Hard to have much respect for Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who portrays himself as a hard headed, data driven guy (just not so much on climate data).
He took the job knowing that the “Drill Baby Drill” mantra was bullshit, that oil companies could not and would not follow that plan, but stood up for the nonsensical 50 dollar a barrel target that would collapse the industry.
Now it’s happening, it’s happening to his own company, and he is unwilling to separate himself from the fable.
The U.S. oil industry is suffering from the lowest crude prices in years, surging costs for steel and an economic downturn that could send consumer demand for its products plummeting.
Oil prices have tumbled nearly 15 percent since April 2 to their lowest level since April 2021, a drop that is testing oil executives’ patience. And it’s prompting some in the industry to warn the White House that Trump’s trade policy risks killing his plan for “energy dominance.”
So far, though, the sector is sticking with its support of President Donald Trump, hoping that his calls to negotiate trade pacts with individual countries to avoid tariffs and Republicans’ plan to extend tax cuts would offset their financial pain.
The industry’s reluctance to publicly criticize Trump is noteworthy given the pain it is feeling from the import taxes he’s hiked on the steel that oil companies need for new pipelines and projects, as well as the anger from the foreign buyers of their energy that his trade war has generated.
“Trump’s tariff gamble places energy dominance at a crossroads,” said one oil company executive who had donated to the Trump election campaign and was granted anonymity to speak frankly on the subject. “Striking a delicate balance between trade toughness and market stability will determine whether the U.S. maintains its edge — or risks undermining the very dominance it seeks.”
Trump’s pledge to achieve global “energy dominance” was a core campaign promise — and the subject of Day 1 executive order. But while he has contended his administration would sharply raise U.S. oil output, the fears of a recession has the industry rethinking its investments in new wells.
Growth in oil demand is expected to slow sharply this year because of the negative impact of US tariffs on trade, the International Energy Agency has warned in its first forecast since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” announcement.
The Paris-based agency cut its expectations for oil demand growth this year by about a third from 1.03mn barrels a day to 730,000 b/d and signalled that further downward revisions were possible depending on how the US president’s tariff programme evolved.
Roughly half of the anticipated 300,000 b/d decline would be due to reduced demand in the US and China, it said. “While imports of oil, gas and refined products were given exemptions from the tariffs announced by the United States, concerns that the measures could stoke inflation, slow economic growth and intensify trade disputes weighed on oil prices,” the IEA said.
“With negotiations and countermeasures still ongoing, the situation is fluid and substantial risks remain.”
Eight OPEC+ countries unexpectedly agreed on Thursday to advance their plan to phase out oil output cuts by increasing output by 411,000 barrels per day in May, a decision that prompted oil prices to extend earlier sharp losses.
Oil, which was already down over 4% on U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs on trading partners, extended declines after OPEC updated its plans in a statement, with Brent crude dropping over 6% to below $70 a barrel.
China hasn’t imported liquefied natural gas from the US for 60 days, the longest gap in five years, as worsening relations between Beijing and Washington lead the nation’s buyers to divert shipments.
No US shipments are currently heading to China, according Kpler, an analytics firm that tracks ship data.
During US President Donald Trump’s first term, China didn’t take a shipment from the US for about 400 days through April 2020, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Zero LNG trade between China and the US is likely to continue for the rest of 2025, with a further increase in China’s tariff on US LNG from the previous 15% to 49%, as a counterstrike against Trump’s steepest tariffs,” said Wei Xiong, head of China gas research at Rystad Energy. “In the meantime, we expect to see more reselling by Chinese companies,” she added.
The current geopolitical conflict is beginning to decouple the world’s biggest LNG seller and buyer. Beijing slapped a 15% tariff on US LNG shipments from Feb. 10 in retaliation to American levies, which was further exacerbated last week by another set of Chinese levies on all imports from the US.
The two main adjectives to me for the first and second Trump Administrations are “simplistic” and “incompetent”. Simplistic in that everything for them and their messaging and policies is a very simple black and white response with little to no nuance (much of that comes from Trump himself). Incompetent in that little they do actually works as intended and often has to be reworked and/or dropped (very often because of simplistic underpinnings).
Jon Stewart says much the same here: