The U.S. oil and gas industry has succeeded in exporting massive amounts of natural gas to Europe. Now, with the help of White House officials, it looks like it might also succeed in exporting the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.
Now the sector is attempting to strong-arm the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, into delaying the rollout of what the bloc intended to be a major rule to curb a potent climate pollution. It has prevailed in winning the backing of over half the bloc’s 27 member countries, who have joined U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright in calling for swift changes to the rules.
At stake is potentially billions of dollars in natural gas that U.S. companies want to continue exporting to Europe but that EU policymakers say must be subject to strict rules governing emissions of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that has fueled extreme weather around the globe. And it raises worries among climate advocates that the Americans are choking out what the EU intended to be a major initiative to combat climate change, one that had been years in the making.
The energy industry’s monthslong campaign against new methane regulations that had been in the works since 2024 scored a major victory last week when member countries pushed the commission to delay and make complying with the rules easier. The regulation would require oil and gas imports into the EU to show their fuel is produced with little methane.
“The underlying policy is still very flawed,” Mike Sommers, the chief executive of API, told reporters in response to a question from POLITICO, saying the group has sent delegations to Europe and is working with the Trump administration to “hopefully get a policy that makes sense for American producers — and, by the way, for Europe.”
Many of the industry’s arguments center on technical challenges about implementing the regulation. But one oil and gas executive was more blunt, saying there’s also a battle of business philosophies.
“Some people view this more ideologically about whether or not Europe should be regulating global oil and gas production, but then there are others who see the realities that the EU has over-stretched without the necessary frameworks in place, in the EU and globally — whether around measurement, clarity of enforcement, or understanding of existing commercial agreements.”
The diplomatic fight is around an EU regulation aimed at cutting industrial releases of methane. The greenhouse gas has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide — and is also the main ingredient for natural gas, something European countries have come to depend on the United States for as a supplier. The bloc has committed to ending imports of Russian fuel by the beginning of next year and must also find substitutes for Qatari supplies halted due to damage from Iranian strikes earlier this year.
EU officials proposed that companies seeking to sell natural gas into Europe disclose how much methane leaked out of the wells, inventory tanks, pipelines and ships on its way to Europe. The rules are designed to both meet the bloc’s energy needs while limiting its effects on warming the planet. It would require importers to verify that the fuel they receive is produced with limited methane leakage and intensity.
American oil and gas producers say providing that level of detail once the new rule would go into effect Jan. 1 is all but impossible and would effectively shut them out of a major market. They warn the EU devised the rule without a full understanding of the U.S. gas market, where companies mix supply from various fields and basins to chill into a liquid and then export.
“There is absolutely no way that an importer in Europe could say, ‘show me who produced this gas in the United States, and what was their methane intensity,’” said Fred Hutchison, president of LNG Allies, which supports U.S. LNG exports.
At least two senior European officials expressed skepticism at the industry narrative.
Finnish energy minister Sari Multala told POLITICO that Helsinki’s assessment of the supply risks didn’t match up to the dramatic conclusions reached by other member countries pushing to revise the regulation. Finland doesn’t “see the point” of reopening the rules, she said.
Spanish energy minister Sara Aagesen Muñoz went one further, vowing to fight to preserve the rules. “There are other elements that the Commission should explore, but not opening the regulation,” she said. “This is something that was very tough [on emissions], and it’s very important.”
Exxon Mobil and some of the U.S. industry’s largest players have publicly vowed to combat methane emissions, saying it’s in their interest to account for the gas being lost to leaks and flaring. Lobbying outfits like API have also consistently noted U.S. gas burns cleaner than its competitors.
Still, they uniformly have pushed back against the EU rule. Companies contend their concern is about regulatory uncertainty and timelines rather than any ideological objection to slashing methane emissions.
“Importers will be forced to break the law or stop delivering energy to Europe. No amount of guidance or waivers will fix that,” a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil said in a statement. “The EU must hit the pause button now and simplify the rules so industry can continue to reduce emissions while also delivering the energy that allows society to thrive.”
An industry-backed study — one that many EU officials dispute — shows that uncertainty over how to comply with the EU rules, if finalized, would jeopardize 43 percent of the bloc’s gas and 87 percent of its crude oil imports, much of it from the United States.
That stance may also be masking an ideological aversion to overseas regulation that dictates actions within U.S. borders.
“Some folks are fearful of creep,” said William Foiles, CEO of Project Canary, a company that works with oil and gas operators to reduce methane emissions.
Not all in the oil industry have cast the regulation as doomsday for natural gas sellers. Olav Aamlid Syversen, the vice president of public affairs at Norwegian oil major Equinor, told POLITICO that it would be better to adopt a wait-and-see approach, reviewing the impact of the rules in 2028 instead of adding to the legal uncertainty by delaying them outright. That would give EU authorities the time to gather “the necessary evidence” to judge whether changes need to be made, he said.
He was confident that Equinor itself — which has invested heavily in reducing methane emissions — faced only limited risks to its European exports. “We are pretty confident that the gas from Norway will make it across the border,” Syversen said.
But other global oil and gas companies made the case to Brussels to slow things down, said another executive with a major U.S. oil and gas producer, who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Industry lobbied EU officials to delay the rules until policymakers determine how to implement them in a way that would make compliance easier for U.S. companies. For help, it recently turned to the Trump administration to amplify pressure.
“It’s only when we couldn’t make any progress there that we turned more towards the administration to say, ‘Can you help us?’” the U.S. executive for a major oil and gas producer said.
The White House was happy to answer the call.
Energy Secretary Wright — a former chief executive of an oil services company — penned an open letter along with the energy chiefs of Qatar and other exporters, backing industry’s warning that if the rules are implemented Europe could face a severe shortage of oil and gas. Wright urged the EU to delay its rule, aligned with a snowballing of opposition that eventually rolled up powerful political backing in Europe.
Austrian State Secretary for Energy Elisabeth Zehetner told POLITICO that Vienna started to worry about the impact of the methane rules after U.S. diplomats warned her directly of the potential supply risks. U.S. officials had “several meetings with us explaining the situation,” she said on the sidelines of the Luxembourg summit. Her office declined to say when the meetings were or which U.S. embassy the diplomats belonged to. Saudi and Qatari officials also told her government that their energy sectors would struggle to comply with the rules, she added.
Zehetner added that even if the dire supply warnings are overhyped, it makes sense to err on the side of caution, given Europe’s dwindling sources of supply following the destruction of energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf and the adoption of the EU’s stepwise ban on Russian gas.
“If you look at the current numbers concerning how much LNG we are getting from the U.S. — and also because we tried to phase out from Russian gas — our responsibility as politicians is to be aware that there could rise up a next problem,” Zehetner said.
The lobbying had its effect. At a summit of EU energy ministers last month in Luxembourg, 17 member countries, including Germany, argued to delay the rules under the EU’s current mantra of “competitiveness,” following a push by the populist, fossil-fuel-dependent governments of Czechia and Slovakia.
The Department of Energy celebrated the victory.
“We are encouraged by the growing momentum across Europe and among the world’s leading energy exporters in support of a legislative fix to the EU Methane Regulation,” a spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement. “There is now a broad and expanding consensus among EU Member States, Parliament, European industry, international energy companies, and major supplier nations that the regulation will lead to higher prices and serious oil and gas supply disruptions.”
Still, divisions linger over how that can be achieved, given the timeline for implementing the regulation is already enshrined in EU law. Some of the countries at last month’s meeting adopted a cautious stance, acknowledging that opening up the regulation for changes — at a time when far-right lawmakers have increasing sway over the legislative process — could lead to fresh uncertainty and unintended consequences.
“There are legal risks in reopening the legislation, absolutely, but there are also legal risks in doing nothing if companies don’t know what rules they’ll face — we need a pragmatic solution,” Ebba Busch, energy minister of typically pro-green Sweden, told POLITICO.
James Bikales contributed to this report.
