Emails for Fair Access to Financial Services rule

Dear FOIA Officer:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

All emails exchanged regarding the Fair Access to Financial Services rule exchanged between staff of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and anyone from any of the following outside entities. I have listed the email domain names to make electronic searches easier:

-American Petroleum Institute [...@api.org]
-Independent Petroleum Association of America [...@ipaa.org]
-Western Energy Alliance [...@westernenergyalliance.org ]
-U.S. Chamber of Commerce [...@uschamber.com]
-ExxonMobil [...@exxonmobil.com]
-Chevron [...@chevron.com]
-ConocoPhillips [...@conocophillips.com]

I’d like to limit this request to emails sent or received between July 14, 2020 and January 14, 2021.

For your reference, here is a link to the rule in question: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/11/25/2020-26067/fair-access-to-financial-services

Please include any attachments that were a part of these emails, such as Word documents, or PDFs or other types of attachments. Please also include copies of emails in which any of the employees listed above were simply “cc-ed” or “bcc-ed.”

Because the above searches involve a limited number of outside entities and a defined period of time, this should hopefully constitute a simple request.

If you decide to withhold an exempt portion of any record, please release all other segregable parts. If you withhold any record or portion of a record, please specify which statutory exemptions are claimed for each withholding. Please describe each record withheld, including its date and size (e.g., number of pages).

I request that any documents be provided in electronic format, preferably in a searchable format such as PDFs, and that records be provided electronically via the email attached to this request.

As a representative of the news media I am only required to pay for the direct cost of duplication after the first 100 pages. Please waive any applicable fees. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit news media organization, and release of the requested information will inform the public and serve the public interest, specifically by illuminating the background for an important rule for the financial and energy industries. The information will be included in publicly-available news articles and will not be used for commercial interest. If there are any search, review, or duplication fees greater than $100, please inform me before you fill the request.

As I am making this request as a journalist and this information is of timely value, I would appreciate your communicating with me by telephone, rather than by email, if you have questions regarding this request. I can be reached at 917-719-0671

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 days.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Kusnetz