1/ You've probably never heard of Jeffery Hildebrand. But this billionaire Trump donor is one of the oil industry's top polluters — and the poster boy for a huge climate problem that's actually relatively easy to fix... 🧵
3/ As one climate advocate put it to me, “If you could lose 6% of production and cut emissions in half, who wouldn’t make that trade?” But when Biden's EPA effectively imposed the first federal limits on methane from stripper wells, Hildebrand reacted…
Alex Cuadros
7/ The consequences of this rollback could not be more serious. Methane traps 80x more heat than CO2. It's responsible for ⅓ of the global warming we experience today. All for the sake of rescuing wells that barely contribute to the U.S. energy supply…
5/ Trump named Hildebrand's wife ambassador to Costa Rica. He also named a former lobbyist for Hildebrand's company to a top EPA post, putting him in charge of an effort to unravel the Biden-era methane rules. But that's not all…
4/ Hildebrand had never been a major campaign donor. But since 2020 he and his wife have given $15 million to Trump and other Republicans — and my reporting shows that their bet has paid off handsomely…
2/ Hildebrand got rich buying up the old, low-producing wells known as “stripper wells.” Wells like these collectively contribute just 6% of US oil and gas, but generate half (!) the sector's methane pollution: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
6/ That former Hildebrand lobbyist is rewriting the EPA's methane rules, and my reporting shows he has been seeking input from oil industry groups backed by Hildebrand himself. Now the agency is poised to make specific carveouts for stripper wells.
8/ Hildebrand and his wife didn't respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson said his company was “proud” of recent emissions reductions. Aaron Szabo, the former lobbyist, also didn't respond to requests for comment, but the EPA sent this:
9/ There's a lot more to the story — like when I got Trump to answer his personal cellphone, and my visit to a Hilcorp well where I saw this shocking sign: www.propublica.org/article/trum...
