WASHINGTON—The Trump administration said Monday that it is proposing to roll back an Obama-era climate regulation aimed at cutting emissions of methane from drilling operations on federal lands.

The Bureau of Land Management, an arm of the Interior Department, announced it wants to replace a regulation issued by former President Barack Obama that would limit the amount of gas released into the air at the drilling sites, often through venting or burning it off.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and efforts to cut its frequent emissions from oil and gas drilling are seen as a way to help combat global warming. Republicans in Congress last year attempted to reverse the rule, but their efforts were rejected in the Senate.

The Trump administration’s proposal would virtually eliminate the rule, replacing it with requirements similar to those in force before the Obama administration’s guidelines were issued just days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. The new proposal would be subject to 60 days of public comment before it is finalized.

The department has tried to delay the rules’ requirements until 2019—a decision that is being challenged in court—and this updated plan would replace them. The Obama administration had underestimated the rule’s economic impact, the bureau said in its announcement. It also said the Obama rule duplicates provisions from several pre-existing state and federal protections.

“In order to achieve energy dominance through responsible energy production, we need smart regulations not punitive regulations,” said Joe Balash, assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management on Monday. “We believe this proposed rule strikes that balance and will allow job growth in rural America.”

The American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobby group that has previously said the rule wasn’t needed, cheered the bureau’s announcement.

Several Republican members of Congress who also supported the bureau’s move, said that the Obama rule, if left in place, would have discouraged new development from the energy industry, hurting the economy in several Western states.

Environmentalists rejected that claim and decried the decision, pointing out that several companies had already moved on their own to start cutting methane emissions. Many oil-and-gas companies—including some of the world’s biggest—have been anticipating further rules to slow climate change and have decided to invest in better methane-capturing technology. They can recoup some of the investment and potentially add to profits by capturing more stray gas and selling it with the rest of their output.

“The proposal [the bureau] put forward today would only serve to reward the least responsible actors in industry at a time when other companies are moving forward to tackle methane waste,” Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund said in a statement. “Gutting the rule would allow unchecked waste of natural gas, unnecessary pollution, and the loss of revenue to communities and tribes” that own royalties from drilling at these sites.

Pulling the rule has been a central part of the Republicans’ effort to undo Obama-era environmental regulations that started as soon as Mr. Trump took office. His agencies are rewriting rules designed to fight climate change, coal-ash pollution and coastal flooding, among many others. It is part of a broad attempt to lower costs for oil companies, power plants and manufacturers.

The rule that covered methane emissions, formally known as the Waste Prevention Rule, was part of a larger effort by Republicans to revoke some late regulations issued by Mr. Obama using the Congressional Review Act. Republicans passed 13 resolutions to undo such Obama-era regulations, but three Republican senators and all 48 members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus blocked a procedural vote on the bill to quash this one.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine had objected to the rule on environmental grounds, saying methane should be captured rather than allowed to escape, which most commonly happens at wells during early testing or sometimes during safety precautions to release pressure. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona had wanted the Interior Department to revise and improve the rule.

The Obama administration said methane has a warming impact on the planet 25 times that of carbon dioxide, though it lasts not nearly as long in the atmosphere. With the onset of the energy boom, flaring or venting gas became an increasing problem, emitting methane straight into the atmosphere, usually when pipelines or other infrastructure weren’t immediately available to transport and process it. The Obama-era rule had required energy companies to capture the methane and ship it as fuel.

Write to Timothy Puko at email@example.com Agency proposes reinstating requirements similar to those in force before Obama-era rule was put in place
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