Rick Perry, Climate Denier and Dakota Access Pipeline Owner Board Member, Named Energy Secretary

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Former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry, a boardmemberย of Energy Transfer Partnersย โ€” owner ofย the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) โ€” has been named U.S. Secretary of Energy by President-elect Donaldย Trump.

Perry, the former chairman of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), ran for president as part of the Republican Party primaries in 2015, but his campaign ended quickly. He announced his run for the Oval Office in 2015 while facingย felony charges for official state corruption inย Texas.

As reportedย by DeSmog at the time, at a 2015 town hall meeting in Iowa during his short-lived presidential run, Perry was asked by someone in the audience about his Energy Transfer Partners board position. Perry said that he thought his ties to DAPL were โ€œirrelevant, franklyโ€ in response to theย question.

โ€œAll of our sources of energy in this country will be important,โ€ Perry said at the town hall. โ€œIf America is going to be energy secure, we’re going to have to have infrastructure. I happen to think it’s important for us as a country to have these sources ofย energy.โ€

Trump and DAPL

One of Perry’sย donors for his short-lived presidential run was Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, who also served as a major donor to Trump’s presidential campaign. Warren also sat on the advisory board for Perry’s 2015 run forย president.

After Trump’s election, Warren expressed a sense of elation over the future of the hotly-contested DAPL, which has erupted into the largest and most prolonged grassroots direct action mobilization againstย a pipeline in U.S. history at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation in Northย Dakota.ย 

โ€œHaving a government that actually backs up what they say that we’re going to support infrastructure, we’re going to support job creation, we’re going to support growth in America, and then actually does it?,โ€ Warren told The Dallas Morning News. โ€œMy God, this is going to beย refreshing.โ€

In a recent interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Trump said that when he takes office on January 20, he plans to move forward and approve the currently stalled DAPL. Until recently, Trump owned tens of thousands of dollars worth of Energy Transfer Partners stock. Trump’s energy adviser for his presidential campaign and major donor, Harold Hammย โ€” CEO and founder of Continental Resourcesย โ€” also will see some of his company’s oil flow through DAPL.

Ironically, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Perry will now head upย is an agency he said he would get rid of during his run for the presidency during the 2012 election cycle. In a 2011 GOP primary debates, in a now unforgettable gaffe, Perry actually forgot the name of it when he proclaimed he’d throw it by theย wayside.ย 

Climate Denier, Former Head of IOGCC

Perry, a vocal supporter of slashing regulations as applied to the oil and gas industry, is also a climate change denier.ย 

He does have some experienced heading up an energy-related agency, or at least a quasi-agency which functions much more like a lobbying organization: the IOGCC. IOGCC serves as an interstate compact of the 30 oil and gasย states.ย 

Under Perry’s leadership, IOGCC pushed through a model resolution in multiple states which called for the maintenance of what is often referred to as the โ€œHalliburton Loophole.โ€ That provision tucked into the Energy Policy Act of 2005ย created a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement exemption, as applied to hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) for oil and gas, for the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Waterย Act.

At the time, a bill called the FRAC Act was moving through Congress, which called for the lifting of the exemption. Trump’s choice to head the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), as reported by DeSmog, introduced the first โ€œHalliburton Loopholeโ€ bill back in 1999.

โ€œSerious Conflicts ofย Interestโ€

In a press statement reacting to Trump’s nomination of Perry to serve as Energy Secretary, the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth (FOE) said that Perry is โ€œuniquely unqualifiedโ€ for theย job.

โ€œRick Perry might be uniquely unqualified to run the Department of Energy,โ€ said FOE executive director Ben Schrieber. โ€œHe has so little regard for the agency that he has pushed for it to be eliminated during his presidentialย race.โ€

โ€œGovernor Perry also has serious conflicts of interest that should disqualify him from the job. Perry is on the payroll of the company that attacked Indigenous people in an effort to forcibly construct the Dakota Accessย Pipeline.โ€

The future of DAPL is somewhat up in the air and those on the ground in Standing Rock have pledged continued resistance through the winter as necessary. But at least in so far as the Trump Administration goes, with the naming of Perry to head the DOE, the old adage applies: personnel isย policy.ย 

Image: Governor Rick Perry Credit:ย Ed Schipul, CC BYSAย 2.0

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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