A ProPublica investigation reveals that Texas oil billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand, a significant donor to Donald Trump, is poised to be the primary beneficiary of the Trump administration's EPA engineering a rollback of US methane emission rules, particularly those targeting "stripper wells" which, though accounting for only 6% of US oil and gas output, are responsible for roughly half of the industry's potent methane emissions. Hildebrand, whose company Hilcorp has been identified as the US oil and gas industry's top methane emitter, significantly increased his political contributions to Trump and other Republicans after the Biden administration introduced regulations on these wells, subsequently benefiting from a swift reversal including his wife's appointment as US Ambassador to Costa Rica and the appointment of a former Hilcorp lobbyist to oversee EPA climate regulations, all while proposed legislation aims to permanently exempt stripper wells from EPA rules, a development with global implications given methane's potent warming effect and the US's role in climate action.

A ProPublica investigation reveals that Texas oil billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand, a significant donor to Donald Trump, is poised to be the primary beneficiary of the Trump administration's EPA engineering a rollback of US methane emission rules, particularly those targeting "stripper wells" which, though accounting for only 6% of US oil and gas output, are responsible for roughly half of the industry's potent methane emissions. Hildebrand, whose company Hilcorp has been identified as the US oil and gas industry's top methane emitter, significantly increased his political contributions to Trump and other Republicans after the Biden administration introduced regulations on these wells, subsequently benefiting from a swift reversal including his wife's appointment as US Ambassador to Costa Rica and the appointment of a former Hilcorp lobbyist to oversee EPA climate regulations, all while proposed legislation aims to permanently exempt stripper wells from EPA rules, a development with global implications given methane's potent warming effect and the US's role in climate action.

A ProPublica investigation reveals that Texas oil billionaire Jeffery Hildebrand, a significant donor to Donald Trump, is poised to be the primary beneficiary of the Trump administration's EPA engineering a rollback of US methane emission rules, particularly those targeting "stripper wells" which, though accounting for only 6% of US oil and gas output, are responsible for roughly half of the industry's potent methane emissions. Hildebrand, whose company Hilcorp has been identified as the US oil and gas industry's top methane emitter, significantly increased his political contributions to Trump and other Republicans after the Biden administration introduced regulations on these wells, subsequently benefiting from a swift reversal including his wife's appointment as US Ambassador to Costa Rica and the appointment of a former Hilcorp lobbyist to oversee EPA climate regulations, all while proposed legislation aims to permanently exempt stripper wells from EPA rules, a development with global implications given methane's potent warming effect and the US's role in climate action.

In a detailed investigation, ProPublica revealed how Jeffery Hildebrand—a little-known Texas oil billionaire and one of Donald Trump's biggest donors—stands to be the primary beneficiary of a sweeping rollback of US methane emission rules being engineered by the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Hildebrand owns Hilcorp, a privately held company that specialises in buying up "stripper wells", which are old, barely productive oil and gas wells that individually generate as little as one barrel of oil a day.

These wells collectively account for just 6 per cent of America's oil and natural gas output, yet scientific studies have identified them as the source of roughly half of the entire US oil and gas industry's methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

A donor who buys influence

According to the report, Hildebrand had historically been a modest political contributor. That changed sharply when the Biden administration in 2024 issued America's first federal regulations targeting methane emissions from stripper wells, which would have imposed significant compliance costs on Hilcorp. ProPublica's analysis of EPA data alleged that Hilcorp was the No. 1 methane emitter in the entire US oil and gas industry.

Hildebrand and his wife subsequently (allegedly) gave more than $15 million to Trump and other Republican federal candidates since 2020, making them among the industry's top political donors. He is said to have co-hosted at least three high-dollar fundraisers for Trump during the 2024 campaign, and at one private roundtable, oil executives discussed the methane rules directly with Trump himself.

The returns came swiftly, the report revealed. Within three weeks of Trump's 2025 inauguration, Melinda Hildebrand, primarily known for charity work and running a doughnut shop in their wealthy Houston neighbourhood, was named US Ambassador to Costa Rica. Republican-controlled Congress then killed the methane fee. And Trump nominated Aaron Szabo, a former Hilcorp lobbyist, to oversee the EPA's climate regulations, the report stated.

Read the full report here.

It was Szabo's appointment that became the centrepiece of ProPublica's investigation. Before joining the EPA, Szabo had lobbied for Hilcorp and other oil companies and had helped draft a trade group letter opposing the very methane rules he is now tasked with dismantling.

He also contributed to the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which specifically recommended dismantling the programme that forces companies to respond to satellite-detected "super-emitter" events.

And now, Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation to permanently exempt stripper wells from EPA emissions rules entirely.

Why it matters beyond the US

For India and other major emerging economies, Methane's outsized near-term warming effect, which is 80 times that of CO₂ over 20 years, is not something that can be ignored. Regulatory rollbacks in the world's largest economy can directly accelerate the very climate conditions, such as intensified heat waves, droughts, and monsoon disruptions, that disproportionately affect South Asia.

India has itself committed to reducing its emissions intensity under the Paris Agreement framework, and a US retreat on methane undermines the global momentum on which those commitments depend.

While ProPublica stated that the EPA declined to discuss details with them, it reportedly confirmed that it was working on a proposal to "provide relief" to the oil industry and that Biden-era methane rules "were unworkable and unnecessarily restricted American energy dominance."

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