Environmentalists slam Pruitt and accuse him of going ‘soft’ on Oklahoma oil and gas companies

 

Scott Pruitt is no longer head of the Environmental Protection Agency and he’s still  targeted by environmentalists and left-leaning news organizations.

The latest report contends he was “soft” on Oklahoma-based oil and gas companies while he ran the EPA and cracked down on firms in other states.

The Sierra Club, the Environmental Integrity Project and Environment Texas sent a letter this week  to the EPA Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine citing a new study by EIP that reportedly found unequal treatment of oil and gas companies based on where they are headquartered.

EIP reviewed six different oil and gas companies that had violated the Clean Air Act and three of them are based in  Oklahoma….Chesapeake Energy,  Devon Energy and Gulfport Energy. The report claimed the three Oklahoma companies have not been penalized for their Clean Air Act violations. But three companies based out of state and with similar violations were fined millions of dollars. They reportedly are spending more than $100 million  in clean-up costs.

“We respectfully request that you exercise your authority, and demonstrate that Oklahoma corporations are not subject to a more relaxed ‘rule of law’ than the one that applies to their competitors,” wrote the three environmental groups.

The three out-of-state companies are Noble Energy of Texas, PDC Energy of Colorado and Slawson Energy of Oklahoma.  They had a combined $9.55 million in fines for air pollution violations. They also signed consent decrees requiring them  to spent $146 million on cleanup and environmental mitigation efforts.

The Oklahoma companies received violation notices for methane leaks at their operations but the EPA has yet to take any follow-up enforcement action.

The study found that Devon Energy in February entered into  an administrative settlement with the EPA that required no penalties.

“Environmental  laws should be enforced equally for everyone in all states,” said Luke Metzger,  executive director of Environment Texas. “It looks as though EPA, under Administrator Pruitt, may have been going easy on Oklahoma-based oil and gas companies. If that’s true, the new administrator should fix that problem immediately.”

The EPA responded to the claims.

“We have seen the EIP report and would observe that it contains significant factual errors and omissions that EPA is not at liberty to correct because of the enforcement confidential nature of our impartial work,”  said EPA spokesman John Konkus.