Trump Meets With US Oil and Gas Executives in Closed-Door Meeting
Domestic oil and gas executives pressed President Donald Trump in a Wednesday White House meeting on a number of mounting concerns that threaten to derail the president’s campaign pledge to “unleash American energy.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said that the president met with the executives “who are eager to unleash American energy after four years of Biden’s radical climate regulations.
“President Trump reaffirmed his commitment to restore America’s energy dominance and drill, baby, drill,” he said.
The president’s closed-door, mid-afternoon discussion with 15 corporate energy leaders, attended by Interior Secretary and National Energy Dominance Chair Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, focused on tariffs, permit reform, and tax credits, the cabinet members told reporters during a brief exchange after the meeting concluded.
Oil prices, which have declined nearly 15 percent since Trump took office in January to less than $67 a barrel, a three-year low, were not on the agenda, Burgum and Wright said.
The price of oil certainly was on the agenda when most of the same executives who met with the president Wednesday convened in Houston March 10-14 for the 43rd annual CERAWeek by S&P Global.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) have agreed to increase output in April, making it difficult for many large oil U.S. producers to stay competitive amid increased operational costs and slackening demand. Chevron, the second-largest oil producer in the United States, has announced plans to lay off up to 9,000 workers.
Those fears are compounded by senior White House aide Peter Navarro’s comments about consumers and industry benefitting from the price per barrel declining to $50 and Wright telling reporters at CERAWeek that the Trump administration is “pleased to see OPEC return barrels to the market.”
“The market sets the prices,” Wright said, and the more markets for more U.S. oil and natural gas, the more its energy corporations will profit, and the more Americans will benefit with lower fuel costs and greater economic development.
The administration supports “anything to make it easier to produce new oil and gas” to lower costs, he said. “More energy means better lives.”
This is not good news to executives in an industry that funneled more than $75 million into Trump’s campaign PAC and millions more in other contributions to support his “drill baby drill” energy policy, which reorients federal support for fossil fuel development.
The domestic oil and gas leaders were expected to discuss proposed exemptions to the president’s 25-percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10 percent levy on Canadian energy products set to be implemented April 2.
Burgum and Wright did not indicate if they made progress in that request, which Trump has previously rebuffed.
The tariffs not only threaten to make Canadian crude oil, natural gas, and cross-border electric transmission for millions of ratepayers in 37 utility districts nationwide more expensive, but affect a wide array of products and equipment vital to the industry.
“The issue of tariffs is going to be very significant for the energy industry, especially when you’re talking about tariffs on imported steel, raising the cost of steel,” American Council for Capital Information (ACCF) Senior Vice President for Regulatory and Energy Policy Kyle Isakower told The Epoch Times.
A key theme of CERAWeek, as espoused by Wright, was that before producers can “drill baby drill” to meet the increasing demand for natural gas, they must “build baby build” more infrastructure to move it from field to furnace.
“Not only are pipelines made from steel but the down-hold well casings are, themselves, also steel,” Isakower said. “And you’ve got some well casings that will go down, you know, three or four miles, right? So, how do you absorb [increased expense] into the cost of energy production? That’s going to be a tough one.”
The United States is already the world’s leading natural gas producer.
Energy executives were also expected to join utility advocates, such as the National Association of Regional Utility Commissioners, in calling on the administration and Congress to relax permitting requirements and timelines for building transmission lines and natural gas pipelines.
Among the initiatives that the president has expressed support for and Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin has issued orders to review is limiting litigation time spans to ensnare projects in legal limbo under the National Environmental Policy Act.
If CERAWeek discussions were a preamble to corporate leaders’ entreaties to the president, accolades regarding his order lifting Biden-era restrictions on LNG exports were on the docket, as were questions about retaining some Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for renewable energy development, specifically in reference to hydrogen fuels and carbon capture sequestration. The industry is investing billions in advancing techniques in an elusive effort to commercialize both emerging technologies.
No details of the meeting have been publicly disclosed as of early Wednesday evening.
