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The transition team of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump is drafting an energy package to expand domestic oil and gas drilling on federal lands and offshore lease sales, in addition to expediting LNG export permits, Reuters reported on Monday, citing sources with knowledge of the plans.
President-elect Trump has vowed on the campaign trail to support the oil, gas, and coal industries and repeal some of President Biden’s environmental-oriented measures, including a pause on new LNG permitting and the minimum possible offshore oil and gas lease sales mandated by Congress.
Energy is expected to be at the top of the list of priorities for the new administration, with some measures likely to be taken on day one, or soon after, according to Reuters’s sources.
The new Trump Administration will lift the pause on LNG export permits, accelerate permitting for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters, and offer lease sales more frequently.
Trump is also expected to seek new Congress funding to build up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which was drained in half as the Biden Administration released crude from the reserve to curb the oil price spike following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The new administration is also likely to pressure the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) to re-focus on its core mission to ensure adequate oil supply, rather than advocate for net-zero and emission reductions as it has done over the past couple of years.
“The American people can bank on President Trump using his executive power on day one to deliver on the promises he made to them on the campaign trail,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said in a statement carried by Reuters.
In a sign of what the energy industry can expect, Trump earlier this month picked a shale boss, Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy, as his nomination to lead the Department of Energy. Wright is a vocal critic of the energy transition as envisaged by most Western governments to date, instead calling for energy realism and prioritizing the supply security and affordability of energy rather than its emission footprint.
