President-elect Trump has picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s environmental policies, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to multiple reports.
Pruitt has opposed EPA climate rules and the Clean Power Plan for power plants, the signature policy of the president’s agenda to combat global warming.
Pruitt is one of 28 attorneys general opposing the EPA plan in federal appeals court. The plan is being weighed by a 10-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and is expected to go to the Supreme Court, no matter how the federal appeals court rules.
Trump has vowed to repeal the Clean Power Plan in his first 100 days in office, along with a number of other environmental rules that directly harm the coal industry.
Pruitt’s state is a major oil and gas hub and is at the center of developing rules for the fracking industry, including wastewater injection standards to avoid the hundreds of earthquakes in the state that have resulted from oil and gas drilling.
It is safe bet that his tenure at EPA would be marked by taking regulation of fracking wells out of the federal domain and placing it with the states. the EPA is currently looking to develop new methane regulations for oil and gas industry. That effort likely would be put on ice under Pruitt’s leadership.
Trump is also vetting Republican Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin to lead the Department of Interior. That agency is also leveling a number of regulations on both the coal and fracking industries, including a moratorium on issuing new federal coal leases.
