"Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and other top agency officials were closely involved with reviving a private equity-owned oil refinery that went bankrupt last year and is now shutting down after a fiery explosion last week.
In January 2018, the month the refinery company Philadelphia Energy Solutions went bankrupt, Pruitt and EPA leaders held three previously unreported meetings with or about PES, agency documents show. The last meeting — organized by a lobbyist with ties to Trump administration EPA appointees — was on a Sunday afternoon, the day before it went belly up. In the days and months after the bankruptcy, Pruitt organized four additional briefings on PES, which at the time was primarily owned by the Carlyle Group.
The culmination of those discussions was an EPA settlement in March 2018 that waived half of the refinery's outstanding renewable fuel standard blending credits — a deal worth some $175 million to PES. It helped the refinery emerge from bankruptcy, although perhaps only briefly."
