The European Union opened the door to oil and gas importers getting an extra year to prepare for the bloc’s methane reporting rules, in a bid to safeguard energy security amid disruptions caused by the Iran war.

Starting next year, fossil fuel imports into the EU will have to meet monitoring and reporting rules designed to reduce methane emissions. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said that the bloc could delay the rules until 2028, in an interview on Friday.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, trapping around 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere. As of 2030, imports that exceed a methane-intensity threshold could face penalties. Under the current framework, companies could be fined up to 20 percent of their annual turnover.

The new regulations have been heavily criticized by oil and gas companies as potentially jeopardizing supplies. Under pressure from a dozen governments and top exporting nations, led by the US, the EU earlier this year softened its stance and recommended a three-year delay in penalties for non-compliance.

Still, the industry and member states have continued warning the move isn’t enough to offer legal clarity. Jorgensen said on Friday that his latest initiative was in response to those complaints.

"I have instructed my services to look into the possibilities of postponing the import part of the legislation with one year," he told Bloomberg News in an interview. "And this would give the market actors time to make sure that they can indeed implement these new rules without it hurting our security of supply and prices."

Jorgensen did not say when the commission could table a proposal to change the methane regulation and how exactly it plans to formulate potential amendments. The rules are set to be discussed by energy ministers at the margins of their informal meeting in Dublin next week.

The commission has been resisting pressure to amend the regulation, arguing that a recommendation not to apply penalties between 2027 and 2029 would be legally sound enough of a solution to allay the energy industry concerns. Tension increased earlier this month, with French President Emmanuel Macron writing to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to float a postponement of the requirements by a year.

"We are approaching a potentially very tough winter with the uncertainty regarding the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and therefore very high energy prices," Jorgensen said. "I do not think we can go into this winter not knowing that we’ve done everything we can to create certainty and be sure that we at least have done what we can do to alleviate some of the negative consequences that might hit us and our citizens and companies." 

The industry has repeatedly said that EU recommendations are not enough and that importers risk being pushed into non-compliance. The US, which has become Europe’s largest LNG supplier, has warned that its output will head elsewhere if the bloc refuses to ease the regulations. 

The latest in a series of warnings from the industry came on Thursday, when Repsol SA said that about 90 percent of its crude oil supplies would be in breach of EU law as suppliers won’t agree to provide the information needed under the methane regulation.

"It’s important for me to say that we are not backtracking on our ambitions," Jorgensen said. "Methane is still at the core of our fight against climate change and we want to continue to be world leaders in this. And our ambitions are also the highest in the world."

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