President Donald Trump used the world stage this week to sell American oil and gas. But U.S. oil and gas producers are increasingly feeling sour about the president.
A quarterly survey of oil and gas companies released today by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas quotes industry executives who blast Trump on everything from tariffs and policy uncertainty to his attacks on renewable energy.
“Life is long, and the sword being wielded against the renewables industry right now will likely boomerang back in 3.5 years against traditional energy,” wrote one unnamed executive.
The comment cut a sharp contrast with Trump’s speech Tuesday at the United Nations, where he castigated countries for building renewable energy projects and boasted that “we have the most oil of any nation anywhere.”
“We stand ready to provide any country with abundant, affordable energy supplies if you need them, when most of you do,” Trump said.
American oil producers heavily backed Trump in last year’s presidential contest, but their simmering discontent with the president has emerged as an early theme of his second term.
Oil executives told the Dallas Fed earlier this year that Trump’s push to lower fuel prices, which lessens the economic incentive for producers to drill, was incompatible with his stated desire to increase production. The president’s decision to impose tariffs on a wide range of foreign products has driven up drilling costs at a time when producers are struggling with an oversupplied market, sluggish demand and weak prices.
One executive told the Dallas Fed that “U.S. shale was broken” thanks to a one-two punch from former President Joe Biden and Trump. Biden “vilified” the industry and “now the current administration is finishing the job,” the executive wrote.
“Guided by a U.S. Department of Energy that tells them what they want to hear instead of hard facts, they operate with little understanding of shale economics,” the executive went on, accusing the administration of pursuing policies favored by OPEC.
A White House spokesperson deflected questions about the critical survey comments and instead accused Biden’s policies of creating “unprecedented uncertainty for the industry.”
“President Trump continues to take historic action to unleash American energy by rolling back burdensome regulations that were killing the industry – this resulted in record-high oil production in June,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “President Trump is the biggest champion for the energy industry, which can be certain of one thing: their renewed ability to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL.’”
U.S. oil production has been on a tear this year, building on the historic levels reached during the Biden administration and posting record monthly production in June. But there are emerging signs of slack. Companies reported facing higher costs and almost half (49 percent) said there was less business activity than at the same time a year ago. Slightly more than half of 139 executives surveyed said their outlook for the future had worsened compared with last year.
One executive warned that a round of budget belt-tightening could be on the horizon, writing, “The oil industry is once again going to lose valuable employees.”
Source: By Benjamin Storrow