Former BP Spokesperson Is Now EPA Region 6 Chief of Staff
After more than a decade working for BP, Wynn Radford IV has a leadership position at the EPA regional office covering five states, including Texas and Louisiana. He has been cleared to work on matters relating to his former employer.
Wynn Radford IV, chief of staff for the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6, previously worked as a spokesperson for the multinational oil company BP following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The April 2010 explosion on an offshore BP drilling rig killed 11 people and caused the largest marine oil spill in history, leaking almost 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before it was capped 87 days later
Radford assumed his new role on April 21 serving under Regional Administrator Scott Mason IV, the Trump administration’s appointee as Region 6 chief. Radford was a BP spokesperson and a director of communications for BP America between 2010 and 2023.
Radford will now provide leadership for the EPA office that oversees the nation’s most productive oil and gas basins and aspects of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Joe Robledo, the EPA Region 6 press officer, said that Radford does not have any financial conflicts of interest with BP and has satisfied federal ethics standards. This means he will be able to work on issues involving BP at the EPA, Robledo said.
“Every Trump political appointee works with the career employees in the EPA Ethics Office to ensure all applicable ethics obligations are addressed,” Robledo said. “Since he last worked for them more than a year ago, [he] does not have any loss of impartiality concern. Federal career ethics officials have confirmed that Mr. Radford may work on particular matters in which BP is a party or represents a party.”
Environmental advocates say his appointment signals that the agency is putting corporate interests above environmental protection.
Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper from Seadrift, Texas, who has challenged oil and gas pollution on the Gulf Coast for decades, said that Radford’s appointment sends a clear message.
“The message is a slammed door in our faces,” Wilson said. “It’s a clear message of ‘don’t bother.’”
Region 6 is headquartered in Dallas and covers Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and 66 Tribal Nations.
From BP to the EPA
Radford worked in the George W. Bush White House before joining BP in 2010. The multinational company was embroiled in the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that April.
While working at BP, Radford was active in trade groups in Louisiana and served on the Mining, Oil and Gas Sector Committee for the state’s 2021 Climate Action Plan. The company declined to comment on Radford’s employment, saying it does not comment on personnel issues.
BP paid billions of dollars in penalties under the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Settlements with the families of the workers killed in the explosion were reported to be between $8 and $9 million. Members of crews that cleaned up after the spill also received settlements.
Radford left BP in 2023. He worked for a consulting firm in Dallas before becoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s chief of staff in January 2025. He was replaced by early March, as reported by Politico, and joined the EPA in April.
Region 6 manages general permits under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System for offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico. BP currently operates five offshore oil rigs in the Gulf.
“To appoint a former executive from the company responsible for the worst oil spill in human history to lead a key agency for regulating the fossil fuel industry is total lunacy,” said Jeffrey Jacoby, acting co-executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, which works on the Gulf Coast.
Adrian Shelley is Texas director of Public Citizen, an advocacy group focused on corporate interests in politics. He said that 15 years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP continues to litigate dozens of individual claims related to the incident.
“In a Trump administration, serving corporate interests is practically a qualification for an environmental position,” Shelley said. “The goal is to protect corporate profits, and the strategy is to install industry leaders in the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.”
Robledo, the Region 6 spokesperson, said that “while accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.”
Cover photo: An offshore oil drilling rig is seen in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
