Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who has championed the project since announcing it with Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) in 2025, accused Drummond of filing in retaliation following Trump’s backing of one of Drummond’s rivals.

"As soon as President Trump made his endorsement in the governor's race, Drummond dropped the act and showed his true colors," said Stitt in a statement to KTUL. "Now he is turning his machine against one of President Trump's top priorities, once again weaponizing his office to settle scores instead of serving Oklahomans."

The plant is a joint venture between Century Aluminum and EGA, announced Jan. 26 for the Tulsa Port of Inola. Designed to produce more than 750,000 metric tons of primary aluminum per year—more than doubling current U.S. output—the facility would create 1,000 permanent direct jobs and 4,000 construction jobs, with a construction start targeted by the end of 2026.

The project has received significant federal, state and local backing. The U.S. Dept. of Energy committed a grant of up to $500 million; Oklahoma has assembled an incentive package reported to be worth up to $255 million; and the City of Inola created a tax-increment financing district to support the development, in addition to tax credits and property-tax exemptions. In February, the developers brought in Bechtel for preparatory engineering work, including modularization planning and logistics. Bechtel is also coordinating with sustainability consultancy ERM on environmental and social permitting efforts.

The petition identifies EGA as a United Arab Emirates state-owned enterprise, equally owned by the sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. "The controlling hand behind the largest smelter ever proposed on American soil belongs not to Oklahomans, nor even to Americans, but to a foreign sovereign more than seven thousand miles away," the petition states.

Primary aluminum smelting is described in the filing as "among the most polluting heavy-industrial activities known," releasing fluorides, sulfur dioxide, fine particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, perfluorocarbons and hazardous spent potliner. It states that the smelter's pending air-quality permit application authorizes emissions of approximately 425 tons of hydrogen fluoride per year, which the EPA classifies as extremely hazardous.

The petition focuses particularly on fluoride's effects on cattle, which can ingest it—and irreversibly accumulate it—through forage, resulting in dental and skeletal fluorosis.

"For a cattle operation, chronic fluoride exposure is a slow sentence of ruin—for the herd and for the livelihood that depends on it," the petition states, noting cattle ranching is Oklahoma's single-largest agricultural sector and Rogers County sits at the heart of that industry. The facility would be located within approximately 3 miles of Inola's schools, homes and farms.

Beyond projected impacts, the petition points to Century Aluminum's operating history at other facilities. It cites a South Carolina smelter where residents sued the company in 2023 over alleged pollution impacts and where Century later paid more than $940,000 to settle claims brought by 719 nearby property owners. The petition also notes that South Carolina regulators fined the company more than $360,000 for air-pollution violations and reporting failures.

In Kentucky, the filing cites approximately 30 violations over roughly the past 12 years involving emissions limits, hazardous waste management, monitoring and testing failures, emergency-planning deficiencies and water-quality violations.

Drummond argues that the company's compliance history raises concerns about potential impacts from the proposed Inola smelter on nearby residents, agricultural operations and the environment. The challenge also centers on the project’s energy demands.

According to the filing, the smelter would require more than 1,000 megawatts of continuous power—more electricity than many Oklahoma cities consume—placing what Drummond describes as an extraordinary strain on the regional grid served by Public Service Company of Oklahoma and potentially driving up costs and straining power reliability across the region.

"A primary aluminum smelter does not belong in a community's backyard, and its emissions do not respect property lines," Drummond said. "The injury is imminent, it is grave and it is irreparable."