Oil Sector Lobbies Trump Says To Keep It On Prices And Regulation

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(Bloomberg) — Oil industry executives are urging President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration to make good on promises to bolster U.S. energy by providing more drilling opportunities, rolling back environmental regulations and protecting the sector from costs.

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These proposals are spread over 42 pages of invitations to 10 institutions that the American Petroleum Institute presented to Trump’s transition team, which jointly explain how the president-elect can translate his promise to “drill, baby, drill” into action. The organization is the main voice of the US oil industry in Washington and has a long history of influencing the country’s energy policy. Now it is poised to exercise greater power under Trump.

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“We want a whole-of-government approach” to energy management, said Mike Sommers, executive director of the American Petroleum Institute. “This is our whole agenda for regulatory agencies to get back to that common sense approach.”

Trump has promised to release “massive stores of liquid gold from the American public land for energy development,” remove “red tape” blocking certain energy projects and immediately end outgoing President Joe Biden’s announcement to authorize new natural gas exports.

Although oil companies see Trump as a strong ally, some of his proposals threaten to destroy their profits.

The republic has expressed disdain for economies that dominate the boards of energy companies, where executives are under pressure from shareholders to control the growth of oil production. It’s a far cry from the idea of ​​unfettered dirty production that Trump described on the campaign trail. In October, Trump boasted that oil prices would fall because oil companies would ramp up drilling. “If they put themselves out of business, I don’t give them anything,” Trump said.

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Sommers proposed a different metric. The success of the oil industry, he said, should be measured by how it “improves the American economy and provides the means for continued economic growth in the United States.”

Oil companies are eyeing the tariffs that Trump has vowed to impose on a wide range of goods, fearing they will increase the cost of materials used for wells, pipelines and refineries. They are also worried about the prospect of adding jobs to the crude itself that flows into the US from Canada and Mexico, which refiners depend on to make diesel and gasoline.

API is asking Trump not to impose tariffs on crude oil, natural gas or any other essential products that industry can’t export domestically.

“I hope the president understands how our energy system works and how important energy trade is – especially between the United States, Canada and Mexico,” Sommers said. “The president understands how important that free trade is to keeping consumer prices down.”

Related: California Gasoline Car Ban Wins Biden OK in Clash With Trump

API aims to eliminate or relax a number of regulations, including air quality standards and directives that control pollution from power plants, automobiles and heavy-duty vehicles. But it’s urging Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to tread lightly when it comes to legislation limiting methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure.

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A complete repeal of the methane measure would not remove the EPA’s responsibility to regulate the greenhouse gas, but it would introduce “significant uncertainty” about industry operations and investment, API said. The group is instead urging incoming administrations to make minor changes to those mandates and work with European allies that have imposed methane restrictions to ensure continued US LNG sales there.

Other API recommendations include:

• Promoting new legislation that regulates pipelines that transport carbon dioxide as a gas, not a liquid, said the delay in publishing updated safety standards “increases public concern and stalls important infrastructure projects.”
• Holding other auctions of oil and gas leases on land and water, including the sale of blocks in the Gulf of Mexico next year.
• Repeal of Biden-era restrictions on the development of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

API is also urging Trump to make changes to the Jones Act, a century-old law that mandates the use of US-built, registered and manned vessels. During Trump’s first term in office, the government considered revoking decisions that allowed foreign ships to transport certain equipment to offshore oil fields. API now warns any changes risk “significant disruption to the oil and natural gas industry and the broader US economy.”

Ultimately, Sommers said, the group wants a “long-term energy policy.” The plan provided by API “is a form of that long-term energy policy under President Trump,” he said, “and we hope that it will survive, whoever the president of the United States is in the future.”

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