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President Donald Trump will use a campaign swing through Texas on Tuesday to announce a plan to ease methane rules for oil and gas producers, seeking to show voters he is working to bring down gasoline prices a week before the midterm elections, Reuters reported, citing a White House official.
The announcement is planned during rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock for Trump's hand-picked Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, who is locked in a close race with Democrat James Talarico. It is Trump's third visit to Texas this month, part of a broader October campaign blitz across Republican-leaning states that have become midterm battlegrounds.
What the proposal would change
Trump plans to announce an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to roll back Biden-era rules that required companies to fix leaky equipment and regularly check wells for escaping methane, a potent greenhouse gas, the White House official told Reuters.
The plan would give relief to small, low-output wells and end a program that used outside groups to report large methane leaks, the official said. It would also ease rules aimed at phasing out the routine burning off of gas at oil wells, a practice known as flaring.
The administration is casting the move as a way to produce more energy and lower costs. It is the latest in a string of pre-election steps by Trump to address fuel prices, which Reuters noted have become a political liability for Republicans amid the war with Iran.
Why Texas, and why now
By pairing the methane rollback with rallies for Paxton, Trump is trying to turn energy policy into votes in a longtime Republican stronghold. A loss for Paxton next Tuesday would complicate the Republican Party's path to retaining its slim Senate majority, Reuters reported.
The trip also fits a wider pattern: Trump's October campaign blitz has taken him to Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, South Carolina and Mississippi, as races once expected to be safely in Republican hands have tightened.
What this is — and is not — yet
What is planned is an EPA proposal, not a final rule. The details reported so far come from a White House official speaking to Reuters ahead of the announcement, and the proposal itself has not yet been published. Its final form, and how far it goes, will only be clear once the EPA puts it out.
Still, the direction is clear: the administration is moving to loosen one of the previous administration's signature climate rules for the oil and gas industry, and it is doing so in the final week of a midterm campaign in which energy prices are a central issue for voters.
Sources: Reuters (planned announcement, White House official, Corpus Christi and Lubbock rallies, Paxton–Talarico race, third Texas visit this month, proposal details, energy and fuel-price framing). The announcement is reported as planned, not yet delivered, and the proposal details are attributed to the White House official cited by Reuters.