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
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