 countries to sign a global pledge to slash human-made methane emissions by 30% from 2020 levels within a decade.

“The fastest win we can get in order to slow down global warming is to cut methane, it’s really the crucial thing we can do immediately to address this crisis,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House. “It is the policy lever we can pull to limit near term temperatures and impacts.”

But both the methane fee and EPA methane regulations are likely to be targeted should Trump win power, experts expect. “The Biden-Harris administration has made a major push on methane domestically and globally and I think that this could be decisively reversed in a second Trump administration,” said Barry Rabe, who specializes in environmental policy at the University of Michigan.

AXPC has said its members are committed to cutting methane but the group has joined legal action to challenge EPA methane rules. The leaked plans also show confidential data revealing the volume of gas flared by AXPC member companies increased by 21% from 2022 to 2023, with one company raising its flaring intensity by 134% since 2021.

There is a broader upward trend in methane emissions that has concerned scientists. Methane pollution is rising at the fastest rate in decades globally, with the lack of action to control these emissions putting agreed climate targets in jeopardy and risking fiercer storms, heatwaves, droughts and other disasters.

The rising emissions come from a variety of sources, with methane emitted during the drilling and processing of oil, gas and coal, and a boom in fracking causing a rash of new gas projects this century. The gas is also released from livestock, primarily through the burps of cows, and rice production.

Meanwhile, rising global heat is causing the faster decomposition of organic matter in wetlands, thereby releasing more methane.

An AXPC spokesman said that member companies’ methane emissions have declined since 2021 and that these members “have consistently driven down emissions year over year regardless of party control over various branches of government in Washington, and will continue to do so moving forward”.

“While AXPC largely supports the EPA’s regulatory methane program, we have expressed opposition to the methane tax Congress enacted as part of the IRA as a duplicative, less effective approach,” he added.

“While we support the tax’s repeal, we recognize that EPA had to propose implementing regulations for it, and so have been engaging with EPA and other stakeholders to address specific implementation issues, especially where the proposal runs afoul of congressional intent, in advance of the rule becoming final.”

Hilcorp was contacted for comment but did not respond to questions about the leaked documents.

Cover photo: Donald Trump arrives at the Double Eagle Energy oil rig on 29 July 2020 in Midland, Texas. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP