A Koch Industries alum without much nuclear experience on his Washington-heavy resume parachuted into President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team Tuesday, Trump Tower announced.
Thomas Pyle, president of the petrochemical-focused American Energy Alliance advocacy in Washington, will serve under Michael McKenna, the Trump transition team’s point man for the Department of Energy.
According to his LinkedIn resume, Pyle is a Beltway insider who began his Washington career in the House of Representatives in 1993, working as a legislative aide for then-Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). For just over four years around the turn of the century, Pyle was director of federal affairs for Koch Industries: the energy services mega-firm led by the conservative and politically active brothers Charles Koch and David Koch.
The transition team will help the incoming administration pick a new secretary of energy, and also to fill such presidential-appointee positions as DOE deputy secretary, and assistant secretary for environmental management: the head of the agency’s roughly $6-billion-a-year legacy nuclear cleanup operation.
It was widely reported this week that Trump donor-advisor Harold Hamm — chief executive of the Oklahoma-based oil firm Continental Resources — was considered a candidate to run DOE in Trump’s first term. However, Hamm told his employees in Oklahoma, in a memo that was also widely reported on, that he will pass on the opportunity.
Politico also reported, and a source confirmed to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, that Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commissioner Kristine Svinicki is being considered for a range of agency jobs, including secretary of energy.
Meanwhile, industry consultant Ed Davis and former nuclear Navy man Don Hoffman, longtime president of Excel Services Corp., in Rockville, Md., have been mentioned as possible fits for assistant secretary for environmental management, according to someone familiar with, but not directly involved in, the transition.
