Oil Companies Covertly Lobbied Against Car Regulations

The Trump administration completely undid the Obama administration emission standards, and even the automotive industry spoke out against it. New reporting shows that the oil industry lobbied for the legislation. "In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country’s largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found," Hiroko Tabuchi writes for the New York Times.

Oil companies stood to gain if the regulation eventually went through, so they also invested online. "A separate industry campaign on Facebook, covertly run by an oil-industry lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and other oil giants, urged people to write to regulators to support the rollback," Tabuchi reports.

For their part, the Koch-brothers-backed Koch Industries claim no responsibility for the outcome, saying that their reputation for avoiding "corporate welfare" is well known.