Bureau of Land Management (BLM) fracking rig in Wyoming. Photo courtesy of the BLM.
Barely two weeks into Scott Pruitt’s reign as EPA Administrator and he’s already doing the bidding of dirty fossil fuel interests. On March 2, Pruitt’s EPA announced that it was withdrawing an information collection request (“ICR”) for onshore oil and gas facilities. The Obama EPA issued the ICR last November to gather information about oil and gas sites, acknowledging its legal duty under the Clean Air Act to limit harmful pollution from this industry. These safeguards would curb emissions not only of methane—a climate-forcing gas that is 87 times more powerful than carbon dioxide during the time it stays in the atmosphere—but of traditional pollutants as well, including dangerous smog- and soot-forming volatile organic compounds and air toxins such as benzene and formaldehyde. The ICR was an important step toward these critical climate and public health protections.
But with Scott Pruitt at the helm, it’s not climate and public health that come first—it’s the corporate agenda of big polluters and their allies in government. On February 22, a group of industry-friendly state Attorneys General and two governors sent a letter to Pruitt urging him to withdraw the ICR, which they labeled an “empty regulatory burden” tantamount to “harassment” of oil and gas companies. These hysterics belie the fact that most respondents would have to spend no more than about 8 hours and $1,200 to complete the survey—a miniscule drop in the bucket in comparison to corporate profits. Notably, many of the politicians signing this letter were same individuals with whom Pruitt previously joined forces as Oklahoma Attorney General to attack EPA’s methane standards for new oil and gas equipment. Without blinking an eye, Pruitt delivered up his friends’ request on a silver platter and withdrew the ICR a mere 24 hours after receiving their letter. Whereas Obama’s EPA spent the better part of a year developing the ICR surveys, submitted them to two rounds of public comment, and reached out extensively to stakeholders and affected communities, Administrator Pruitt has done nothing of the kind; he simply pulled the ICR with no input from the public, from supportive states and communities, or from other key stakeholders.
Sadly, none of this should be particularly surprising. As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt sued EPA 14 times—in every instance, siding against public health and the environment. He has been on record expressing skepticism toward the impacts of human activity on climate change, declined to name a single EPA regulation he supported during his Senate confirmation hearing, and cozied up to oil and gas industry lobbyists as Oklahoma’s top lawyer. But the fact that it isn’t surprising doesn’t make it any less appalling. Whether he likes it or not, Administrator Pruitt is under a legal mandate by virtue of the Clean Air Act to control methane emissions from existing oil and gas sources. Refusing to collect the data that will allow him to do that—and entirely shutting the public out of the decision making process—will only make his job harder. Pruitt can either faithfully execute the law and discharge his duty to protect public health and the environment, or he continue to serve the same corporate interests he did in Oklahoma at the expense of the communities he is supposed to protect. He cannot do both at once.