LEE ZELDIN: Biden's energy rules cost billions. Trump's EPA is lowering costs

So much of America runs on oil and gas. It's fuel in vehicles and heat in homes. It's the diesel in the tractor that grows your food and the truck that hauls it to your grocery store. When it costs more to produce and supply goes down, you pay more for almost everything.

That's why President Trump and I were in Lubbock, Texas, today to announce our biggest step yet to fix one of the Biden administration's costliest mistakes. EPA's new proposal to overhaul the Biden-era oil and natural gas rules is expected to save Americans $45 billion. It would also unleash an estimated 210 million more barrels of American oil and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

In 2024, the Biden EPA slapped one-size-fits-all mandates on oil and gas producers, from the biggest companies to families with a single well. By its own estimate, the rule would cost $18 billion and push natural gas prices higher, and even those estimates were too low. Worse, the Biden EPA refused to admit what producers told us again and again: these rules would shut down existing wells and keep new ones from ever opening.

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Producers don't absorb those costs. You do. You pay at the pump, on your heating bill and at the checkout line, because farmers paying more for diesel have to charge more for their crops.

Nobody was hit harder than America's marginal well owners. About 783,000 of the nation's oil and gas wells, roughly 79 percent, are small, low-producing wells, many on family land. Families use them to heat their homes, run their farm equipment and build their retirement. The Biden rule would have forced mass closures of these wells.

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Our proposal fixes that. We are proposing separate, workable standards for different kinds of well sites, so a family's stripper well isn't treated like a major operation. We are proposing to end the so-called super emitter program, which is unnecessary, ineffective and built on shaky legal ground. And for the natural gas that comes up alongside oil, we are restoring a commonsense standard: 95 percent efficient flaring or other controls, instead of a mandate that every bit of it reach a sales line that simply doesn't exist in many producing areas.

Protecting human health and the environment is EPA's core mission, and that isn't changing. The Clean Air Act requires standards that sources can actually achieve. The Biden EPA touted "zero emissions" requirements while ignoring that existing rules already required 95 percent reductions, then stuffed its rule with exemptions to paper over the gap.

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We are writing rules that match reality, and we want to hear from the states and operators who know it best.

Beyond todays announcement, the Trump EPA has racked up a series of wins that have proven popular everywhere the President has traveled, and Texas is no exception. Over the past year, the agency finalized a record $1.6 trillion in deregulatory savings, a historic effort that is advancing consumer choice and lo