The battle over Oklahoma's proposed smelter reaches beyond environmental review

Much of the filing does not focus on whether regulators misapplied environmental standards or whether permit applications contain technical deficiencies. Instead, it argues the characteristics of primary aluminum smelting itself create a threat that justifies judicial intervention before the regulatory process is done.

The petition cites project emissions from pending permit applications. However, the filing largely treats those projected impacts as evidence that the project should not proceed, rather than arguing that regulators have incorrectly evaluated them.

Prior assessments

The petition arrived after years of environmental review, infrastructure planning and permitting activity.

By the time Drummond filed suit, Oklahoma Primary Aluminum had already launched a formal Environmental and Social Impact Assessment process. The project’s scoping report was released publicly in March.

Tulsa Ports also began evaluating wastewater management years before the smelter permit applications appeared. After acquiring land for the Inola Industrial Park, Tulsa Ports commissioned Burns & McDonnell to evaluate wastewater treatment options and assess the Verdigris River’s assimilative capacity. The process included a study, review by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and a preparation for a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting pathway.

EGA submitted its Prevention of Significant Deterioration permit application Feb. 10, which included emissions calculations, dispersion-modeling plans in April, and a Best Available Control Technology (BACT) assessment in May.

The permitting process is not yet finished. Nevertheless, regulators had already begun reviewing emissions, wastewater and operating assumptions before the petition was filed.

It’s stated in the BACT assessment that wet scrubbers, devices that remove particulates, gas and volatile organic compounds, were not believed to be required under existing permitting precedent and would cost roughly $175 million each. Even so, the company said it intends to install wet scrubbing downstream of the gas treatment centers.

The assessment estimates gas treatment centers will capture about 98% of emissions generated by the pots, with the remaining emissions leaving through roof vents in an effort to maintain air flow for worker safety.

While that explanation may satisfy regulators, it might not satisfy critics. On the other hand, Oklahoma ranks among the nation’s largest natural gas producers.

Oil, gas, pipelines, refineries and related infrastructure already operate across the state. It remains to be seen how the sixth largest natural gas producer in the country, according to Energy Information Agency’s 2024 analysis, removes a greater share of emissions at their treatment plants. Then again, the oil and gas industry is a much larger and more entrenched political constituency to take on during election season.

Foreign ownership

The petition’s discussion of foreign ownership occupies a prominent place in its narrative sections. Yet ownership plays little role in the underlying causes of action, which focus on alleged environmental, agricultural and infrastructure impacts.

The filing repeatedly returns to EGA’s status as a state-owned enterprise of the United Arab Emirates, noting its 60% ownership stake and contrasting foreign control with Oklahoma’s local interests.

The petition seeks injunctive relief and abatement for anticipatory public nuisance and threatened pollution. It does not identify a separate legal remedy tied specifically to EGA’s ownership structure.

Even so, the United Arab Emirates is a longstanding US ally, the proposed site is zoned for industrial use. EGA’s exclusive land option grants development rights but doesn’t require outright ownership of the property. In other words, the project does not fit the common circumstances that typically elicit federal and state concerns about foreign ownership.

The ownership also becomes difficult to separate from the project’s history.

In March 2024, Century Aluminum received a potential $500 million award from the US Department of Energy to pursue a new domestic primary aluminum smelter. At the time, Century discussed a project somewhere within the Ohio and Mississippi river basin region.

Separately, Oklahoma’s discussion with EGA followed. Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office signed a memorandum of understanding with EGA in 2025. Century did not formally join the Oklahoma project until January 2026, when EGA took a 60% stake and Century took the remaining 40%.

As a result, the petition’s narrative presents taxpayers as supporting a project controlled by a foreign sovereign. Another interpretation is the federal government initially backed a domestic producer’s effort to build a new US smelter, and EGA later became the majority partner.

Public support

The petition also discusses public support largely as a single figure, while project documents describe a more layered structure.

The memorandum of understanding references around $545 million in tax increment financing (TIF) support and a separate incentive packaged value at about $255 million. That said, public planning documents indicate the $545 million figure aligns with three proposed TIF districts totaling roughly that amount.

So, those funds were not structured solely as direct payments to the smelter and planning documents indicated portions would support roads, rail infrastructure, utilities, wastewater facilities and other industrial park improvement associated with development at the Port of Inola.

The petition’s discussion of public support as a single figure presents a more simplified picture than the underlying project documents that laid out the TIF support.

Political timing

Drummond filed roughly six weeks after Oklahoma state lawmakers introduced companion House and Senate resolutions opposing the project at the end of April.

The filing also came days after President Trump endorsed Mike Mazzei in Oklahoma’s Republican gubernatorial primary on TruthSocial. Voters decide that race June 16.

The timeline doesn’t establish motive; it does show that opposition to the project had already reached statewide political institutions before the attorney general acted.

Even if the electoral significance fades after the primary concludes, the petition will remain. Future governors, legislators and regulators will still confront the issued raised by the case.

Industrial policy

Federal officials have described the project as a means of increasing domestic primary aluminum production and reducing US reliance on imports.

The dispute highlights a recurring challenge in industrial policy. Policymakers often support domestic manufacturing in principle. Individual projects face a different test once environmental concerns and political interests become attached to a specific site.

The conflict also stands out because the project did not emerge solely from private-sector negotiations. Oklahoma leaders actively pursued the development through direct discussions with EGA before Century joined a partner.

Final thoughts

Drummond’s petition does not contend that Oklahoma regulators failed to review the project. It argues that information produced during those reviews already demonstrates sufficient risk to justify stopping the project before the process is complete.

After years of environmental assessments, wastewater studies, permit applications, technical reviews and public consultations, the central debate has shifted from what the regulatory process will conclude to whether the regulatory process should be allowed to finish at all.

Whether courts accept that argument is unlikely to redefine the availability of preliminary injunctive relief, which is already a feature of major project litigation.

Most recently, opponents used it in challenges to Aluminum Dynamics’ proposed Benson, Ariz., plant. However, that case centered on allegations that local officials misapplied permitting and zoning procedures rather than on the broader proposition that regulators should be prevented form completing an ongoing review process.

A more immediate implication may be what the dispute reveals about the political position of the modern aluminum industry.

Unlike oil and gas, which remains deeply embedded in Oklahoma’s economy and political institutions, primary aluminum production occupies a smaller, less established role in the United States today.

That may make the Inola project a more attractive target for political actors seeking leverage or visibility, particularly when compared with industries that command broader constituencies, stronger lobbying networks, or greater employment.

In that sense, the case may say less about the future of judicial intervention and more about how emerging or less entrenched industrial sectors can become focal points for broader political battles. For elected officials, the potential downside of opposing a proposed smelter may appear smaller than the downside of confronting industries that already possess deep economic and political roots.