A TotalEnergies executive is working with U.S. officials to delay the implementation of new European Union methane rules, raising questions over the company’s pledges to tackle leaks of the potent greenhouse gas. François-Régis Mouton, formerly vice-president of gas advocacy at TotalEnergies, has been representing the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP), a London-based fossil fuel lobby group, on an assignment from the French oil giant since 2018. Mouton has repeatedly shared and engaged with hard right, anti-renewable energy and climate science-denial content on his personal social media, a review by DeSmog and French environmental newsroom Vert found. Mouton, who serves as IOGP’s Europe managing director, met with U.S. federal officials on at least three occasions to discuss the European Union Methane Regulation (EUMR) in the past 14 months, according to social media posts. The new framework would force oil and gas importers to meet certain standards for methane leaks in their supply chains or face big fines. In October 2025, Mouton visited the White House to brief the National Energy Dominance Council, a pro-fossil fuel Trump administration advisory body, on how the IOGP could ‘work together to address and remove regulatory barriers such as…the #EUMethaneRegulation,’ according to LinkedIn posts by Mouton and the council’s executive director Jarrod Agen. This year, U.S. officials have repeatedly cited IOGP arguments for delaying the regulations after meeting with Mouton, including in a 27 April op-ed in the Financial Times by U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder headlined ‘The EU’s methane regulation could spark an energy crisis.’ Puzder’s office sent an email, seen by DeSmog and Vert, to EU member states on 20 October, which similarly echoed IOGP language warning that the regulations could threaten gas supplies to Europe. These incidents form part of a wider pattern of closed-door meetings and public statements that place Mouton in a key role in campaigns by the Trump administration and oil industry to delay the rules by at least three years, according to a DeSmog-Vert review of social media feeds, freedom of information requests, industry documents and interviews. Mouton assumed this role despite his employer TotalEnergies and its CEO Patrick Pouyanné spending the past decade painting the company as a leader on methane action and publicly backing the EU Methane Regulation. Pouyanné is one of three top oil industry figures championing the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, a voluntary initiative to curb greenhouse gas emissions from across the sector, which is due to launch a status update at the UN climate conference COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, which opens today. By sponsoring trade groups such as the IOGP, TotalEnergies can work at arm’s length to delay, weaken and ideally defeat the regulation altogether, according to sources involved in industry discussions of the rules. ‘They are coming to kill this regulation,’ said one of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. On Friday, the European Council — made up of heads of state or government of the EU’s 27 countries — endorsed a European Commission proposal for a one-year delay in implementing the rules, which had been due to take effect on 1 January, 2027. The Council will now have to negotiate the final decision with the 720-seat European Parliament, which has voted for a three-year delay amid the fossil fuel industry lobbying. This story was published in partnership with French environmental newsroom Vert and the EUobserver. ‘Emergency Brake’ The U.S. has been on track to eclipse Norway as Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas — used to heat tens of millions of the continent’s homes and power industry — since the February, 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted the bloc to seek alternatives to Russian supplies. TotalEnergies imports more American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe than any of its rivals, according to research and advocacy group Oil Change International. Methane, the main component of natural gas, has a heating effect on earth’s atmosphere more than 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Scientists say that urgent action to stop plumes of the gas seeping from the fossil fuel industry’s sprawling networks of pipelines, wellheads, storage tanks, and transport vessels represents a potential ‘emergency brake’ to help slow the climate crisis. The IOGP — whose members include oil majors ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell — says it backs methane regulation in principle but has spearheaded the industry’s calls for a three-year delay to clarify the new rules. Rapidly implementing the regulations in their strictest form could avoid around 80 million tonnes of methane emissions by 2050, according to a study by Berlin-based think tank DIW. This would prevent 155,000 premature deaths and produce €700 billion in climate, health and economic benefits. Delaying the rules by three years, in line with industry demands, would lead to 40,000 premature deaths and cost the EU €185 billion worth of benefits, according to the study, which was funded by the European Climate Foundation. The lobbying over methane is the latest sign of transatlantic coordination between the Trump administration, which has gutted climate regulations, and corporations opposing key aspects of the EU’s environmental and climate plans. The U.S. government is in the process of weakening or delaying a suite of rules to reduce methane emissions from the country’s oil and gas industry. The campaign to slow the European regulations has continued even as colossal, climate-fuelled heatwaves killed tens of thousands of people across the continent during this year’s summer of record-breaking forest fires and droughts. Meanwhile, TotalEnergies and other oil majors have raked in bumper profits off the back of soaring oil prices due to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. ‘Climate Crisis Is a Fraud!’ Even as climate impacts have intensified, Mouton has appeared to downplay the urgency of the crisis, including by sharing a link to a book called There is No Climate Apocalypse on his personal Facebook account in June 2025. In January 2026, Mouton shared an extract from a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump branding European countries deploying wind turbines as ‘losers’. In a subsequent Facebook post this August, Mouton said that ‘loads of CO2’ was emitted during the Middle Ages and that current climate science was ‘so binary’. As of late October, Mouton was a member of three Facebook groups which are forums for questioning human-caused climate change, including one called ‘Climate Crisis is a Fraud!’ A post from French oil lobbyist François-Régis Mouton’s Facebook account on 29 June, 2025. (Credit: Facebook/Vert) Mouton has also shared content by far-right French Member of the European Parliament Sarah Knafo, as well as from a Facebook page called ‘Zemmour TV’, which promotes the views of Eric Zemmour — a politician convicted multiple times in France for racial discrimination, making racist statements, and inciting racial and religious hatred. Zemmour and Knafo’s party Reconquête have promised sweeping Trump-style rollbacks of climate and environmental measures if voted into power in next year’s French general election, including cancelling a planned ban on new petrol car sales and state support for wind farms. Screenshot of a Facebook post from French oil lobbyist François-Régis Mouton’s Facebook account on 28 October, 2026. (Credit: Facebook/Vert) The IOGP and Mouton declined an interview request and did not respond to questions about Mouton’s personal social media activity. Mouton’s Facebook account — previously public — was in private mode the day after the interview request. In a statement, the IOGP said it backed the EU’s climate goals and that it has ‘never sought to weaken the Regulation’s objective and has never called for it to be scrapped.’ It was important that policymakers ‘draw on industry expertise when developing energy and climate legislation,’ the IOGP added. TotalEnergies said it ‘does not comment on the personal views or content shared on personal social media accounts by employees.’ The company did not respond to questions about lobbying by trade associations such as the IOGP and said it was calling for an approach that balanced ‘the implementation of the Methane Regulation with energy security.’ TotalEnergies pays the IOGP between €200,000 and €500,000 in membership fees each year, according to the company’s latest disclosures. The U.S. Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. ‘Europe should be defending its citizens, not importing the politics of climate denial championed by the fossil fuel lobby and the far-right,’ said Laurence Tubiana, director of the European Climate Foundation, a grant-making organisation headquartered in The Hague that supports hundreds of organisations working on climate action. ‘Breath of Fresh Air’ In 2022, amid rising awareness of the devastating climate impacts of methane, Mouton told IOGP members the organisation had begun publishing industry methane emissions reporting ‘so we can show what we’re doing,’ according to a report to members obtained by DeSmog. ‘Methane is a question of credibility for gas in Europe,’ said Mouton in the memo. ‘This issue affects our license to operate’ — an industry term for companies enjoying enough public support to be able to continue with business as usual despite growing fears over the climate crisis. The EU enshrined the methane regulations into law in August, 2024, providing the legal framework for penalties to be imposed from the beginning of 2027. With the threat of regulation now very real, Mouton and the IOGP stepped up the pressure. Mouton’s public support for the Trump administration’s opposition to the regulations can be traced to at least September 2025, when Mouton endorsed remarks by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, himself a former fracking CEO, at an event in Brussels. Mouton said Wright was a ‘breath of fresh air’ for telling the audience that the EU Methane Regulation should be ‘fixed,’ according to European politics site Rapporteur. The following month, in October 2025, Mouton emerged from his meeting with Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council emphasising the importance of collaboration to ‘remove regulatory barriers such as…the #EUMethaneRegulation,’ according to the LinkedIn posts by Mouton and Agen, the council’s executive director. A LinkedIn post by François-Régis Mouton, Europe director, IOGP in October, 2025, telling Jarrod Agen, executive director of the U.S. National Energy Dominance Council, that the respective organisations should collaborate to ‘remove’ the EU methane regulations. (Credit: Vert/LinkedIn) [From Left]: François-Régis Mouton, Europe director, IOGP; Jarrod Agen, executive director of the U.S. National Energy Dominance Council; Iskren Kirilov, director of institutional relations at IOGP Europe, 23 October, 2025. (Credit: Vert/LinkedIn) In November 2025, Brittany Kelm, a then-colleague of Agen’s at the National Energy Dominance Council, tagged Mouton and the IOGP in a LinkedIn post celebrating a vote by the European Parliament to weaken proposed flagship environmental regulations known as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Kelm described the vote as a ‘great step forward in progress on EU regulation changes for US LNG!’ before adding: ‘Now onto the EU Methane Reg….’ ‘Indeed, let’s move forward,’ Mouton replied. Mouton met with Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, in March 2026, according to an Instagram post from the ambassador’s official account. The following month, the Financial Times published the Puzder op-ed citing an IOGP-coordinated call for delays and amendments to the methane rules on the grounds they could harm European energy security. The same month, the IOGP and FuelsEurope — another TotalEnergies-backed trade group — funded a study published by analysts Wood Mackenzie that had concluded the methane regulation ‘risks worsening the energy crisis’ caused by the Iran war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Instagram post from the U.S. Mission to the European Union, published on 19 March, 2026, after a meeting between François-Régis Mouton [Left] and Andrew Puzder. (Credit: Instagram/Vert) In June 2026, Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, co-signed an open letter to the EU with the energy ministers of Qatar, Algeria and Nigeria asking for the methane regulation to be delayed, citing an ‘independent, comprehensive industry analysis’ that had found ‘significant negative supply and price impacts are a certainty.’ Research by the European Commission and Rystad Energy, by contrast, has concluded that there are sufficient supplies of compliant gas available to fulfil Europe’s energy needs next year. ‘The gas industry has consistently exaggerated the threat the EU Methane Regulation poses to Europe’s gas supply,’ said Sam Leon, co-founder of climate research group DataDesk. On 3 September, 2026, Puzder posted an IOGP open letter on X calling for a three-year delay to the new rules, signed by 22 other trade groups. In response to questions from DeSmog, the U.S. Mission to the EU said the U.S. ‘supports reducing methane emissions’, but that ‘EU regulators have not clearly defined the compliance and verification process to allow companies to adhere to the regulation.’ Asked whether the U.S. wants to revoke the EU Methane Regulation, the Mission said this was ‘a decision for the EU’ and ‘our immediate focus is a three-year delay in implementation.’ It added that the U.S. administration believes ‘deregulation improves economic competitiveness.’ As the Trump administration has announced its own deregulation of methane at home, it has cast the moves as a boon for fossil fuel production and a way to reduce costs for U.S. businesses and consumers. In a 27 October, 2026 press release, Agen, the National Energy Dominance Council director, said the administration’s revisions of a U.S. rule to reduce methane leaking, venting, and flaring ‘will unleash oil and natural gas and save families and businesses $45 billion in regulatory costs.’ ‘No Threat’ The IOGP, meanwhile, has been intensifying its calls for a three-year reprieve on the methane regulations. In late September 2026, the European Commission began signalling that it may push back implementation of the rules after French President Emmanuel Macron echoed growing calls among EU member states for a year-long delay. In early October 2026, Mouton said in an IOGP statement that a one-year delay would see the EU ‘return to the same problem twelve months from now.’ Puzder echoed this language in the 20 October 2026 email to EU member states encouraging them to vote for a three-year delay. ‘Do we really want to go through all this again next year and the year after?’ Puzder said in the email. In parallel, the IOGP has been touting its success in keeping politicians focused on energy security — as opposed to climate action — as part of its pitch to the oil industry. In an internal presentation meant for prospective new-joiners, dated October 2026, the IOGP listed ‘keeping energy security at the centre of EU debates’ as one of the ‘highlights’ of its lobbying activity. The document listed ‘30+ targeted media placements’ as part of its lobbying strategy on the methane regulations. The European Commission declined to comment on lobbying related to the rules but said it ‘remains fully committed to the goals of the Methane Regulation.’ ‘The Commission’s own findings say the Methane Regulation poses no threat to our security of supply, yet it is about to delay it anyway because Paris, the gas industry and Washington asked loudly enough,’ said Marie Toussaint, a French Green party member of the European Parliament. ‘Pushing Back’ TotalEnergies has long painted itself as an industry leader on tackling methane. The company has launched numerous voluntary methane initiatives, left the American Petroleum Institute (API) — a powerful U.S. fossil fuel lobby group — in January 2021 over its support for rolling back regulation, and publicly backs the new EU regulations. Pouyanné, the TotalEnergies CEO, who is one of France’s highest-profile business leaders, has suggested he can convince the American fossil fuel industry to curb emissions of the gas. ‘I’ve insisted in front of everybody in the U.S…it’s a mistake today not to keep the standards on methane emissions, including in the U.S.,’ Pouyanné told a TotalEnergies investor meeting in March 2025. In a measure of its influence, TotalEnergies was the only European company present in a separate meeting that month where EU officials and a group of U.S. fossil fuel companies and lobbies including ExxonMobil and the API discussed the methane rules, according to meeting notes obtained via climate research group ARIA. Ten months later, in January 2026, the API specifically named ‘pushing back’ on the EU methane regulations among its top policy targets for this year. TotalEnergies’ support for Mouton and the IOGP — and their coordination with the Trump administration — suggest the French oil company is intent on avoiding regulation with any teeth, climate advocates said. ‘As usual, the industry prefers to do it [reduce methane leaks] on a voluntary basis — without any accountability or risk of sanctions,’ said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Brussels-based think tank the Corporate Europe Observatory. The post How a French Oil Executive Is Working With the Trump Administration to ‘Kill’ Europe’s Methane Plan appeared first on DeSmog.