WASHINGTON—The Obama administration on Friday directed several federal agencies to clamp down on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted from natural gas and other industries, fleshing out an initiative that attempts to address environmental concerns without harming the nation’s booming natural-gas industry.

The White House move is part of President Barack Obama’s broader plan announced last June to tackle climate change. The administration’s methane strategy reflects a reluctance to commit right now to new federal regulations targeting the natural-gas industry, which could be politically unpopular. New rules could also contradict the administration’s rhetoric and actions supporting natural gas in the past few years, including the Energy Department’s conditional approval earlier this week of the seventh U.S. project to export gas.

Reaction from oil and natural-gas companies was muted, while environmentalists cheered the news. Statements from senior officials at the two trade associations representing producers—America’s Natural Gas Alliance and the American Petroleum Institute—didn’t criticize the administration and instead pointed to how the industry was already and will continue cutting its methane emissions without new regulations.

As U.S. natural-gas sources have ballooned, environmental groups have worried more about the effects of natural-gas use on climate change.

The primary component of natural gas is methane, which the administration said has a warming effect on the planet more than 20 times greater than carbon dioxide. Despite mounting skepticism from environmentalists, the administration has supported natural gas as an energy source in part because it puts out far fewer carbon emissions than coal or oil.

The administration’s plan calls for just one new regulation on the natural-gas industry. It leaves until this fall the decision about whether the Environmental Protection Agency—already the target of congressional Republicans for its rules on coal-fired power plants—will propose new rules.

The Interior Department will later this year propose a rule requiring companies to install pipelines and other infrastructure to reduce the amount of natural gas they vent and flare.

This rule would only apply to production on public lands; however, much of the new gas drilling, done using hydraulic-fracturing technology, is conducted on private lands.

Other parts of the administration’s strategy include tougher regulations for cutting methane from landfills and a new program to capture and dispose of waste-mine methane on lands leased by the U.S.