Ex-oil lobbyists land top EPA air office jobs

By Sean Reilly | 01/27/2025 04:20 PM EST

Two veterans of Trump’s first term who have lobbied for years to roll back environmental regulations now hold key jobs at the agency.

EPA headquarters in Washington.

EPA headquarters in Washington on June 29, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

As President Donald Trump re-ups his push on environmental regulations, he has tapped two top political appointees for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation that have each spent years lobbying for industries with a stake in the outcome, records show.

Until this month, Abbie Tardif, the office’s newly named principal deputy assistant administrator, was federal government affairs manager for Ohio-based refiner Marathon Petroleum, according to her LinkedIn profile and lobbying disclosure reports filed with the Senate.

At Marathon, Tardif’s portfolio included the Renewable Fuel Standard program and H.J.Res. 136, a Congressional Review Act resolution that sought to repeal stricter tailpipe emissions standards issued last spring by then-President Joe Biden’s administration, the records show.

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From 2022 to 2023, Tardif lobbied for the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group whose members include Marathon. Besides the RFS program, her work there included unspecified air regulations on refineries and petrochemical plants along with vehicle fuel economy standards, one quarterly disclosure report shows.

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