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Chris Wright, the founder of a fracking services company, argues that oil and gas are key to alleviating global poverty.
Chris Wright, Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, landed the job during his first encounter with the past and future president.
The founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking services company based in Colorado, Mr. Wright was among about 20 oil and gas executives whom Mr. Trump gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in April. Mr. Wright had not met Mr. Trump before but caught his attention by making what two people in the room described as a forceful case for fossil fuels.
“Want to be my energy secretary?” Mr. Trump asked, seemingly in jest, according to those present. Days after the election, though, Mr. Trump chose Mr. Wright to lead the agency.
On Wednesday, Mr. Wright will appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It will be the first of three confirmation hearings this week for Mr. Trump’s picks to run the agencies at the center of his plan to increase the production and use of coal, oil and gas.
Mr. Wright has been an evangelist for that cause. On podcasts and in speeches, he frequently makes a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need oil and gas to realize the benefits of modern life.
He also has distorted climate science, researchers and activists said. For example, Mr. Wright inaccurately claimed on a podcast last year that a top United Nations scientific body had found that climate change “is a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.”