When the Trump administration announced plans last year to repeal the federal government’s greenhouse gas reporting system, rather than celebrate, many oil and gas companies publicly urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to preserve it. But for more than a year, behind closed doors, the fossil fuel industry has been pushing to weaken one of the reporting program’s most consequential elements.

Oil and gas companies fear this Biden-era revision to the methane reporting rule, known as Subpart W, would force them to disclose much higher — and previously hidden — pollution levels. Those concerns, brewing for years, grew into a wave that ultimately would break onto the friendly shores of the Trump EPA, in response to the agency’s expected overhaul of both the methane reporting rule and the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, the most comprehensive system for tracking the nation’s greenhouse gases, industry comments and public records show.