Trump has made it crystal clear what he wants from Big Oil, and what he’ll give them in return.
Young people in particular should know what a stark choice they have in the coming election. Most of them apparently do not.
The U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term, according to energy executives with direct knowledge of the work.
As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.
Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.
The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an “existential threat,” and over the last three years, his administration has finalized 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters. In comparison, Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years.
Despite the oil industry’s complaints about Biden’s policies, the United States is now producing more oil than any country ever has, pumping nearly 13 million barrels per day on average last year. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the largest U.S. energy companies, reported their biggest annual profits in a decade last year.
Yet oil giants will see an even greater windfall — helped by new offshore drilling, speedier permits and other relaxed regulations — in a second Trump administration, the former president told the executives over the dinner of chopped steak at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump vowed at the dinner to immediately end the Biden administration’s freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports — a top priority for the executives, according to three people present. “You’ll get it on the first day,” Trump said, according to the recollection of an attendee.
The roughly two dozen executives invited included Mike Sabel, the CEO and founder of Venture Global, and Jack Fusco, the CEO of Cheniere Energy, whose proposed projects would directly benefit from lifting the pause on new LNG exports. Other attendees came from companies including Chevron, Continental Resources, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, according to an attendance list obtained by The Post.
At the same dinner, Trump railed against wind energy:
Former president Donald Trump repeatedly ranted about wind power during a fundraising dinner with oil and gas industry executives last week, claiming that the renewable-energy source is unreliable, unattractive and bad for the environment.
“I hate wind,” Trump told the executives over a meal of chopped steak at his Mar-a-Lago Club and resort in Florida, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Trump’s comments reveal how he is wooing potential donors with his long-standing hostility to wind farms and pledges to halt this form of renewable energy if he returns to office. His stance poses a potential threat to one of the linchpins of America’s clean-energy transition, according to more than a dozen Trump allies, energy experts and offshore wind industry officials.
Even if President Biden were to win reelection, experts say, opponents of offshore wind will remain emboldened by Trump’s stance and well positioned to challenge a new generation of projects in federal waters.
And if Trump were to return to the White House?
“If I were in the offshore wind industry, I would probably be pretty, pretty nervous,” said a former Trump administration energy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.
The Trump campaign did not respond to specific questions for this story, and it has not elaborated on his energy policies, which he has often summarized as “drill, baby, drill.” In an emailed statement, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the former president would “make America energy dominant again.”Energy analysts say they expect a second Trump administration would slow the pace of offshore wind lease sales and environmental reviews. These steps could undercut the industry at the very moment when it needs to accelerate to meet Biden’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, and to help New England reduce its deep dependence on imported gas and oil.
–
Near the end of the meeting, Trump told executives that they should contribute to his campaign — the leader of his main super PAC was in the room — because he was trailing Biden financially. His policies would be much better for the oil and gas industry than those of Biden, and he’d do much of what they wanted “on Day 1,” he said.