INOLA, Okla. — June 4, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
Attorney General Gentner Drummond drove to Inola on Tuesday, stood outside the high school and announced that a town he does not live in, in a county he represents no more than he represents the other 76, had made a mistake it did not know it was making. Then he filed a petition in Rogers County District Court to fix it for them.
The lawsuit, Case CV-2026-108, asks a judge to permanently block construction of Oklahoma Primary Aluminum, a roughly $4 billion smelter planned for 350 acres along the Verdigris River. The named defendant is Century Aluminum Company of Chicago, which owns 40 percent of the venture. The other 60 percent belongs to Emirates Global Aluminum of Dubai. Governor Kevin Stitt, who announced the project last year and backs it, is not a defendant, though from the tone of the press conference you would be forgiven for thinking he was the target.
The legal theory is something called anticipatory public nuisance. The plant does not exist. It has poured no concrete, hired no one and released not a single molecule of anything into the Verdigris. Drummond is asking a court to abate pollution that has not happened, from a facility that has not been built, on the grounds that it eventually might. This is a bold thing to ask of a judge and an even bolder thing to ask of the people who actually live there.
Let me be clear about where I stand, because this is not the column of a man who waves through every smokestack that promises jobs. I am a risk manager and a former certified safety professional. I have done the environmental assessments federal projects require, and I worked as a city planner before that. I am an environmentalist, and I am for safe industry, which are not opposing positions no matter how often people pretend they are. So yes, I know a smelter on the Verdigris has to protect that river, the air over it and the cattle and families downwind. But here is the thing Drummond skips past. Those concerns were already raised, and they were already built into the plans, the permitting path and the standards the project has to meet. That is how it is supposed to work. The protections were not missing. They were exactly where they belong, in the local review and the DEQ process, before a candidate for governor decided to relitigate them from a courthouse lectern.
Here is the part worth sitting with. Inola already decided. The city created a tax increment financing district to land the thing. The state assembled a $255 million incentive package of tax credits and property tax exemptions. The federal Energy Department added a $500 million grant. Every layer of government that is genuinely accountable to the people of Inola, the city council they elect and the commissioners who answer to them, looked at the smelter, the jobs and the tax base and said yes.
Those are the bodies that handle this. Whether a community hosts heavy industry, how it zones the land, what it offers to attract investment and what it is willing to live next to are local questions, settled at the county and municipal level by people whose phone numbers are in the book. The environmental side runs through the Department of Environmental Quality, which has issued no permit because there is as yet nothing to permit. None of that machinery belongs to the attorney general.
To his credit, Drummond did not pretend otherwise. An attorney general can bring a public nuisance action. The office holds that authority and always has. But authority and judgment are not the same animal. The question was never whether he could file. It is whether a statewide officeholder should parachute into one town’s economic development fight and substitute his appetite for risk for the judgment of the people who will breathe the air either way.
And he is not exactly hiding the campaign. From the lectern outside the high school, Drummond told the crowd, “This is why you need to elect me governor,” adding that as governor he would pull the case out of the attorney general’s office and run it himself. A lawsuit is supposed to be about the harm. This one comes with a slogan.
The timing has not helped his case in the court of public opinion. He filed days after President Trump endorsed his rival in the governor’s race, Mike Mazzei. Stitt accused him of weaponizing the office to settle scores. Drummond says the endorsement has nothing to do with it. Readers in Inola can do that math themselves.
Even his strongest point lands in the wrong building. Drummond objects that a majority of the project is owned by a foreign enterprise, and reasonable people can share that concern. But foreign ownership of American industry is reviewed by the federal government, not resolved by a nuisance petition in a county courthouse. It is one more sign the case was filed in the wrong place by the wrong person.
Inola asked for a smelter and the paychecks and tax base that come with it. What it got instead was a candidate for governor, one who is being sued for corruption himself, holding a press conference and a lawsuit filed on its behalf by a man who will sleep just fine downwind of nothing.
Writing By: Dr. King Shultz | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note: Where satire and truth come together, there is a story.
Sources
Oklahoma Voice, “Oklahoma AG sues to stop construction of Trump-endorsed aluminum smelter in Inola,” Emma Murphy, June 2 2026. Primary report on the filing, ownership split and dollar figures. https://oklahomavoice.com/2026/06/02/oklahoma-ag-sues-to-stop-construction-of-trump-endorsed-aluminum-smelter-in-inola/
Oklahoma State Courts Network, docket for Rogers County District Court Case CV-2026-108. Confirms court, case number and parties. https://www.oscn.net/dockets/GetCaseInformation.aspx?db=rogers&number=CV-2026-108&cmid=403354
Office of the Attorney General, Petition for Injunctive Relief and Abatement of Anticipatory Public Nuisance, CV-2026-108. The filing itself, including the nuisance theory and requested injunction. https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/oag/news-documents/2026/june/CV-2026-108%20Petition%20for%20Injunctive%20Relief%20and%20Abatement%20of%20Anticipatory%20Public%20Nuisance.pdf
KOSU, “Drummond files petition to block Oklahoma aluminum smelter,” June 2 2026. Drummond and Stitt statements. https://www.kosu.org/drummond-inola-smelter
U.S. Department of Energy, announcement of the federal award to build the smelter. Source for the $500 million grant. https://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-awardee-build-first-american-aluminum-smelter-1980
Oklahoma Voice brief, “Stitt announces $4 billion aluminum smelter coming to Oklahoma,” 2025. Background on the project and state support. https://oklahomavoice.com/briefs/stitt-announces-4-billion-aluminum-smelter-coming-to-oklahoma/
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