Bill exempts small oil and gas wells from air-quality rules.
H.R. 8990 — Protect Domestic Oil and Gas Small Business Act of 2026 · Filed by August Pfluger (R-TX) · 29 cosponsors · Introduced May 21, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill changes the Clean Air Act. Oil wells making 15 barrels per day or less are exempt. Gas wells making 90,000 cubic feet per day or less are exempt. These small wells do not have to check for leaks. They do not have to measure emissions or report data. States cannot make these wells follow the rules either. Any EPA cases already investigating these wells are stopped.
Who it affects
Oil and gas companies that run small wells are affected. The public is affected because these wells no longer report leaks or emissions. Local air quality may be affected by methane and other gases.
One thing to notice
Thousands of small wells would no longer be watched or tracked. No one would know how much gas they leak.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
29 cosponsors: 27 Republicans, 2 Democrats.
- May 21, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- May 21, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $3,030,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 30 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 41% of bills with any report.
August Pfluger, who sponsored the bill, received $1,092,825 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- American Petroleum Institute — $2,780,000 in 1 report
- Independent Petroleum Association of America — $250,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- emissions — Gases and other things released into the air.
- methane — A gas that comes from oil and gas wells and harms the climate.
- EPA — The Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency that makes and enforces air and water rules.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (3,348 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,778 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-01.
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