So why return to the issue now?

Well, until this year, Mr. Pruitt was never really able to deliver on what Mr. Ferate, and Devon Energy, wanted: the termination of the methane rule, and of a related effort by the E.P.A. to collect data on methane emissions by oil and gas companies.

I found myself thinking back to that history this past weekend, as my colleague Lisa Friedman and I worked our way through a 316-page document detailing Mr. Pruitt’s daily activities in the first months after he became the E.P.A. administrator, for a story we published on Tuesday.

The New York Times had filed a Freedom of Information request for Mr. Pruitt’s calendar, with no response from the agency. But the nonprofit group American Oversight sued the E.P.A. over its slow response to a similar request it had filed and received a copy, which it provided to The Times.

Lisa covers the E.P.A. for The Times. I write about regulatory policy and lobbying. We spent much of the weekend reading through Mr. Pruitt’s calendar.