Washington
CNN
—
The Environmental Protection Agency has told staff overseeing the country’s industrialized Midwest — a region plagued by a legacy of pollution — to stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies, multiple sources told CNN.
The directive, which sources say was issued verbally to stunned staff in recent months, comes as EPA insiders say there is broad pressure within the agency to ease scrutiny of the industry.
Efforts — implicit and explicit — to reduce enforcement fit with an ambitious deregulation agenda being enacted by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin at the behest of President Donald Trump, who entered office promising to slash “burdensome” oil and gas industry regulations and increase production.
At the EPA, this has meant unwinding climate and pollution regulations finalized under former President Joe Biden, particularly those that curbed fossil fuel emissions. Just last week, Zeldin proposed weakening limits on air toxins and repealing a rule cutting climate pollution from coal and gas-fired power plants.
But even before these policy changes have been formalized, the EPA is pulling back in a way that agency insiders haven’t seen in previous administration changes.
A spokesperson for the EPA told CNN that “inspections and enforcement continue to occur in the energy and oil and gas industries.”
Beyond shifts within the agency, sources say its enforcement office also has effectively lost a partner in the US Department of Justice’s environmental division, where buyouts and firings have greatly thinned staff.
“The companies are scoffing at the cops,” one EPA enforcement staffer quipped. “EPA enforcement doesn’t have the leverage they once had.”
The alarm bells began ringing just weeks into the new Trump administration, sources said, when they were asked to detail cases they were working on for review by upper management. That was not particularly unusual — but they were also asked to single out any violations involving fossil fuel.
Managers told enforcement officials “that energy-sector cases are being handled differently and less likely to be moved ahead,” one official told CNN.
“It stuck out to me,” the source said. “I was concerned if any of those cases would be resumed again.”
Four sources with knowledge of the situation at the EPA’s Region 5 office, which oversees six Midwestern states, told CNN that enforcement officials were informed that “there is a pause on oil and gas enforcement” at staff meetings.
“That is how our regional management is interpreting signals from the president,” the EPA enforcement staffer said.
Officers stopped being able to issue notices of violation or send information requests to fossil fuel companies suspected of polluting, the sources told CNN. A violation notice is a prerequisite for taking a company to court for alleged violations of environmental laws.
Region 5 includes active oil and gas producing states like Ohio, which accounted for about 5% of US marketed natural gas in 2024, and major production sites, such as the Whiting Refinery, the largest BP refinery in the world.
The region has the most enforcement staff of any EPA office, according to David Uhlmann, a former EPA assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance, “and consistently brings major precedent setting cases,” including some of the EPA’s largest historical settlements.
In neighboring EPA Region 6, which includes oil and gas powerhouses such as Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico, enforcement has also “effectively been paused,” according to another source with knowledge of the situation there. Texas produces by far the most oil and gas in the US.
While fossil fuel violation notices are still being issued in the region, “no direction is [being] given to move forward” on those cases, the source said.
Even asking for information from oil and gas companies suspected of violations has drawn scrutiny, the person said.
In one instance, according to one of the sources familiar with the matter, a lawyer for a fossil fuel company directly called the office’s political appointee — a non-career official installed by the Trump administration — about a request to the company. Within weeks, the appointee was “questioning the motives” of EPA officials seeking the information, the source said, adding that staff interpreted the reaction as a warning for probing the industry.
An early snapshot of enforcement data from Trump’s start of his second term shows the overall number of EPA enforcement cases initiated or closed across sectors has dropped by 32% compared with the first three months of the Biden administration, according to publicly available EPA data analyzed for CNN by environmental watchdog Environmental Integrity Project. The same data shows nearly 60% fewer cases have been initiated or closed compared with the first three months of Trump’s first term.
Although the data is preliminary, the drop is in line with policies outlined in a March 12 memo issued by EPA’s acting enforcement chief at the time, Jeffrey Hall.
The memo directed agency staff to consult with Trump-appointed officials before issuing any violations. Enforcements “shall not shut down any stage of energy production (from exploration to distribution) or power generation absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health or an express statutory or regulatory requirement to the contrary,” it said.
Actions would need to be approved by Hall, or someone he delegated.
The memo also directed staff to stop cracking down on methane leak violations from oil and gas operations, a major policy priority of the Biden administration.
Uhlmann, the former senior EPA official, said any pause on enforcing environmental laws for a specific industry is alarming.
“EPA is giving a competitive advantage to companies that break the law and don’t make the necessary financial investment to comply with the law,” Uhlmann told CNN, adding that it “will make climate change worse and leave communities unprotected from harmful pollution.”
In an email to CNN, an EPA spokesperson said fossil fuel industry enforcement continues in line with Trump’s energy dominance executive orders.
“Inspections and enforcement continue to occur in the energy and oil and gas industries,” the spokesperson said. “At any facility involved in energy production or power generation, EPA’s compliance assurance and enforcement program will prioritize addressing violations that threaten human health and safety or risk releases or accidents that would disrupt energy production or power generation.”
The EPA spokesperson also pointed to several oil and gas settlements it says it has finalized as proof of its enforcement activity under the Trump administration. However, all of those cases were initiated and negotiated during the Biden administration.
EPA sources told CNN that under the new administration, the dynamics between the industry and the agency have dramatically shifted.
Cuts at the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division, or ENRD, has meant that “the environmental enforcement section of DOJ has been decimated,” one EPA employee familiar with the matter told CNN. “There’s no one to do the work.”
Several EPA sources say they are unable to negotiate penalties or terms for fixing oil and gas violations. “It’s not a small problem, it’s a big problem,” one of them said.
A Justice Department official told CNN that despite cuts to the unit, the ENRD has continued to bring and litigate cases in the usual manner.
Yet, the Justice Department is making a point of defending the fossil fuel industry. Last month it filed suit to block Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Vermont’s plans to fine fossil fuel companies for contributing to harm brought by climate change. When announcing the lawsuit, Attorney General Pam Bondi said her agency “is working to ‘Unleash American Energy’ by stopping these illegitimate impediments to the production of affordable, reliable energy that Americans deserve.”
Yet there is support for some pollution regulations within the oil and gas industry itself. Companies like ExxonMobil have previously expressed support for cracking down on methane leaks, as such leaks can be captured and sold as natural gas.
An independent 2022 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report, for example, estimates that tighter rules and enforcement could help the oil and gas companies recoup some $4.6 billion of product that would escape through methane leaks over the next 10 years.
“The irony is that the gas industry itself has identified methane reductions as a priority,” said Mark Brownstein of the Environmental Defense Fund, which has worked extensively with oil and gas companies to clamp down on methane emissions.
“The failure to enforce methane requirements is not just a problem for public health and the environment; it’s a waste of a national energy resource,” Brownstein said.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
