by Darren Barbee
Heart Energy

After years of discord and conflict with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the oil and gas industry may finally have a ringer headed to the director’s chair at the agency.

Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt, named by President-elect Donald Trump to head the agency, is in tight with companies such as Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE: DVN). Pruitt fought for the Keystone XL Pipeline, has sued the EPA repeatedly and is a climate change skeptic.

Craig E. Richardson, president of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, said Trump will need to gear up for battle “draining the EPA swamp.”

“Pruitt has led the charge in recent years to confront head-on the enormous federal regulatory overreach proposed by the EPA as epitomized by the Clean Power Plan and Waters of the U.S. rule,” Richardson said.

He predicted that Pruitt will be met with the “utmost resistance from an entrenched and well-funded green industrial complex.”

Environmentalists were indeed recoiling from Pruitt.