XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns

'Long-term benefits predicted from restoration of domestic energy
production'

'Trump administration 'should mark a return to the consensus' it's good
for the U.S.'

<https://www.wnd.com/2025/01/long-term-benefits-predicted-from-restoration-of-domestic-energy-production/>


'The energy policy of the incoming Trump administration seems as concise
as it is clear: Slash domestic energy costs under the mantra,
popularized in 2008 by GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, of
"Drill, baby, drill!" While a RealClearInvestigations canvass of energy
experts suggests many of them foresee long-term benefits in that
approach, it's less clear to them that consumers will see immediate
change.

In other words, Trump may not deliver in 2025 on his campaign pledge to
"cut energy prices in half within 12 months." On the other hand, given
expected huge increases in energy demand, a more aggressive approach to exploiting domestic resources should help keep prices steady and
buttress affordability in the long run.

"'Drill, baby, drill' is a soundbite, really, that stands for increasing domestic energy production from reliable sources, meaning located in the
United States and not subject to geopolitical shocks and other
disruptions," said H. Sterling Burnett, director of climate and
environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, a free market think
tank long supportive of the oil and gas industries.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the Trump administration is likely
to continue the whipsaw of 21st-century energy policies of the United
States. From Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, and now back to Trump, the
U.S. has zigzagged between the conviction that global warming threatens
the planet, requiring a wrenching and expensive shift from fossil fuels,
and the belief that society is better off when energy is abundant and affordable.

Despite his campaign warnings of insufficient energy supplies, Trump
will take office with high domestic oil and gas production. Since the
new year, the price of oil has hovered around $75 a barrel, roughly
equivalent to what it was a year ago and down from the more than $130 a
barrel price it hit at the midpoint of President Biden's term. It's true
that Biden's policies limited energy exploration on federal lands and
banned some liquid national gas exports, but American energy companies
have refined their techniques, allowing them to tap more from existing
sources.

Consequently, the Trump administration will be trying to goose
production at a time when environmentalists insist it is unnecessary,
and with inflation still percolating it may be difficult to deliver
lower prices in the near term.

Trump conceded last month that "it's hard to bring things down once
they're up, you know, it's very hard," but added: "I think that they
will. I think that energy is going to bring them down."

"I will declare a national emergency to allow us to dramatically
increase energy production, generation and supply," Trump stated on the campaign trail. "Starting on Day 1, I will approve new drilling, new
pipelines, new refiners, new power plants, new reactors, and we will
slash the red tape."

All of that is doable, experts said, but energy markets are nothing if
not unpredictable. Even as the U.S. enjoys a relatively ample supply of
energy, new warnings have emerged about the ravenous energy demands of artificial intelligence and data centers that are at the forefront of technological innovation. Moves that put the U.S. on more solid
production footing are expected to benefit consumers by stabilizing
prices while also leaving the nation more secure in its energy future, according to supporters of Trump's outlook.

"There are levers he can pull that will remove the disincentives to
drill," said Mark Mills, executive director of the National Center on
Energy Analytics (NCEA). "At current prices it might not be that
attractive to drill, and of course Trump wants to bring down prices so
there's a natural tension between those objectives."

Still, optimism is high among energy mavens sympathetic to Trump's
approach. As analyst Alex Epstein told commentator Jordan Peterson in a conversation made public Tuesday, "I've been at this 17 years now, and
it's definitely at a peak in terms of enthusiasm and opportunity in this sphere."

Biden's departure will leave an energy sphere shifted toward renewables
by design rather than free market forces. While Trump's victory last
November would seem to indicate a majority of Americans agree with his
design, the Biden administration is going down swinging on its position
that global warming is an existential threat, and ramping up efforts to
limit oil and gas production in the U.S. Through an executive order on
Jan. 6, the administration banned exploration in 625 million acres of saltwater, covering the east and west coasts, much of the Gulf of
Mexico, and some stretches on the Alaskan coast. Left-wing environmental
groups that cheered the sweeping move insist Trump will be unable to
reverse it.

Such parting shots are of a piece with Biden's entire term, which began
with a raft of executive orders designed to shut down oil and gas
projects under Trump, and consistent maneuvers to limit lease sales and permits, starve the fossil-fuel industry financially, and pump hundreds
of billions of taxpayer dollars into various green energy schemes.
Biden's anti-oil-and-gas strategy, coupled with his gigantic spending initiatives, triggered the worst U.S. inflation in decades.

Biden also deep-sixed the previously approved Keystone XL pipeline to
pump oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast;
offshore exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) has stagnated,
and new liquid natural gas projects were paused. In 2024, the government
held no offshore lease sales for the first time in 42 years, and in
their final weeks Biden's team offered the legal minimum of Alaskan
sites for auction.

"The Biden administration was at war with our industry," said Mike
Moncla, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association. "Industries
with expensive long-term projects like offshore exploration and LNG
[Liquified Natural Gas] are looking for certainty in the marketplace."

Environmentalists made much of what they called tepid interest in the
recent Alaska lease auctions. But industry executives said the low
interest was more attributable to the limited nature of the auctions and
the fact Biden officials chose the least attractive sites from a
geological perspective. In addition, while it is true domestic
production is at a record high, the total is only a fraction greater
than it was in 2019 before the COVID lockdowns.

Just as Biden canceled or paused oil and gas initiatives when he took
office, Trump can restart them on Jan. 20 in keeping with the nation's 21st-century energy policy zigzag. In addition, Trump is expected to
again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, and the U.S.
is unlikely to remain an eager participant in the various conferences
the global warming alarmists hold in farflung cities.

While climate change activists have raised alarms about such moves,
supporters of more gas and oil exploration note that over the past 15
years, no country has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions more than the
U.S., in large part because of the transition to natural gas from coal.
"The Trump administration should easily be able to just start approving
LNG permits again," said Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for
Energy Research. "The greens will likely sue based on the bogus study
the Department of Energy released, but it won't hold up to scrutiny."

In addition to disengaging from United Nations-led climate agreements,
Trump could take three other moves that would indicate Washington will
end its hostile stance toward fossil fuels, Burnett told RCI. Two of
those would involve holding regular lease sales as required by law, and
laying down specific timeframes for the conclusion of the permitting
process.

Third, and most significant, would be rescinding of the Environmental Protection Agency's Obama-era "endangerment finding," regarding
greenhouse gases, according to Burnett and others. Should the EPA drop
that measure, which put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of renewable
energy by labeling CO2 harmful, the oil and gas industry would prosper.

There is other low-hanging fruit likely to be plucked via a "drill,
baby, drill" mindset, which experts said would help signal the U.S. is committed to abundant energy now and in the future. The office of
"climate czar" which was created by Biden and which has adamantly
refused to break down how it spends its money could be shuttered, along
with the "environmental justice" offices Biden implanted in various
government agencies.

While some projects like the Keystone XL pipeline appear to be dead,
holding more lease sales, ungumming the permit process, and removing
regulatory obstacles would all send clear signals the U.S. would be open
for business for oil and gas production. In addition, federal lawyers
could end litigation or decline to defend against lawsuits that might be
filed against regulations pushed through during Biden's term, according
to energy experts. Trump could also replenish the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve drawn down by Biden since 2022.

Chris Wright, the executive Trump has nominated as energy secretary, is
a former oil executive who participated in the fracking boom, but he has
long championed policies that would increase all forms of energy,
including renewables and nuclear. Similarly, his interior secretary
nominee, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, is expected to slash regulations
and open up more opportunities for exploration and mining on federal
lands.

What the Trump administration does do with energy will not be confined
to oil. This month Trump announced a $20 billion foreign investment in
building data centers here in the U.S., a part of the technology
explosion linked to artificial intelligence and a development that will
require enormous amounts of energy. The juice for such projects comes
from natural gas, not oil, and green lights on LNG pipelines and
facilities from the Trump administration would facilitate them.

A recent report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy,
a nonprofit research organization that seeks to "reduce energy waste and
combat climate change," predicts that new data centers, manufacturing facilities, and electric vehicles will require a vast expansion of the
electric grid during the next decade.

"A data center can be built in 12-18 months and it needs power 24/7 so windmills aren't going to do it," Mills said.

Yet another component of "drill, baby, drill" would be geared toward
ensuring futures markets and U.S. independence, according to Mills and
others. After curbing domestic oil and gas, Biden was put in the
uncomfortable position of rattling the U.S. energy cup before Saudi
Arabia, a regime he had been sharply critical of, and nations generally
hostile to the U.S. such as Venezuela.

Such foreign policy contortions would be avoided by ramping up domestic production, and it might also insulate the U.S. from "black swan" events
that can send shockwaves through global energy markets. It's unclear,
for example, what will happen with supplies from Iran if Trump, as
expected, ratchets up sanctions on the Tehran theocracy that Biden
relaxed, or if Israel were to extend its bombing campaign against Iran
and target the mullahs' export facilities.

The situation in Ukraine and relations with Russia present another
factor. Of the four major pipelines Russia used to supply Europe with
most of its energy, only one, that running farthest south that comes up
through Bulgaria and Romania, is still active. Thus, increased domestic production and supply would cushion the U.S. from possible adverse
impacts on global markets and also provide more profit and jobs via
exports.

"Policies of restriction are bad for consumers and our national
security," Pyle said. "The street is fickle, they saw money in 'green'
but they'll go wherever the money is."

Trump's pro-industry outlook is also aligned with recent market
tradewinds, which have shifted away from the "environmental, social and governance" investing that leftist groups and Wall Street firms like
BlackRock had pushed. Since the end of 2023, some $14 trillion was
withdrawn from such funds, and in the new year many big banks and
investment companies, such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup,
and Bank of America have announced their departure from the "ESG" fold. Republican governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis have also fought
against left-wing investing by pulling huge state pension funds from
managers that embrace those trends.

"People are obviously concerned about the price at the pump and the cost
of electricity, but it's important that the government gives the
industry a clear signal that the policy environment will be reframed to ultimately benefit American consumers," said Dustin Meyer, a senior vice president at the American Petroleum Institute. "I think there's a lot
more interest in energy exploration than there was four years ago. The
new administration should mark a return to the long-established,
bipartisan consensus that energy production is good for the U.S."'

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