EPA methane chief secretly authored oil industry's case against the rules he now rewrites

On April 1, 2026, ProPublica reported that Aaron Szabo — the Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator directing the agency's effort to loosen methane-emissions rules for oil and gas operations — helped write the industry's key arguments against those same rules four years earlier. PDF metadata identifies Szabo as the author of a January 2022 comment letter submitted to the EPA by the American Exploration and Production Council (AXPC), a trade group whose members include some of the country's largest methane emitters. Szabo's name appears nowhere in the letter itself; at the time he drafted it, he was a registered lobbyist for AXPC member Ovintiv.

Szabo joined the second Trump administration on its first day as an adviser to EPA chief Lee Zeldin, after two years as a fellow at the America First Policy Institute, and was later confirmed to head the Office of Air and Radiation. In that role he oversees the federal methane rules he had argued against as a lobbyist. Internal emails, calendar entries, and records of closed-door conversations reviewed by ProPublica show his office soliciting input — including specific draft regulatory text — from the oil industry groups that stand to gain from weakened rules, and meeting with AXPC representatives within weeks of the inauguration to discuss its petition to reconsider the rules. Compliance deadlines for many provisions have already been delayed.

While Szabo disclosed his lobbying clients during confirmation, his authorship of the industry's case against the methane rules was not disclosed; it surfaced only through document metadata. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, called the arrangement evidence of agency capture. The EPA said in a statement that Szabo "fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter." The methane rules, finalized under the Biden administration, were projected to cut the industry's methane emissions by nearly 80 percent.