Unknown author of important industry arguments against those exact rules, who was a member of the Trump administration’s lobbying team, was an unnamed author who was leading an effort to loosen the methane pollution regulations just four years ago.
In PDF data, Aaron Szabo, an associate superintendent at the Environmental Protection Agency, is listed as the author of a letter criticized for proposed methane emissions in the oil and gas industry in January 2022. The letter was submitted to the EPA by the American Exploration and Production Council, which represents some of the company’s largest emitters of the planet-warming oil, including ConocoPhillips, Diversified Energy and Hilcorp. Although Szabo’s brand does not appear in the PDF file itself, it can be found in the text that the software used to make it contains.
When Szabo drafted the claims against the regulations, which were later finalized in the Biden administration, he was registered as a lawyer for one of the AXPC’s lesser-known people, Ovintiv. He has also lobbied for different consumers in the fuel and chemicals industries. He described it in a way that avoided making any mention of efforts to influence climate policy, but he did not conceal that job when he was appointed last year as head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation:” I learned how governed companies adhere to the federal government’s dozens of regulations and policies. I likewise witnessed firsthand how important it is for the employees of these companies to ensure the setting is properly protected.
In his latest role overseeing national climate rules at the EPA, Szabo has been soliciting insight and also specific regulatory language from oil industry groups that stand to gain from watered-down methane rules, according to internal emails, calendar entries and records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R. The oil and gas industry had essentially been acquiesced to by Szabo’s past advocacy, according to I., the ranking Democrat on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. ” Now he can perform Big Oil’s dirty work from inside the EPA”, Whitehouse told ProPublica in an email.
The Trump administration has launched an extraordinary campaign against restrictions on fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming, as part of its “unleash National power.” One of its biggest moves was to overturn the “endangerment finding,” which established the EPA’s authority to impose limits on emissions at all. Rather than throw out the methane rules entirely, however, Szabo’s office is working to revise them, emails and documents show. Many of the compliance deadlines have already been postponed until next year due to it.
The United Nations Environment Programme claims that the main component of natural gas, methane, is a climate superpollutant, contributing to one-third of the rise in global temperatures since preindustrial times. When it escapes into the atmosphere without being burned for energy, it can trap 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, research shows. The oil and gas industry accounts for the majority of U.S. methane emissions, in part due to equipment leaks that were poorly maintained. Companies occasionally purposefully release the gas when it is unprofitable to collect it for sale through a technique known as venting.
To cut down on methane discharges, President Joe Biden’s EPA imposed much stricter controls on oil and gas operations, including requiring increased monitoring for leaks and equipment upgrades. The new regulations would have reduced the industry’s methane emissions by almost 80 %, according to agency estimates. And since the gas breaks down relatively quickly, this would have been one of the quickest ways to stop global warming.
Industry groups pushed back. The AXPC pushed for more “flexibility” in the request for less expensive leak-detection methods and less frequent monitoring in the letter Szabo helped draft in January 2022.
The group also raised questions about the expected effects of the rules on climate and health, citing” the importance of communicating the significant uncertainties within the estimates.” The AXPC’s chief executive, Anne Bradbury, added in a later statement that the rules risked “undercutting US production in the near and long-term — which will lead to increased energy costs and reduced energy security”.
The Biden administration’s approach was largely ignored by the AXPC. But it renewed its push after President Donald Trump returned to office and ordered federal agencies to” suspend, revise, or rescind” any “undue burden” on domestic energy production.
After serving for two years as a fellow at the Trump-led America First Policy Institute, Szabo became a consultant to EPA Chairman Lee Zeldin on Day 1. He gave the impression that he intended to stifle the laws he had fought for as a lobbyist. His staff met with AXPC representatives as early as Feb. 6, 2025, less than three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, to discuss its petition to “reconsider” the methane rules, according to emails and calendar entries obtained through public records requests and shared with ProPublica by Fieldnotes, a watchdog group that investigates the oil and gas industry. Szabo was listed as a required attendee for a meeting with Bradbury in July, and his staff then met with them at least twice more.
ProPublica sent an email asking for comment, but the AXPC didn’t respond.
According to records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica, other oil industry representatives have described their meetings with Szabo and his staff as highly favorable to their interests. The leadership of a major trade group wrote to its members last year in an internal newsletter,” Mr. Szabo assured us that the EPA is focused on these [methane ] rules and doing everything that can be done to limit the damage they will cause.”
Lee Fuller, of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, also praised his excellent communication with Szabo’s office during a conference call with industry representatives last year.
” It was one of the more fascinating meetings that we’ve ever had, just because they were suddenly willing to talk to us”, he said. They’ve never even let it pass unchecked on the radar, and they’ve suddenly been willing to talk about things we’ve been trying to get them to do for years.
The IPAA disputed ProPublica’s request for specific answers, but instead referenced a letter from September 2025 that the organization publicly requested EPA methane rule exceptions.
Szabo’s office has even invited oil industry groups to offer specific wording for the revised rules. We received a call a few weeks ago regarding. referring to devices that are a major source of methane emissions, MikeO’Connor of the American Petroleum Institute wrote to an EPA official in a letter written by him. “EPA had informally requested input on this topic and any suggested reg. text language We are using the EPA’s inquiry as informal input in the attached draft document. The draft called for a number of exemptions.
The EPA’s own communications also reflect the shift in priorities under Szabo. An agency official askedO’Connor to meet and discuss alternative leak-detection methods in a June 2025 email that ProPublica reviewed. Echoing the language in the AXPC comment that Szabo helped to draft, the official spoke of” the additional flexibility we would like to pursue”.
One former EPA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity about private conversations said of Szabo and other Trump appointees at the agency,” I think their agenda was, from what I could tell, to do what industry wanted.”
Since when do public officials ask the public what they think? the EPA said in an emailed statement, referring to Szabo’s interactions with oil industry representatives. “Szababo satisfied every ethical requirement to the letter.” When he first started at EPA, he met with the career ethics staff to make sure he is aware of and abides by federal ethics standards.
Szabo’s affinities are hardly a secret. In Project 2025, the deregulatory blueprint for the second Trump administration, he is given a personal thank you in the EPA chapter. He also submitted ethics disclosures listing oil, natural gas, and chemicals companies he had lobbied for as part of the nomination process for his appointment at the EPA.
Still, at his confirmation hearing on March 5 last year, he repeatedly declined to elaborate on his role in Project 2025, beyond saying he provided “general advice and thoughts” on the Clean Air Act.
The article The Trump EPA Official in Charge of Methane Regulations Contributed to the Oil Industry’s Writing Against Those Rules first appeared on ProPublica.
