The lawyer in charge of pipeline safety regulations for the Trump administration spent some of the past four years fighting on behalf of companies against the Biden administration’s pipeline safety regulations.
Keith Coyle was appointed chief counsel for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last month by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Previously a staff attorney at PHMSA, Coyle had been in private practice at the Babst Calland law firm.
Coyle’s new role has gotten the attention of Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a safety advocacy group. In private practice, Coyle twice filed legal challenges to pipeline safety rules finalized by the Biden administration. Both challenges led to changes to the rules, delaying one and reducing the scope of another. Caram said he understands that Coyle had a solid safety record as a staff attorney at PHMSA but is still uneasy about PHMSA’s legal department being run by a lawyer who went to court over safety regulations.
“It’s concerning to see a lawyer who challenged pipeline safety regulations that emerged from 12 years of careful stakeholder negotiations and consensus-building now overseeing the agency’s legal strategy,” Caram said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News.
