End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller released the following statement on President-elect Donald Trump appointing oil executive and mega-donor Chris Wright to be Secretary of Energy, further cementing Big Oil’s grasp on the incoming Trump Administration:
“Trump made a corrupt $1 billion pay-to-play deal with Big Oil executives like Chris Wright, and now he’s following through on his end of the deal by installing oil barons and their cronies in his cabinet to ensure Big Oil makes big profits and sees a return on their investment. And the key to this corrupt deal is the promise to lift the pause on natural gas exports, which would pad the profits of oil barons at the expense of America’s energy independence.”
Read more:
Associated Press: Trump names fossil fuel executive Chris Wright as energy secretary
Colleen Long, Matthew Daly and Will Weissert
11/17/24
Key Sections:
- President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.
- CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
- Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change, and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.
- Consideration of Wright to head the administration’s energy department won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.
- Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term. Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if reelected.
- The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. The agency is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons, oversees 17 national research laboratories and approves natural gas exports, as well as ensuring environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. It also promotes scientific and technological research.
Washington Post: What Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign
Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow
5/9/24
Key Sections:
- 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 rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.
- 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.
###