The European Commission told lawmakers in Strasbourg on 6 October 2026 that it will give oil and gas exporters an extra year to meet the European Union’s methane emissions rules, pushing the toughest import requirements from January 2027 to January 2028. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen framed it as a cost-saving measure for a bloc already straining under high energy prices. The European Union plans to delay new climate rules to limit methane emissions by another year in a bid to lower energy prices, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
The announcement caps months of lobbying from exporting governments, oil and gas companies and roughly a third of EU member states. It also draws objections from environmental groups and from some lawmakers in the United States, the EU’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas. The dispute illustrates a broader tension running through 2026: climate regulation colliding with an energy crisis triggered by the war between the United States and Iran.
What the methane regulation requires
The EU’s Methane Regulation, adopted in 2024, introduced progressively stricter requirements for companies supplying oil, natural gas and coal to the European market, and importers have already been required to provide information about the origin of fuel and the systems used to measure and reduce methane emissions. The rules have applied to domestic EU producers since 2024.
The provision now being delayed is more demanding. A more demanding stage was due from January 2027, under which importers would have to demonstrate that fuel supplied under contracts concluded or renewed since August 2024 came from producers operating monitoring, reporting and verification systems equivalent to EU standards. Non-compliant companies faced fines. The EU Methane Regulation would have seen companies face fines of up to 20 percent of annual turnover for failing to comply with European-equivalent emissions monitoring rules.
This is not the first softening of the law this year. The European Commission in July said that EU member states should not apply penalties in 2027-2030 in order to avoid energy supply disruptions. Tuesday’s announcement goes further, delaying the entry into force of the import requirements themselves rather than just the penalties. Once the Commission has presented a formal proposal, EU member states and the European Parliament would have to back the delay. That means the one-year delay is not yet law.
The price backdrop driving the decision
Von der Leyen tied the delay directly to fuel costs. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, she reiterated that Europe faced pressures from high energy costs, suggesting that since the end of February “gas prices have risen by 140% while diesel prices have doubled.” She put a figure on the broader damage: since the start of the conflict in Iran, fossil fuel imports have cost Europe an extra 100 billion euros, she said.
Wholesale gas data backs up the scale of the move, even if not every percentage lines up exactly with the Commission’s framing. Gas was trading at around EUR 27/MWh in December 2025, near the price levels seen before mid-2021, before the crisis took hold. By late August 2026 the benchmark TTF contract had climbed to 66.47 EUR/MWh as of 28 August, up 11.8 percent on the month and roughly double the prior-year level. It kept rising into September, reaching 80.32 EUR/MWh on 11 September 2026, the first time above 80 EUR/MWh since 2023. By 7 October it had eased slightly to 76.23 EUR/MWh, up 0.71% from the previous day and up 133.11% compared to the same time last year.
Carbon costs have moved far less. EU Carbon Permits rose to 84.66 EUR on October 6, 2026, up 0.94% from the previous day, with the price up 8.11% over the past year. The contrast matters for the policy debate: the acute pain this year is coming from gas and oil markets roiled by the Iran conflict, not from the EU’s carbon price, which has stayed comparatively stable.
Who pushed for the delay, and who fought it
The pressure to delay came from multiple directions at once. The push for a postponement has come from France, the United States and several EU member states, which argue that energy security concerns have become more urgent as conflicts in the Middle East disrupt global oil and gas markets. Some governments wanted to go much further than a single year. More than a dozen EU countries, including Germany, called in June for the rules to be delayed or suspended, while Italy and the Czech Republic pushed for a three year postponement.
Outside the EU, exporting governments and US officials lobbied hard. Energy ministers from the US, Qatar, Nigeria and Algeria all warned the EU regulation could disrupt fuel and gas supplies. Two of the largest oil and gas suppliers to the EU, the United States and Qatar, have argued repeatedly that the methane regulation would hurt both the security of supply and prices. Industry voices echoed the same argument: those opposing the current timetable argue that some suppliers are not prepared to meet the requirements and could avoid sending LNG cargoes to Europe rather than risk fines or legal disputes, with companies including ExxonMobil raising similar concerns.
Opponents of a delay are just as organized. Following the one-year delay announced by Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen, 99 US NGOs including Greenpeace US and Oil Change International urged EU member states not to yield to pressure from oil lobbies, saying they were concerned about the weakening of the regulation. Their core argument is about future dependence: the letter said the current situation in the Middle East could leave Europe dependent on US liquefied natural gas for 80% of its supply by 2028, even though it is the most expensive option for European buyers. European NGOs made a similar case in Brussels. Esther Bollendorff of Climate Action Network Europe said the calls from EU member states to halt the methane rules “worryingly” echo the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to roll back the law, framing it as a threat to security of supply.
| Stakeholder | Position on the delay | Stated reason |
|---|---|---|
| European Commission | Proposes one-year delay of import rules to Jan 2028; penalties already suspended 2027-2030 | Lower energy costs during the crisis |
| France, Italy, Czech Republic and other member states | Backed delay; Italy and Czech Republic sought three years | Verification systems and legal certainty not ready |
| US government, Qatar, Algeria, Nigeria | Pushed for delay or changes | Risk of supply disruption to Europe |
| Oil and gas industry (Eurogas, IOGP, ExxonMobil) | Say even the current proposal doesn’t go far enough | Accreditation and compliance frameworks incomplete |
| US NGOs (Greenpeace US, Oil Change International, ~100 groups) | Oppose delay | Say it’s the last tool to curb emissions from US LNG exports |
| Climate Action Network Europe | Opposes delay | Says it undermines investor confidence and energy security strategy |
| Clean Air Task Force | Disputes industry’s cost argument | Puts compliance cost under 1-2% of supply cost |
Competing claims about cost and climate impact
Industry groups have centered their case on uncertainty and cost. Eurogas and 20 other companies and organisations argue the rule should be delayed because key accreditation, verification and certification frameworks are still not fully in place, with compliance solutions still under development. Some also point to a narrower logistics cost: sending a US cargo to Asia rather than Europe costs $3.50 per MMBtu more in shipping alone, an argument industry groups say shows Europe could simply be bypassed if the rules are too strict.
Clean Air Task Force, a research group that supports the regulation, pushes back on the scale of that cost. It estimates compliance costs for the future performance standard, including abatement and potential methane fees, are projected to add less than 1% of the total cost of supply for imported gas and less than 2% of imported oil. It also warns that reopening the law to negotiate changes would be slower and less predictable than implementing the current text, since amending the regulation requires agreement between the European Parliament and Council, meaning reopening would launch a new period of uncertainty through a slower, less certain route.
On the climate side, the Climate Crisis Advisory Group makes a counterintuitive supply argument. The group says the rule industry wants postponed is aimed at gas that leaks, is vented, or is burned off, all of which is saleable gas being lost, and argues the regulation would make more, rather than less, gas available. On the underlying supply question, reporting cited by Euronews found that data shows Europe has enough gas to last through the winter, and this would be the case even with the methane regulation in place.
The climate stakes of the underlying gas are large regardless of how the delay dispute resolves. Methane is widely cited as responsible for roughly 30% of global warming to date, a figure Euronews attached to its coverage of the rule.
Risks and open questions
The delay is not finalized. It still needs a formal Commission text followed by sign-off from both the European Parliament and the Council of member states, the EU’s normal co-decision process. That leaves room for the one-year figure to shift: Italy and the Czech Republic have already pushed for three years, and industry groups have said the Commission’s earlier penalty suspension for 2027-2030 does not go far enough on its own.
A second open question is precedent. The regulation has now been softened twice in 2026, first through the penalty suspension and now through the delay of the entry-into-force date itself. Climate Action Network Europe has warned this pattern itself carries a cost, arguing in an April 2026 letter that reopening or delaying the regulation would add uncertainty at a moment when the energy system is already under strain and would undermine investor confidence in the regulation as a means to mitigate portfolio risks and support decarbonisation objectives.
There is also a split within Washington worth noting. While the US administration pushed Brussels toward delay through Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a separate letter from US lawmakers in February 2026 urged the opposite: elected US representatives wrote to the Commission describing the regulation as a critical tool to incentivize the capture of natural gas that would otherwise be wasted and emitted into the atmosphere. The same transatlantic split runs through civil society, with congressman Sean Casten telling reporters in Strasbourg that EU officials he met were “almost unanimously supportive of us pushing harder” to help save the rules, even as the Commission ultimately opted to delay them.
Finally, there’s a question of how much the delay actually buys in price relief. Clean Air Task Force’s own estimate puts compliance costs at a small fraction of total supply cost, which raises the question of whether a one-year postponement meaningfully changes this winter’s gas and diesel prices, or mainly addresses exporters’ administrative readiness and legal exposure.
What to watch
- The Commission’s formal legislative text revising the methane regulation’s timeline, and whether it keeps the delay at one year or extends it under pressure from Italy, the Czech Republic and industry groups.
- The European Parliament and Council’s handling of the proposal under co-decision; both must approve any change to the law’s binding dates.
- Whether US LNG’s share of EU gas imports moves toward the 80% by 2028 figure flagged by US NGOs, and what that implies for EU exposure to a single external supplier.
- TTF gas and diesel prices through the winter heating season, the direct trigger the Commission cited for the delay.
- Updated methane emissions data, including the next edition of the International Energy Agency’s Global Methane Tracker, for evidence on whether delayed enforcement changes measured leak and venting rates from exporting countries.