in effect
This is an EPA “interim final rule” — a regulation that takes effect immediately (on July 31, 2025) without the usual round of public comment beforehand, though the EPA is accepting comments afterward (due by September 2, 2025). It does not rewrite the substance of the EPA’s 2024 oil-and-gas air pollution rule; it only pushes back certain deadlines in that rule after companies said some were not workable on the original schedule.
The rule extends compliance deadlines for several parts of “NSPS OOOOb” (the standards for oil and gas facilities built, modified, or reconstructed after December 6, 2022), covering control devices, equipment leaks, storage vessels, process controllers, and covers/closed vent systems. It also delays the future start date of the “SuperEmitter Program” and pushes back the deadline for states to submit their plans under “EG OOOOc” (the guidelines for existing facilities). The EPA says the extensions are needed because thousands of devices came due at once and industry could not get the monitoring equipment, sampling vendors, and lab capacity in time — for example, the document cites vendor lead times of 8–12 weeks for calorimeters and up to 26 weeks for continuous monitoring devices, plus 2–3 weeks to install. The rule states each deadline change is separate and independently justified, and it does not reopen or change the underlying pollution standards themselves. (The specific new dates fall in portions of the rule text not included in the excerpt above.)
The main affected parties are companies that own or operate crude oil and natural gas facilities — extraction, natural gas processing, distribution, and pipeline transport — particularly those with equipment built or changed after December 6, 2022. States are affected through the extended deadline to submit their required plans for existing sources, and tribes may opt in to run their own plans but are not required to. The EPA notes federal, state, and local governments are not themselves regulated as facilities under this action.