Wednesday, February 22,
2017
Email
Dump Reveals EPA Chief Pruitt's Cozy Ties With Fossil Fuels Industry
"You are so amazingly helpful!!! Thank you so much!!!"
Scott Pruitt's former chief of staff wrote to a fracking company VP in 2013
Despite calls for his confirmation vote to be delayed until the
withheld emails could be reviewed, Scott Pruitt was approved and sworn in as
EPA administrator last week. (Photo: Reuters)
Thousands of pages of emails between newly confirmed EPA
administrator Scott Pruitt and fossil fuel companies
during his time as Oklahoma attorney general—released per court order on
Tuesday night—confirm "a close and friendly
relationship" between the man now charged with protecting the U.S.
environment and entities seeking to hamper those efforts.
They show that Pruitt—who sued the EPA more than a dozen times
as attorney general—"closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers,
electric utilities, and political groups with ties to the libertarian
billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch to roll back environmental
regulations," according to the New York Times.
The Times continued:
The
companies provided him draft letters to send to federal regulators in an
attempt to block federal regulations intended to regulate greenhouse gas
emissions from oil and gas wells, ozone air pollution, and chemicals used in
fracking, the email correspondence shows.
They held
secret meetings to discuss more comprehensive ways to combat the Obama
administration's environmental agenda, and the companies and organizations they
funded repeatedly praised Mr. Pruitt and his staff for the assistance he
provided in their campaign.
Furthermore, reporter Steve Horn wrote for DeSmog Blog,
"[t]he emails also shed new light on the relationship between Pruitt and
the sphere of advocacy outfits and legal groups funded by Koch Industries'
billionaires Charles and David Koch."
One 2013 note from Matt Ball, an executive at the Koch-backed
Americans for Prosperity, to Pruitt and an Oklahoma congressman read in part:
"Thank you to your respective bosses and all they are doing to push back
against President [Barack] Obama's EPA and its axis with liberal environmental
groups to increase energy costs for Oklahomans and American families across the
states. You both work for true champions of freedom and liberty!"
The Koch brothers worked hard to get Pruitt confirmed.
All in all, "the newly released emails reveal a close and
friendly relationship between Scott Pruitt's office and the fossil fuel
industry, with frequent meetings, calls, dinners, and other events," said
CMD director of research Nick Surgey.
CMD highlighted the following instances in a
press statement:
·
The oil and gas lobby group American Fuel & Petrochemical
Manufacturers (AFPM) coordinated opposition in 2013 to both the Renewable Fuel
Standard (RFS) Program and ozone limits with Pruitt's office. While AFPM was
making its own case against the RFS with the American Petroleum Institute, it
provided Pruitt with a template language for an Oklahoma petition, noting
"this argument is more credible coming from a State." Later that
year, Pruitt did file opposition to both the RFS and ozone limits.
·
In a groundbreaking New York Times Pulitzer
winning series in 2014, Eric Lipton exposed the close relationship between
Devon Energy and Scott Pruitt, and highlighted examples where Devon Energy
drafted letters that were sent by Pruitt under his own name. These new emails
reveal more of the same close relationship with Devon Energy. In one email,
Devon Energy helped draft language that was later sent by Pruitt to the EPA
about the limiting of methane from oil and gas fracking.
·
In 2013, Devon Energy organized a meeting between Scott Pruitt,
Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, and coal industry lawyer Paul Seby to
plan the creation of a "clearinghouse" that would "assist AGs in
addressing federalism issues." Melissa Houston, then Pruitt's chief of
staff, emailed Devon Energy saying "this will be an amazing resource for
the AGs and for industry."
"You are so amazingly helpful!!! Thank you so much!!!"
Houston wrote in a 2013 email to Devon Energy's vice president for public
affairs.
Groups and Democratic senators had called for Pruitt's confirmation
vote to be delayed until the emails could be reviewed, but the GOP-led Senate
pushed ahead anyway. On Wednesday, CMD general counsel Arn Pearson said the
belated release of the documents was orchestrated so their contents would
"evade public scrutiny."
"There is no valid legal justification for the emails we
received last night not being released prior to Pruitt's confirmation vote
other than to evade public scrutiny," Pearson said. "There are
hundreds of emails between the AG's office, Devon Energy, and other polluters
that senators should have been permitted to review prior to their vote to
assess Pruitt's ties to the fossil fuel industry."
More emails are coming next week, as Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons
ordered the Oklahoma AG's office to turn over an undetermined number of
documents responsive to CMD's five additional open records requests outstanding
between November 2015 and August 2016 by Monday.
People are tweeting about the document dump under the hashtag
#pruittemails:
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
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