Oil executives who met with President Donald Trump this week prioritized discussing faster permitting for new projects, shying away from a discussion of oil prices, which Trump wants to lower—which is not what the industry wants or needs.
According to media reports, the industry representatives and the president talked about tariffs, too but no details were provided by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright who spoke to the media after the talks.
Burgum told media that there was no discussion about oil prices because these were set by supply and demand, and “there’s nothing we can say in that room that would change that one iota.”
Instead, the focus of the conversation was permitting and the industry’s insistence it was enshrined into law to facilitate new oil and gas developments. “The permitting process takes longer than the actual building process on critical infrastructure in our country,” Secretary Burgum told media, saying he and Wright heard the same thing again and again from the oil executives.
“We did talk a lot about permitting, because one of the things that this industry has faced is the onslaught of regulation that really had one goal in mind: trying to drive their business out of business,” Burgum also said.
The Biden administration had indeed introduced a lot of red tape into the energy industry that has made it more difficult for companies to expand their operations—yet they still managed to do it and bring oil and gas production to new highs.
Price, however, seems to remain a rather sensitive subject. The industry has not hidden its reluctance to drill at will just because Trump is president; instead, it has indicated that it will stick to its new focus on fiscal discipline and making shareholders happy. Indeed, the industry’s agenda here is at odds with the president’s, since his involves cheaper energy.
Source: By Irina Slav from Oilprice.com