Wright, chief executive of Denver-based fracking services provider Liberty Energy, “fits right into the Trump paradigm” for energy matters, said Miriam Grunstein, chief energy counsel at Brilliant Energy Consulting and a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for energy secretary is a fracking CEO who has frequently expressed doubt about climate change and opposed policies aimed at curbing it.

Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.