Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his administration, including more than 40 who have directly worked for oil, gas or coal companies, according to a new analysis.
The report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit that has been critical of the Trump administration, alongside the Revolving Door Project, a corporate watchdog, analyzed the backgrounds of nominees and appointees within the White House and eight agencies dictating energy, environmental and climate policy. That includes the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior and energy departments and others.
The analysis comes as Trump wages broad attacks on climate and energy policies and on renewable energy. The president’s so-called one big beautiful act, for instance, opened swaths of federal land to drilling and mining and enshrined the rapid phaseout of incentives for renewable energy. The administration has also launched an unprecedented assault on climate science, for instance with an energy department report on climate change that experts derided as full of misinformation. The report was created to justify the planned overturning of a key legal finding that forms the basis of virtually all US climate regulations.
“With the firehose of terrible, bad things that have happened on the environment front … it’s important to remind the public that these aren’t just actions from the amorphous, ginormous thing that is the Trump administration writ large,” said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, report author and senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project. “It is often specific actors coming from specific moneyed interests that are carrying out this disastrous deregulatory agenda.”
The authors identified 111 employees whom they deemed “fossil fuel insiders and renewable energy opponents”. That includes 43 people who were directly employed by coal, oil or gas companies. Among them are well-known senior officials such as energy secretary Chris Wright, the former CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy.
The list also includes lesser-known administration members. The energy department’s efficiency and renewable energy office – which recently told workers to avoid using terms such as “climate change” and “emissions” – for instance, is led by a former fracking executive. And in the White House, one senior policy advisor has held high-ranking positions at big oil firms including Shell.
Another 12 Trump officials, the authors found, have ties to fossil fuel-funded rightwing thinktanks. Among them: former employees and fellows of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group that has fought renewable energy and made what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, as well as the anti-environmentalist group Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by the fossil fuel moguls the Koch brothers.
A total of 29 other Trump officials are former corporate executives from polluting sectors whose business interests are tied up with fossil fuels, such as chemicals, automaking and mining, the report says. Other officials have ties to utility companies that sell fossil fuels or elected officials who have pushed pro-coal, -oil and -gas policies.
Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “It’s totally pathetic and transparent that The Guardian is regurgitating a press release from a self-described anti-Trump group and calling them a ‘consumer advocacy nonprofit’ in order to attack White House staff.”
Trump has castigated critics of his administration and warned of a crackdown against progressive non-profit organizations.
The Guardian has contacted the American Petroleum Institute, the top US fossil fuel lobby firm, for comment.
The researchers found that 32 employees at the Department of the Interior alone have ties to polluting energy, making it the most compromised federal agency. That includes interior secretary Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota who has long accepted oil funding and been a conduit between fossil fuel industry donors and the US president’s campaign. Burgum himself owns land that he leases to oil company Continental Resources, the report notes. That firm is run by major Trump donor and ally Harold Hamm, whose business interests Burgum has often supported.
Fossil fuel donors poured $96m into Trump’s 2025 presidential campaign and affiliated action committees, and contributed $11.8m to Trump’s second inauguration. Since entering office, his administration has not only enshrined pro-fossil fuel policies and rules, but also crafted tax breaks and tariff carveouts benefitting the industry.
In addition to oil-tied nominees and appointees, the authors identified several Trump administration higher-ups who were appointed or nominated to powerful positions with little or no subject matter expertise.
“These people may not be tied to fossil fuels so directly, but their inexperience is dangerous,” said Alan Zibel, a co-author and the research director at Public Citizen, speaking broadly about the administration’s links to fossil fuels interests. “It’s reasonable to think they will be pushovers, or easy marks, for the oil industry’s agenda.”
Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency’s office of general counsel, Sean Donahue, for instance, has scant legal experience, having worked in the first Trump administration EPA for three years, then briefly for a regional law firm in Buffalo, New York, and then for a solar energy company.
“He has never tried a case to verdict, never taken a deposition, never signed a pleading and never argued a motion,” said the senator Sheldon Whitehouse in May.
Asked for comment about Donahue by the publication Inside Climate News in April, Molly Vaseliou, an EPA spokesperson, defended his nomination. “President Trump made a fantastic choice in selecting Sean to lead EPA’s Office of General Counsel,” she said. “His years of public service to the American people at the federal and state government level is a boon to the agency.”
In another example, one White House aide working on energy policy, Jarrod Agen, came to the role after working for Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and defense company Lockheed Martin. Agen does not appear to have direct energy industry or policy experience, the report says.
In her statement, Kelly of the White House said: “Secretary Wright, Secretary Burgum, and Jarrod Agen are all exceptionally qualified to deliver on the American people’s mandate to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ and unleash our nation’s energy potential – which is what President Trump was overwhelmingly elected to implement, even if The Guardian doesn’t like it.”
Trump oversaw a massive slew of anti-environmental actions during his first term. During his second term, equipped with rightwing plans like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, he has overseen a far broader and harsher crackdown on climate rules and renewable energy.
The current Trump administration has also been completely unabashed about doing the bidding of the oil sector, said Zibel.
“There’s no shame,” he said. “They are proud and willing to go out there and tout the fact that they are doing favors for the oil and gas industry, mining industry, the coal industry.”
