Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is Donald Trump's nominee for Energy Secretary, has resigned from the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the highly-contested and controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer said in a SEC filing on Thursday.
Since Perry was nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Energy, questions had been raised on whether he would leave the board to spare everyone conflicts of interests.
In a two-sentence brief filing, Energy Transfter Partners said that Perry had resigned effective as of 31 December 2016, and that "Mr. Perry's decision to resign from the board of ETP LLC was not due to any disagreement with the Partnership, the General Partner or ETP LLC relating to the operations, practices or policies of the Partnership."
After having served as Texas governor for 14 years, Perry joined the Energy Transfer Partners board in February 2015.
Earlier this week, Exxon Mobil said that it and Rex Tillerson had agreed to cut all ties as part of conflict-of-interest requirements while the former Exxon CEO and chairman is awaiting a confirmation process as U.S. Secretary of State.
While concerns with Tillerson center around his close ties with Russia and Exxon's many deals with and in Russia which he helped forge as CEO, in Perry's case the controversy was that he was sitting on the board of directors of the company responsible for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Just last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refused to grant a permit to Energy Transfer Partners for the construction of the hotly contested section of the Dakota Access that would have passed through Standing Rock Sioux lands. The decision to withhold the permit was made by the Assistant Secretary of Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy, who said she made it because there were alternatives to this specific route of the Dakota Access section that could be discussed with Energy Transfer Partners.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More