Refinery Owned By Billionaire Trump Buddy Gets EPA Waiver
A refinery owned by billionaire Carl Icahn — a close confidant of Donald Trump — received a government waiver to avoid spending millions to comply with government regulations, Reuters reported. Icahn was a special adviser to the president before stepping down last year amid questions over ethics breaches related to his activity in the White House.
The Environmental Protection Agency gave a financial hardship waiver to the Oklahoma facility. The refinery is now exempt from regulations that require refineries to mix a certain amount of biofuel — usually made from corn or soybeans — into their oil. The move has angered the powerful corn and soybean lobbies.
“This one’s going to be hard for [EPA Administrator Scott] Pruitt to explain,” Brooke Coleman, head of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council industry group, said in an email.
Icahn recently wrote a letter to the Washington Post in which he claimed he has had no contact with Trump or any other high-level government administrators “in months.” The only other government official referenced by name in the letter is Pruitt. The letter was in response to a Washington Post article that quoted a source as saying Trump regularly speaks to Icahn.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO