Top Trump official to oil and gas industry: Our government should work for you

Interior Secretary gets caught telling the truth behind closed doors as agency slashes pollution safeguards

Since taking office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has moved quickly to grant the policy wishes of drilling and mining companies — opening vast swaths of public lands for extraction and slashing public health safeguards. Now, in a speech to offshore drilling companies, Zinke finally said out loud what he really thinks: “Our government should work for you, the oil and gas industry.”

These remarks, made at an event closed to the public and press, came on the same day that Zinke’s agency eviscerated a rule requiring oil and gas companies to detect and fix natural gas leaks in drilling operations on public lands and to reduce venting and flaring of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. Although the Interior Department received more than 600,000 comments from the public, 99.8 percent of which asked them to leave the rule in place, Zinke’s mantra held firm — the government worked for the oil and gas industry.

Rescinding the Bureau of Land Management’s methane waste rule now allows drillers to release methane into the air unchecked, instead of capturing and selling it. The resulting pollution will lead to more health-threatening ozone and deprive taxpayers of royalty revenue from wasted gas that should have been sold. Already, attorneys general from New Mexico and California have sued the Interior Department, alleging that taxpayers in their states will be cheated out of millions.

Zinke’s well-oiled revolving door

To make his government agency work for the industry, Zinke has stocked his staff with industry veterans. For example, Interior’s second in command, Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, made a lucrative career of lobbying for an extensive list of oil and gas interests, from the Independent Petroleum Association of America to Statoil, Norway’s state-owned oil company. The agency’s current top lawyer, Daniel Jorjani, was plucked from the Koch brothers’ political network.

Already, senior Interior Department officials are looking to cash in on their government service by taking lucrative jobs in the private sector, taking Zinke’s claim that government should work for the oil and gas industry quite literally. Former Deputy Chief of Staff Downey Magallanes, who authored recommendations to dramatically shrink national monuments in Utah, was recently hired by BP. Vincent DeVito, Secretary Zinke’s energy advisor, recently accepted an executive position at Cox Oil Offshore, a Houston-based offshore drilling company. Last year, Acting Deputy Chief of Staff Megan Bloomgren left the agency to join the American Petroleum Institute.

These moves seem to indicate that Interior Department staff, charged with managing public lands owned by all Americans, are not making decisions with the public interest in mind, but with an eye towards their next paycheck from the oil and gas industry.

Secretary Zinke’s actions have long indicated that he sees the Interior Department as an oil and gas company, meant to open public lands for extraction and reduce health and safety requirements for companies operating on them. At yesterday’s private speech to oil and gas companies in Louisiana, Zinke simply said out loud what he has thought all along.

For more information, sign up for Look West to get daily public lands and energy news sent to your inbox, or subscribe to Go West, Young Podcast.