President Obama praised natural gas production in his last two State of the Union addresses, and has noted that natural gas production creates jobs while natural gas-powered electricity is more climate friendly than coal. But environmentalists say that natural gas production comes with the hidden climate risk of methane leaks from drilling wellheads, valves and pipelines.

The report’s authors conclude that the leaks can be reined in if oil and gas companies invest in technology to prevent methane from escaping into the atmosphere from gas wells and production facilities. That recommendation is in line with a petition sent by New York and other Northeastern states urging the E.P.A. to create federal methane leak regulations.

The regulations would require that oil and gas companies install equipment at wellheads to capture the leaks, use valves in production facilities that do not allow methane to escape and have regular inspections.

“This report justifies E.P.A. taking action on regulation of methane pollution and to focus that regulation on existing wells,” said Mark Brownstein, chief counsel for the American climate and energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

The oil and gas industry has consistently resisted new regulations. Natural gas developers say that it is in their interest to capture methane since it is a component of natural gas and can be sold as such. Allowing it to escape causes them to lose money.

“The industry has led efforts to reduce emissions of methane by developing new technologies and equipment, and these efforts are paying off,” Carlton Carroll, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil and gas companies in Washington, wrote in an email. “Given that producers are voluntarily reducing methane emissions, additional regulations are not necessary.”

Friday’s report is one of a series of closely watched and sometimes hotly disputed studies on the environmental impacts of natural gas production. Natural gas producers celebrated a September report published in The Proceedings of the Natural Academies of Science that concluded that methane leaks from hydraulic fracturing sites are, on average, at or lower than levels set by the E.P.A.

However, that study also found that on some fracking rigs, valves allow methane to escape at levels 30 percent higher than those set by E.P.A. The authors of Friday’s study say that despite the good news in that report, methane appears to be leaking elsewhere in the natural gas supply, production and transportation chain. For example, the authors said, methane could be leaking from facilities where natural gas is stored, compressed or transported.