First Trump Administration Rule Submitted to OMB

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking from the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on “National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measure”. This is the first rulemaking submitted to OIRA since President Trump took office on January 20^th and announced a temporary freeze on federal rulemaking.

There is no entry for this rulemaking in the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda, but I suspect that this rule will be a start to the process of overturning the Biden Administration’s 2024 “National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measure” final rule. That rule essentially overturned a Trump 45 rule from 2018 that overturned an Obama January 2017 rule.

While I have no intention of covering this rulemaking in this blog, it will be interesting to see how quickly OIRA processes this rulemaking. This is obviously a high-profile rulemaking for the incoming administration and there are only four other rulemakings currently in OIRA pending review. This rule will provide the first measure of how effective the new administration is on bureaucratic process of rulemaking.

EPA Sends Methane Emissions NPRM to OMB

Yesterday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs announced that it had received a notice of proposed rulemaking from the EPA on “Methane Emissions and Waste Reduction Incentive Program for Petroleum and Natural Gas Systems”. This rulemaking is mandated by §60113 of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (PL 117-169, 136 STAT. 2073).

According to the Fall 2023 Unified Agenda entry for this rulemaking:

“The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 adds section 136, “Methane Emissions and Waste Reduction Incentive Program” to Title I of the Clean Air Act. Section 136 directs the Administrator to impose and collect a charge for methane emissions from applicable facilities that report to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program petroleum and natural gas systems source category (40 CFR part 98, subpart W) and that exceed statutorily specified waste emissions thresholds. The purpose of this action is to meet directives set forth in section 136 with respect to the Methane Emissions and Waste Reduction Incentive Program.”

NOTE: I will be following the progress of this rulemaking here on this blog, but I probably will not discuss the provisions of rule in detail when it is published.