One billion dollars in donations for Donald Trump’s election campaign. It is the figure that the Republican candidate himself “suggested” at a fundraising dinner attended by the elite of the American oil industry. An adequate and proportional contribution to what Trump himself would save, if re-elected to the White House on November 5, to the US fossil energy giants: fewer taxes, fewer rules, fewer restrictions. Not exactly an “exchange vote”, but an alliance with mutual advantage.
Trump’s appeal to oilmen took place a month ago, in an evening at the private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The news came out first on Washington Post, then it was picked up and confirmed by other media. The source: some of the same oilmen who participated in the eventorganized by the famous billionaire Harold Hamm who is number 1 of Continental Resources, a company that extracts oil and gas from various fields in Oklahoma and North Dakota.
The news is consistent with Trump’s line on fossil energy and climate. In a certain sense it represents yet another remake of 2016. In his first election campaign eight years ago Trump promised to abandon the Paris agreements on the fight against climate change: as soon as he was elected, he promptly confirmed that decision which canceled the choices made by Barack Obama at the Paris summit in 2015. In fact the consequences were modest, leaving the Paris agreements required years of notice, therefore the American abandonment did not become enforceable until the election of Joe Biden, who in turn reversed Trump’s decision.
However, the «scoop» of Washington Post confirms that the November 5 election fuels uncertainties not only about US foreign policy and the stability of strategic alliances, but also about energy policy and choices relating to climate change. The American electoral pendulum, with its increasingly extreme oscillations – or the simple possibility of these oscillations – is an element of unpredictability for the rest of the world too.
What Trump said on April 11 at the “energy roundtable” at Mar-a-Lago is consistent with his repeated attacks on the Biden Administration’s environmental regulations. For months, Trump has been promising that his return to the White House would make a difference the end of many measures taken by the current president to accelerate the transition to electric cars, wind and solar energy.
A spokeswoman for Trump, Karoline Leavitt, while not commenting on the details of the dinner with the oil workers at Mar-a-Lago, confirmed the substance of the promises made by Trump. The spokeswoman said that Biden «is led by environmentalist extremists, they are trying to implement the most radical energy agenda in history, forcing Americans to buy electric cars they can’t afford.” According to Leavitt, Trump’s plan would instead be “supported by those who share his vision, the need for America to maintain energy superiority to protect our national security and reduce the cost of living for all consumers.”
Regarding the billion dollars to be contributed to Trump’s election campaign, some of the oilmen attending the evening at Mar-a-Lago described this sum as an estimate put forward by the candidate themselves on what their companies could save, thanks to the reduction of taxes and restrictions, if the Republican is re-elected. It is not clear whether there were immediate promises or donations from the oil companies that evening or in the following days. American legislation on electoral campaigns is very flexible and permissive on private financing of all kinds, with the sole exception of those coming from foreign entities.
Among the companies whose top managers were present at the event, media reports report ExxonMobil, Eqt Corporation, Venture Global Lng, Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energyplus the leaders ofAmerican Petroleum Institute which is a sort of Confindustria of the sector. Some Republican politicians from fossil energy producing states also participated.
The accusation leveled at Biden, of penalizing the standard of living of American families and weakening the strategic autonomy of the United States, refers to the extensive regulatory activity of the White House in the last three years. For example, Biden signed legislation providing $370 billion in incentives for renewables and electric vehicles; passed regulations requiring accelerated cuts in emissions of CO2, methane and pollutants from power plants and other industrial facilities. Some of this de-carbonization has international strategic and geopolitical implications, to the extent that China has a semi-monopoly in the production of electric batteries, solar panels, or some components and materials needed to produce these and other green technologies. On this front Biden intervened with other industrial policy laws who are trying to bring production currently dominated by China back to US soil.
The White House notes, however, that the US oil and gas industry is bursting with health, in fact it has just returned from a year of record profits. This can be explained by several factors: a good global economy and the stability of economic growth in the United States; the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russian gas. The United States has relaunched the extraction and export of natural gas on its territory to supply those nations participating in the sanctions against Moscow. It is no coincidence that America has just overtaken China as Germany’s largest trading partner: US liquefied gas exports contributed to this overtaking. The United States is the world’s number one exporter of liquid natural gas. They could double their export capacity from current levels, also thanks to the permits granted by the Biden Administration to build new plants and terminals.
Biden has therefore reached several compromises between two objectives: on the one hand de-carbonization, on the other the energy self-sufficiency of the United States for oil and gas, and their role in supporting allied countries to overcome the lack of Russian fossil energy. Among the cases in which it has displeased environmentalists, the White House recalls the new fossil energy production permits granted in Alaska, West Virginia and Texas.
On the renewable energy front, the Biden Administration highlights how the new rules imposed to accelerate decarbonization stimulate technological innovation. An example is the progress that is occurring in the sector of mega-batteries, capable of storing energy generated by sun and wind for use when wind and photovoltaic systems are down.
May 10, 2024, 5:05 pm – edit May 10, 2024 | 6.08pm
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