January, 10 2017, 01:30pm EDT
Sessions' Family Invested in Oil & Gas Company the Same Year He Aimed to Deregulate Fracking
Advocacy Group Raises New Questions Around Wife’s Big Investment In Energen
WASHINGTON
As Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions faces confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Food & Water Watch is raising questions about new information regarding family holdings in an oil and gas company as Sessions sought to deregulate fracking.
In 1999, Sessions was the sole co-sponsor of a bill introduced by Senator James Inhofe to exempt underground injections of fracking-related fluids from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The bill--the original Halliburton Loophole--was eventually folded into the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Through information obtained via Opensecrets.org, Food & Water Watch discovered that the same year Senator Sessions introduced the legislation, he and his wife acquired a larger stake in Energen, an Alabama-based oil and gas company that had pioneered fracking in the state.
In 1995, as Sessions was running for a Senate seat, he and his wife held between $1,001-$15,000 in Energen stock. They reported the same for 1996, 1997 and 1998. But in 1999 -- the year Inhofe and Sessions introduced the bill to exempt Energen's fracking operations from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act -- the Senator reported that his wife had separately acquired an additional stake in the company, valued at $15,000-$50,0000.
In 2008, Sessions and his wife cashed out the stock. After averaging about $5 a share in 1995, Energen stock hit a year-long high of $78 a share in May of 2008.
"Senator Sessions' attempt to deregulating fracking at a time his wife was acquiring a large stake in an oil and gas company that would directly benefit raises many questions," says Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "It adds to the many other ethics questions that are swirling around his nomination--not to mention his troubling civil rights record."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization nearly two years ago, Republican state lawmakers have ramped up efforts to further restrict abortion care—and voters, including residents of red states, have responded by protecting reproductive freedom when weighing in on related ballot measures.
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CI-128 would amend the Montana Constitution to expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one's own pregnancy, including the right to abortion. It would prohibit the government from denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability. It would also prohibit the government from denying or burdening access to an abortion when a treating healthcare professional determines it is medically indicated to protect the pregnant patient's life or health. CI-128 prevents the government from penalizing patients, healthcare providers, or anyone who assists someone in exercising their right to make and carry out voluntary decisions about their pregnancy.
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