DOJ Asks Tulsa Court to Dismiss Drummond’s Inola Smelter Suit
The Energy and Natural Resources Division filed last week. Public Radio Tulsa put the papers on the local record Monday. The live question is what Justice actually asked the court to do — and whether Oklahoma’s air permit comes first.
The Trump Justice Department has told a Tulsa federal judge to get Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s lawsuit out of the way of a primary aluminum smelter planned for the Port of Inola.
That is not a Wednesday surprise. The Department’s Energy and Natural Resources Division put a statement of interest on the docket last week in State of Oklahoma ex rel. Drummond v. Century Aluminum Co., No. 4:26-cv-00450-SEH-SH. The Office of Public Affairs announced it Friday, Aug. 28. Public Radio Tulsa walked through the same papers Monday. The United States is not a party to the case. It is telling the court what it wants done with it. As of this morning desk, no temporary restraining order and no preliminary injunction has been reported entered — and 46th State still has no Inola piece on the site. That ends here.
What Justice wants, according to the Department’s own release, is dismissal. Public Radio Tulsa and News On 6, reporting on the filing, say the statement also asks the court to deny Drummond’s request for an immediate construction pause, or to set the suit aside until the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality finishes air-quality permitting. Those are three different off-ramps. All of them run against the attorney general.
Drummond sued Century Aluminum Company and Aluminum Oklahoma, LLC — the company that does business as Oklahoma Primary Aluminum — in Rogers County District Court on June 2 (CV-2026-108). He pleaded anticipatory public nuisance and asked a state judge to stop the project before it is built. The companies removed the case to the Northern District of Oklahoma on July 21. On Aug. 11, while a motion to send the case back to Claremore was still pending, Drummond asked the federal court for a preliminary injunction that would freeze site preparation, grading, and foundation work. He timed that ask ahead of the Town of Inola’s sixty-day construction moratorium, which the State’s own brief said was set to expire on or about Aug. 28. The moratorium clock has run. The injunction has not.
The plant would sit at the Tulsa Port of Inola in Rogers County. Emirates Global Aluminium and Chicago-based Century Aluminum announced in January that they had formed a joint venture, with EGA owning 60 percent and Century 40 percent, to build what they called the first new U.S. primary aluminum plant since 1980. The companies said the Inola facility is expected to produce about 750,000 tonnes a year, more than doubling current U.S. output, and that construction is expected to start by the end of 2026. Public Radio Tulsa’s Monday report called it a $4 billion smelter. That dollar figure is local reporting, not a number in the Justice Department press release.
Justice’s argument is national security, not a county zoning fight. Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, speaking for ENRD, said: “This project advances national and economic security by reducing the country's reliance on foreign sources of materials critical to the national defense.” He added that the Department is “committed to supporting military readiness and opposing litigation that subverts environmental regulatory processes established by Congress.”
The Friday release says the United States now accounts for less than 1 percent of global primary aluminum production, that China is the leading producer, and that the Department of War needs the metal for aerospace, ground vehicles, naval systems, missiles, and space programs. It says the Inola smelter would be the first constructed in the United States in more than 40 years and the largest in the country. It says the Department of Energy recently awarded $500 million in support of the project and that the plant would avoid an estimated 75 percent of the emissions of a traditional smelter. Those production, grant, and emissions figures are the Department’s claims. They have not been independently re-measured here.
Drummond’s theory is the opposite sequence. His June petition and August injunction brief argue that primary aluminum smelting threatens Rogers County with pollution a court should not wait to see, that fluoride cannot be recalled from bone, pasture, or water, and that a pending DEQ permit is not a license to create a nuisance. Neighbors in and around Inola have spent months making that case at public meetings. On Aug. 20, Drummond’s office also asked the federal court to remand the case to Rogers County — a separate fight about where Oklahoma law claims belong.
The permit is not in hand. DEQ’s public tracker lists Oklahoma Primary Aluminum’s Tier III major-source construction application in technical review, status “Awaiting Applicant Response.” Public Radio Tulsa reported Monday that the process has hit a lull while the agency waits for additional documents. Justice’s position is that the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are the right place to have that fight, and that a state nuisance suit filed before those permits are decided is premature.
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office told Public Radio Tulsa the office would respond in court. Drummond lost the Republican gubernatorial runoff on Aug. 25. He is still the attorney general. The Tulsa court still has his injunction request, the companies’ effort to keep the case in federal court, his remand fight, and now a formal statement from the United States that the Inola plant is the “nearest-term solution” to a national-security shortage.
Inola is not a talking point from Washington. It is a river port in Rogers County, next to hay country, with a town that already tried a sixty-day construction pause that has expired. If the smelter is built, it would be the largest primary aluminum plant in America on Oklahoma soil. If Drummond’s injunction is granted, site work stops while DEQ is still waiting on the applicant. The receipts are in the docket. The ruling is not.
WHY IT MATTERS
DOJ says domestic primary aluminum is a defense input and that Inola is the nearest-term fix. The fight is whether a state nuisance injunction can jump ahead of Clean Air Act / Clean Water Act permitting. Rogers County neighbors, a town moratorium that expired, and a DEQ tracker that still says “Awaiting Applicant Response” are not abstractions. A statement of interest is not a judgment. Drummond’s fluoride and nuisance theory is still before the court.
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