The Claim

Signed a repeal of the Biden-era natural gas tax into law.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That Trump signed legislation repealing a tax on natural gas that was enacted during the Biden administration.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That there was a “tax on natural gas” — a phrase that evokes a tax on the commodity itself, affecting production, sale, and consumer prices. That this tax has been permanently eliminated. That natural gas consumers will benefit from its removal. That the Biden administration imposed a punitive cost on an essential energy source.

What is conspicuously absent?

First, the charge was never a “natural gas tax.” It was a waste emissions charge on methane leaked, vented, or flared from approximately 364 high-emitting oil and gas facilities — not a tax on natural gas production or consumption. Resources for the Future estimated the consumer price impact at “well under 1% of residential consumer prices.” Second, the charge was not repealed. Two separate legislative actions were taken: (1) the Congressional Review Act disapproval of the EPA implementing rule (P.L. 119-2, signed March 14, 2025), which revoked the compliance procedures but left the statutory mandate intact; and (2) the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025), which deferred the charge’s start date from 2024 to 2034 — a 10-year delay, not a repeal. The underlying statute, 42 U.S.C. Section 7436, remains on the books. Third, the charge had never actually been collected. The EPA’s implementing rule was finalized November 18, 2024, with the first payments not due until August 31, 2025. The CRA revocation in March 2025 preempted any collection. Fourth, this was a party-line action, not a bipartisan consensus — the Senate vote was 52-47 with zero Democratic votes in favor.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Trump signed H.J.Res.35 (P.L. 119-2) on March 14, 2025, revoking the EPA’s waste emissions charge implementing rule under the Congressional Review Act. The House passed the resolution 220-206 on February 26, 2025 (Republicans 214-1, Democrats 6-205). The Senate passed it 52-47 on February 27, 2025, on a strict party-line vote with zero Democratic crossovers (Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-ND, not voting). The CRA disapproval revoked the EPA rule titled “Waste Emissions Charge for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems: Procedures for Facilitating Compliance, Including Netting and Exemptions,” published November 18, 2024. Under the CRA, the EPA cannot issue a rule in “substantially the same form” without new congressional authorization. ¹

The CRA disapproval did not repeal the underlying statutory mandate for the waste emissions charge. As Vinson & Elkins explained: “If Congress wants to eliminate the methane tax entirely, it will need to use the traditional legislative process to repeal the tax.” The CRA revoked the implementing regulation — the compliance procedures, netting provisions, and exemption criteria — but 42 U.S.C. Section 7436, which establishes the charge itself, remained law. This created an impasse: the statute required the charge but companies had “no means by which to compute or pay” it. ²

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21, signed July 4, 2025) deferred the waste emissions charge start date from 2024 to 2034, but did not repeal it. Section 60012 of the OBBBA amended Clean Air Act Section 136(g), so that the charge now “applies to emissions reported for calendar year 2034 and for each year thereafter.” The OBBBA also rescinded unobligated funds from the Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP), which had received approximately $1.55 billion in IRA funding for methane monitoring and reduction incentives. ³

Strong Inferences

The waste emissions charge affected approximately 364 facilities, not the natural gas industry broadly. According to the Congressional Research Service (R48475), 2,112 petroleum and natural gas facilities reported methane emissions under EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program in 2022. After applying the 25,000 metric ton CO2e reporting threshold and waste emission thresholds, only approximately 364 facilities would actually have owed the charge. These covered roughly 20 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent — approximately 0.3% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. ⁴

The charge was structured to target waste methane, not natural gas production or consumption. The IRA set waste emission thresholds varying by facility type (0.05% to 0.20% of natural gas sent to sale). Only emissions exceeding these thresholds were charged. Facilities that kept their methane leak rates below the thresholds owed nothing. Facilities complying with EPA’s new source performance standards under CAA Section 111 were exempt entirely. The charge incentivized capturing and selling methane rather than wasting it — the opposite of a production tax. ⁵

The “natural gas tax” label is a political framing that mischaracterizes the charge’s design and impact. The charge was imposed on waste methane emissions from high-emitting facilities, not on natural gas as a commodity. Resources for the Future estimated the consumer price impact at “well under 1% of residential consumer prices” — approximately $0.15 per MMBtu. The American Petroleum Institute estimated $6 billion in total new costs on U.S. energy companies, but this aggregate figure spread across the industry’s multi-trillion-dollar revenue base would translate to minimal per-unit cost increases. Calling this a “natural gas tax” implies a tax on natural gas itself — analogous to a gasoline tax — when the actual mechanism was a penalty on excess pollution from a small number of facilities. ⁶

The distinction between “repeal” and “deferral” is not academic — it has real legal consequences. A repeal would permanently eliminate the statutory authority. The OBBBA’s 10-year deferral leaves 42 U.S.C. Section 7436 intact, meaning a future Congress could accelerate the start date back or a future administration could prepare to implement the charge as 2034 approaches. The CRA prohibition prevents the EPA from reissuing the same implementing rule, but a future Congress could pass new authorizing legislation. The combined effect is that the charge is effectively dead for the foreseeable future but remains on the statute books as a dormant mandate. ⁷

No payment was ever collected under the waste emissions charge before it was neutralized. The EPA finalized the implementing rule on November 18, 2024, with the first payment for 2024 emissions not due until August 31, 2025. The CRA disapproval on March 14, 2025, preempted any collection. The charge existed as law for approximately 2.5 years (August 2022 to March 2025) without generating any revenue. CBO had estimated $850 million in FY2026 revenue; EPA estimated approximately $525 million annually. These projected revenues were never realized. ⁸

What the Evidence Shows

The claim has a factual core: Trump did sign legislation that effectively neutralized the IRA’s waste emissions charge on methane from oil and gas facilities. The CRA disapproval (March 2025) removed the implementing rule, and the OBBBA (July 2025) deferred the statutory charge to 2034. Together, these actions rendered the charge inoperative for at least a decade.

But every key term in the claim is doing distortive work.

“Natural gas tax” misidentifies what was charged. This was not a tax on natural gas production, distribution, or consumption. It was a waste emissions charge targeting methane leaked, vented, or flared from approximately 364 high-emitting facilities — a pollution penalty, not a production tax. The design specifically exempted facilities that kept waste below thresholds, and the projected consumer price impact was negligible. Calling it a “natural gas tax” reframes an environmental compliance cost as a consumer energy tax, implying that ordinary natural gas users were being taxed when they were not.

“Repeal” overstates what happened. Neither legislative action repealed the statutory authority. The CRA revoked the implementing rule; the OBBBA deferred the start date to 2034. The underlying statute — 42 U.S.C. Section 7436 — remains law. As multiple legal analyses noted, full repeal requires the “traditional legislative process,” which was not completed. The administration opted for a deferral through budget reconciliation rather than full repeal, likely because full repeal would have required 60 Senate votes under regular order. Calling a 10-year deferral a “repeal” conflates postponement with elimination.

“Biden-era” is accurate but context-free. The charge was enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which passed on a party-line Democratic vote. It represented the first direct federal charge on greenhouse gas emissions — a significant policy innovation. But the IRA as a whole invested hundreds of billions in both clean energy and traditional energy infrastructure. The methane charge was designed to complement new EPA methane performance standards, creating both a carrot (MERP incentives for reduction technology) and a stick (the waste emissions charge). The administration’s actions removed both — rescinding the MERP funding alongside neutralizing the charge.

The Bottom Line

Steel-manning the claim: the Trump administration did take effective legislative action to prevent the IRA’s methane emissions charge from ever being collected. The CRA disapproval and the OBBBA deferral, taken together, ensure no facility will pay the charge before 2034 at the earliest. The oil and gas industry strongly opposed the charge, and its neutralization was a significant policy win for the sector. For practical purposes, the charge is dead for at least a decade, and a future Congress would need to take affirmative steps to revive it.

But the claim’s framing is misleading in three distinct ways. First, it was not a “natural gas tax” — it was a waste emissions charge on methane pollution from a small number of high-emitting facilities, with negligible projected impact on consumer natural gas prices. Second, it was not “repealed” — the underlying statute remains law; it was deferred through reconciliation because full repeal would have required a filibuster-proof majority the administration did not have. Third, the charge was never actually collected, making the “repeal” of a policy that had not yet imposed any cost less consequential than the framing suggests. The claim takes a real but nuanced policy action — deferring a targeted pollution charge — and repackages it as repealing a broad consumer tax, which overstates both the original burden and the relief provided.

Footnotes

1. GovTrack, H.J.Res.35 House Roll Call #52 (February 26, 2025), https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/119-2025/h52. GovTrack, H.J.Res.35 Senate Roll Call #97 (February 27, 2025), https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/119-2025/s97. Signed as P.L. 119-2 on March 14, 2025. Columbia Law School Sabin Center, “President Trump Signs Joint Resolution to Disapprove EPA Rule on Methane Emissions,” https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/president-trump-signs-joint-resolution-disapprove-epa-rule-methane-emissions. ↩

2. Vinson & Elkins, “Congress Has Disapproved the EPA’s Methane Tax Rule — What Happens Next?”, https://www.velaw.com/insights/congress-has-disapproved-the-epas-methane-tax-rule-what-happens-next/. 42 U.S.C. Section 7436, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7436. ↩

3. One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21), Section 60012, signed July 4, 2025. Kirkland & Ellis, “The OBBBA Is Signed Into Law: Key Changes to Environmental Programs,” https://www.kirkland.com/publications/kirkland-alert/2025/07/the-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-is-signed-into-law-by-president-trump. Sidley Austin, “H.R.1: What You Should Know About the Environmental and Energy Provisions in the OBBBA,” https://environmentalhealthsafetybrief.sidley.com/2025/07/08/h-r-1-what-you-should-know-about-the-environmental-and-energy-provisions-in-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-act/. ↩

4. Congressional Research Service, “Inflation Reduction Act Methane Emissions Charge: Overview and Developments” (R48475, March 28, 2025), https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R48475.html. CBO estimated $850 million in FY2026 revenue; EPA estimated approximately $525 million annually. ↩

5. 42 U.S.C. Section 7436(d)-(e), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7436. Waste emission thresholds set by facility type (0.05%-0.20%). Exemptions for facilities complying with CAA Section 111 standards, permitting delay emissions, and permanently plugged wells. ↩

6. Resources for the Future, “Inflation Reduction Act’s Proposed Methane Fee Would Have Negligible Impact on Natural Gas Prices,” https://www.rff.org/publications/testimony-and-public-comments/inflation-reduction-acts-proposed-methane-fee-would-have-negligible-impact-on-natural-gas-prices/. American Petroleum Institute cost estimate of $6 billion total. ↩

7. Sidley Austin, OBBBA environmental provisions analysis (cited above). Kirkland & Ellis, OBBBA environmental provisions analysis (cited above). The distinction between deferral and repeal is confirmed by multiple legal analyses. 42 U.S.C. Section 7436 remains codified as of March 2026. ↩

8. CRS R48475 (cited above). EPA implementing rule published November 18, 2024 (89 FR 91020). First payment deadline was August 31, 2025, for reporting year 2024 emissions. CRA disapproval on March 14, 2025 preempted collection. ↩