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    U.S. Oil Companies Are ‘Battening Down the Hatches’

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    The industry is bracing for the OPEC Plus oil cartel’s meeting on Saturday, which is widely expected to further increase oil production despite weak demand.U.S. oil companies are pulling back as lower commodity prices take a toll.After two months of crude oil prices hovering around $60 a barrel, companies are shutting down drilling rigs and laying off workers as they pare spending. It now appears very likely that U.S. oil production will not grow much this year, if at all.There are two main reasons for low oil prices. President Trump’s trade war is likely to slow the global economy, hurting demand for fuel. And OPEC Plus, an oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia, is increasing production of oil as demand is softening.On Saturday, eight members of the cartel are widely expected to announce plans to bring even more oil to market this summer, which could send prices lower still.American oil companies are not waiting to find out.While the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron are maintaining their spending plans, smaller companies are pulling back. Those focused on drilling for oil now plan to spend around 3.5 percent less this year than previously planned, according to a BloombergNEF analysis of a dozen publicly traded companies. All things equal, more drilling tends to drive oil prices down and less drilling generally props them up.“We can’t run our program on hope,” Tom Jorden, chief executive of the oil and gas producer Coterra Energy, told analysts during an earnings call this month. “So we are battening down the hatches, expecting this to last for a while.”The Houston-based company said it would drill less in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the top U.S. oil field, and more in the Northeast, which is rich in natural gas. Prices for that fuel, used in power plants and for heating, have been much more resilient.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Will global climate action be a casualty of Trump’s tariffs?

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      Donald Trump’s upending of the global economy has raised fears that climate action could emerge as a casualty of the trade war.In the week that has followed “liberation day”, economic experts have warned that the swathe of tariffs could trigger a global economic recession, with far-reaching consequences for investors – including those behind the green energy projects needed to meet climate goals.Fears of a prolonged global recession have also tanked oil and gas prices, making it cheaper to pollute and more difficult to justify investment in clean alternatives such as electric vehicles and low-carbon heating to financially hard-hit households.But chief among the concerns is Trump’s decision to level his most aggressive trade tariffs against China – the world’s largest manufacturer of clean energy technologies – which threatens to throttle green investment in the US, the world’s second-largest carbon-emitter.‘A tragedy for the US’The US is expected to lag farther behind the rest of the world in developing clean power technologies by cutting off its access to cheap, clean energy tech developed in China. This is a fresh blow to green energy developers in the US, still reeling from the Trump administration’s vow to roll back the Biden era’s green incentives.Leslie Abrahams, a deputy director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, said the tariffs would probably hinder the rollout of clean energy in the US and push the country to the margins of the global market.Specifically, they are expected to drive up the price of developing clean power, because to date the US has been heavily reliant on importing clean power technologies. “And not just imports of the final goods. Even the manufacturing that we do in the United States relies on imported components,” she said.The US government’s goal to develop its manufacturing base by opening new factories could make these components available domestically, but it is likely to take time. It will also come at considerable cost, because the materials typically imported to build these factories – cement, steel, aluminium – will be subject to tariffs too, Abrahams said.“At the same time there are broader, global economic implications that might make it difficult to access inexpensive capital to build,” she added. Investors who had previously shown an interest in the US under the green-friendly Biden administration are likely to balk at the aggressively anti-green messages from the White House.Abrahams said this would mean a weaker appetite for investment in rolling out green projects across the US, and in the research and development of early-stage clean technologies of the future. This is likely to have long-term implications for the US position in the global green energy market, meaning it will “cede some of our potential market share abroad”, Abrahams added.Instead, countries like China are likely to divert sales of their clean energy tech away from the US to other countries eager to develop green energy, Abrahams said. “So on the one hand, that should help to accelerate adoption of clean energy in those countries, which is good for emissions, but for the US, that is future market share that we’re ceding,” she said.‘Clean energy is unstoppable, with or without Trump’It’s important to distinguish between the US and the rest of the world, according to Kingsmill Bond, a strategist for the energy thinktank Ember.“The more the US cuts itself off from the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world will get on with things and the US will be left behind. This is a tragedy for the clean energy industry in the US, but for everyone else there are opportunities,” he said.Analysis by the climate campaign group 350.org has found that despite rising costs and falling green investment in the US, Trump’s trade war will not affect the energy transition and renewables trade globally.It said the US was already “merely a footnote, not a global player” in the race to end the use of fossil fuels. Only 4% of China’s clean tech exports go to the US, it said, in a trade sector where sales volume grew by about 30% last year.“Trump’s tariffs won’t slow the global energy transition – they’ll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans,” said Andreas Sieber, an associate director at 350.org. “The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the US and drive up costs for American consumers.”View image in fullscreenOne senior executive at a big European renewable energy company said developers were likely to press on with existing US projects but in future would probablyinvest in other markets.“So we won’t be doing less, we’ll just be going somewhere else,” said the executive, who asked not to be named. “There is no shortage of demand for clean energy projects globally, so we’re not scaling back our ambitions. And excluding the US could make stretched supply chains easier to manage.”Countries likely to benefit from the fresh attention of renewable energy investors include burgeoning markets in south-east Asia, where fossil fuel reliance remains high and demand for energy is rocketing. Australia and Brazil have also emerged as countries that stand to gain.“In times like these, countries will be increasingly on the hunt for domestic solutions,” Bond said. “And that means clean energy and local supply chains. There are always climate reasons to go green, but there are national security reasons now too.”The challenge for governments hoping to seize the opportunity provided by the US green retreat will be to assure rattled investors that they offer a safe place to invest in the climate agenda.Dhara Vyas, the chief executive of Energy UK, the UK industry’s trade body, said: “Certainty has always been the thing that investors say they need. The UK is seen as a stable country with a stable government, but now more than ever we need to double down on giving certainty to investors.”“Investors do like certainty,” Bond agreed. “But they also like growth and opportunity, so that’s why there is some confidence that they will continue to deploy capital in the sector.”‘The US still matters’Although the green investment slowdown may be largely limited to the US, this still poses concerns for global climate progress, according to Marina Domingues, the head of new energies for the consultancy Rystad Energy.“The US is a huge emitter country. So everything the US does still really matters to the global energy transition and how we account for CO2,” she said. The US is the second most polluting country in the world, behind China, which produces almost three times its carbon emissions. But the US’s green retreat comes at a time when the country was planning to substantially increase its domestic energy demand.After years of relatively steady energy demand, Rystad predicts a 10% growth in US electricity consumption from a boom in AI datacentres alone. The economy is also likely to require more energy to power an increase in domestic manufacturing as imports from China dwindle.In the absence of a growing energy industry, this is likely to come from fossil fuels, meaning growing climate emissions. The US is expected to make use of its abundance of shale gas, but it is planning to use more coal in the future too.In the same week that Trump set out his tariffs, he signed four executive orders aimed at preventing the US from phasing out coal, in what climate campaigners at 350.org described as an “abuse of power”.Anne Jellema, the group’s executive director, said: “President Trump’s latest attempt to force-feed coal to the US is a dangerous fantasy that endangers our health, our economy and our future.” More

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      in US Politics

      Gold has surged amid economic uncertainty. Should you buy some?

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      As economic uncertainty roils the US, the price of gold has roared to record highs amid investors seeking a place to shield their cash from Donald Trump’s scattergun trade wars.A single ounce of gold cost $3,051.99 on Wednesday, compared with $2,160 in 2024, and gold has historically been seen as the safest place to invest in financially turbulent times.But the buying, and potentially hoarding, of gold need not be restricted to the Scrooge McDucks of this world. In 2025, gold can be bought from Walmart and Amazon – although experts say more established gold dealers are a better source.Once a person has bought the gold, they can do whatever they like with it: there are whole Reddit threads devoted to the best way to bury gold underground. (Dig a deep hole, dump your vacuum-sealed gold in the hole, put a layer of rocks on top of the gold so it can’t be discovered by a thief with a metal detector, then try not to forget where the gold is buried.)Experts suggest not burying the gold, however.“Gold is one of the few elements on the periodic table that does not decay or oxidize over time, so there’s no need to worry about deterioration,” said Alex Deluce, the host of the Gold Telegraph Show, and an expert in gold investment.“However, for safekeeping, store it in a secure location, ideally in a safety deposit box or a well-protected home safe. Keep it away from direct sunlight and heat sources to maintain its condition and security.”Deluce said gold should be purchased “from reputable suppliers who insure all deliveries”, and financial magazines including Forbes have lists devoted to gold-selling companies.To the uninitiated, an equally important question is: what kind of gold should people buy?Taylor Kenney, an economic journalist who works for ITM Trading, a gold and silver dealer based in Arizona, said most gold purchases are of bullion: gold that has been refined and shaped into coins or bars.Some of those bars are the big heavy type that is frequently stolen from banks in heist movies, but those tend to be very heavy, which means they are very expensive. Instead, many gold purchasers will be buying much smaller bars.A handy example was seen in the recent case of Bob Menendez, the now former Democratic senator who in January was sentenced to 11 years in prison for receiving bribes.Photos shared by the FBI showed that Menendez had an amazing a hoard of gold bullion in a variety of sizes: he had a couple of gold bars that weighed just one ounce.According to the United States Gold Bureau – which is not a government body, but instead a cleverly named private gold-trading company – the one-ounce bars are the most commonly traded around the world. Roughly the size of a US military dog tag, one-ounce bars were listed at Walmart for $3,122.10 on Friday, although anyone who has ever ordered and never received a table lamp from Walmart might want to try elsewhere.Menendez had also accumulated, through nefarious means, some one-kilo gold bars, each of which, at today’s prices, is worth just under $100,000.“Now is the perfect time to buy gold,” said Kenney.She said gold prices are rising “in response to inflation, geopolitical unrest and economic uncertainty”.Kenney added: “As dollar dominance is called into question, gold carries no counterparty risk and serves as a true store of wealth, unlike fiat currencies [such as the US dollar] that can be printed at will. The same reason central banks are buying gold is the same reason that average citizens should be buying gold as well.”Gina Miller, the founder of Moneyshe.com, is less convinced. She told CityAM that while gold has traditionally been viewed as a safe investment, “its track record reveals significant limitations as a long-term investment”.“For instance, while gold surged 148% from October 2008 to August 2011, it took nearly nine years, until July 2020, to reach new highs. Such prolonged stagnation makes it unappealing for investors seeking steady, long-term growth,” Miller said.With gold at record-high prices, it is unlikely that people will be able to buy the metal and flip it for quick returns. Instead, experts say, people should see gold as a small part of an investment portfolio, rather than pumping all their money into it and putting it in a big vault.As Trump shows no signs of backing down on his trade battles, having a few dog tags of gold stored in a safe space, or, if you’re Menendez, “jammed into jackets and boots”, might not be the worst option. More

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      in US Politics

      Is Trump driving the US into a recession? – in charts

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      Prospects for the US economy have cooled significantly in a matter of months. After outperforming its international peers last year, warning lights are flashing on a dashboard of economic indicators as analysts warn that Donald Trump’s erratic approach is hitting the world’s largest economy.Fears of a US recession this year are growing, in what is being called a “Trumpcession”, amid a sharp decline in business and consumer confidence as the president threatens punitive import tariffs on US allies and enemies alike.Most economists reckon a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking economic output – can be avoided. But it is clear there are storm clouds gathering within the president’s first 100 days back in the White House.GDPUS growth in gross domestic product (GDP) had outpaced international peers in recent years, and since the Covid pandemic in particular – helped by the Biden administration pumping billions of dollars into the economy through the Inflation Reduction Act. The former president did not get much credit, though, as voters felt the squeeze from the period of high inflation triggered by the pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.This week, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow, which measures GDP economic growth in real time, suggested the US economy would contract at an annual rate of 2% in the first quarter. However, this widely followed indicator can be volatile, and it is heavily influenced by the US trade deficit, which soared in January.Trade balanceThe US goods trade gap surged to $153.3bn in January. This was driven by record import volumes, an increase of $36.2bn to $329.5bn in total, as US businesses rushed to bring shipments into the country to avoid potential tariffs.US gold importsA significant driver of the import rise was inbound shipments of “finished metal shapes”, which include bars of gold. The trend is also attributed to traders rushing to get ahead of potential US tariffs. A widening trade deficit would normally weigh on a country’s GDP, because imports are subtracted from the measurement. But because gold bought to sit in a vault is not consumed or used in production, it is excluded.This means the Atlanta Fed is likely to be overestimating the hit to first-quarter GDP. Still, there are other signs that the US economy is cooling.InflationTrump had promised to “bring prices down, starting on day one” and “cut energy costs in half within 12 months after taking office”.Official figures show the headline annual rate as measured by the consumer price index was 2.8% in February, after an unexpected rise to 3% in January from 2.9% in December. Energy costs are down by 0.2% on an annual basis.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said on Monday that Trump’s trade wars risked stoking inflation. It increased its US inflation forecast for 2025 to 2.8%, up from a previous estimate of 2.1% made in December.EmploymentThe US jobs market has boomed in recent years, and the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in early 2023, the lowest level since the year of the first moon landing in 1969. The rate has ticked higher in recent months, but remains historically low at 4.1%. This has been spurred by rapid growth in the numbers of jobs being added to the economy.Wage growth has also strengthened, and has remained above inflation since early 2023, helping households to rebuild some of their purchasing power lost during the recent rise in living costs.StocksThe US stock market has powered to record highs in recent years. Tech stocks and the “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla – have led the charge in particular, buoyed up by investors betting on the growth of artificial intelligence.The Biden administration oversaw a strong stock market performance, helped by the economic recovery from the pandemic. However, Wall Street surged after Trump’s election victory in November, amid investor expectations for tax cuts that could increase company profits. Markets have been rattled in Trump’s first 100 days amid concerns over his erratic approach to the economy and the threat of tariffs hitting growth and stoking inflation.The US dollarThe US dollar had been rising sharply against other leading currencies, reflecting the strength of the economy and investor concerns that Trump’s policies could stoke inflation. Tariffs pushing up the price of imported goods, driving up inflation, could force the US Federal Reserve to hold back from cutting interest rates.With inflation having fallen back, the Fed cut its benchmark rate last year by a whole percentage point – from a range between 5.25% and 5% to between 4.25% and 4.5%. Higher inflation could limit its capacity for further rate cuts.A dramatically slowing economy could force the central bank to take action to lower borrowing costs. This has led to a pullback in the dollar in recent weeks.Washington has long held a “strong dollar” policy in the view that it supports the purchasing power of US consumers, helping to keep inflation low. The dollar is also used as the currency of choice for world trade and underpins the financial system. The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said this approach is not changing. But Trump has argued that a weaker dollar would benefit US manufacturing by making exports cheaper for overseas buyers.Prices of inputs for manufactured productsBusiness surveys have shown a marked increase in input costs for US manufacturers, providing an early warning sign for growth and inflation. The price gauge on the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) shows raw material costs rose sharply at the start of this year, in the first signs of supplier difficulties and discussions about who will pay for tariffs. The rise in input costs could dent US manufacturing output, and is likely to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for finished goods.Consumer spendingUS consumer spending unexpectedly dropped in January for the first time in almost two years, with a fall of 0.2%, the biggest decrease in nearly four years. Cold temperatures in some parts of the country, as well as wildfires in California, were likely to have hit spending. However, some analysts warn consumer sentiment has taken a knock amid mounting concern over the strength of the economy. More

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      in Elections

      Oil Companies Wanted Trump to Lower Costs. Tariffs Are Raising Them.

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      President Trump’s promise during last year’s election to make it far easier to drill for oil and gas thrilled energy executives who believed his policies would lower their costs and help them make a lot more money.Those hopes are now fading. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the oil and gas industry is contending with rising prices for essential materials like steel pipes used to line new wells.That has not yet translated into a meaningful change in U.S. drilling activity or production expectations, but companies have begun revising budgets to reflect higher materials costs. Decisions made today about which wells to drill will affect production many months from now.Oil refineries are separately bracing for a tariff on Canadian oil, which some of them need to produce gasoline, diesel and other fuels.At the same time, consumers have grown jittery about the economy and the price of oil has fallen about 10 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office, to around $70 a barrel. Oil companies tend to drill less when prices fall.The combination could complicate Mr. Trump’s stated desire to juice U.S. oil and natural gas production, which are already at or near record highs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Corporations are forcing Americans to pay more for less – in their own words | Matt Stoller

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      In 2022, the Biden administration and the oil industry were in a brutal fight over oil prices. The president was demanding that domestic oil producers invest and drill more to address spiking costs, but Texas frackers were recalcitrant. “Whether it’s $150 oil, $200 oil, or $100 oil, we’re not going to change our growth plans,” the Pioneer CEO, Scott Sheffield, said, echoing comments from other leaders at different domestic firms. Profits would go to investors, not to more rigs to address pain at the pump.The oil barons won the fight. Profits in the oil industry jumped from virtually nothing in 2020 to the hundreds of billions in 2021, and then doubled again in 2022. And yet, economists did not see any sort of plot at work. “Don’t blame the oil companies for their high profits,” said the economist Olivier Blanchard. “It is not price gouging, just how markets work.”Three weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission released information showing how naive such statements really were. Sheffield, it turns out, allegedly helped engineer a price-fixing scheme to reduce oil production and increase prices for Americans at the pump. His goal was to end fierce competition in the industry, which had, as he put it, “lowered the price by $20 to $30 per barrel over the past 10 years”. The FTC banned Sheffield from his corporation’s board and has reportedly referred allegations against Sheffield to the Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation.The magnitude of this alleged plot is stunning. Oil prices are controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), a cartel composed of nations with known oil reserves. Because Opec is made up of governments, price-fixing law doesn’t apply. But these laws do apply to domestic US firms engaged in shale oil production, who competed fiercely with Opec from 2014 to 2016 for market share, bringing down prices in the interim.In 2017, tired of this price war, Texas oilmen and Opec officials began sitting down to dinners, and by 2021, Texas had de facto joined Opec. Companies like Pioneer, Devon Energy and Continental Resources publicly pledged to hold back production. As the FTC found, Sheffield was also privately sending hundreds of text and WhatsApp messages to Opec officials, seeking to align US producers with the global cartel.Class-action lawyers are on top of the scandal, but there’s also increasing political interest. At a hearing last week, the US representatives Rosa DeLauro and Matt Cartwright began criticizing “big oil” for this scheme, and Representative Mark Pocan even called for jail time for the oil executives allegedly involved. The top Democrat on the powerful energy and commerce committee, Frank Pallone, just launched a wide-ranging investigation across the industry.The US consumes 7bn barrels of oil a year, meaning that if the dollar amount went up by $20-30, as Sheffield calculated, that’s roughly $400-700 a person in America, a transfer from consumers to oil men and their private equity backers. That’s a not small amount of what inflation wrought in 2021, which was about $4,700 per capita in increased prices. (I suspect the amount is actually more than $20-30 a barrel, since price spikes tend to be larger than the average over long periods of time. But we’ll leave it at what Sheffield calculated.)What is perhaps most shocking about this scandal is not that it happened, but that it happened in plain sight. Oil CEOs weren’t hiding. In 2021, as prices rose on the end of Covid lockdowns, Sheffield publicly threatened rivals who might increase production, saying “all the shareholders that I’ve talked to said that if anybody goes back to growth, they will punish those companies”.For years, there has been a debate between macro-economists like Blanchard about the source of post-Covid inflation. Many economists chalked up price hikes to workers demanding more money and saw the way to address it as scaring workers into accepting less money by throwing a bunch of them out of work. “We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation,” said Larry Summers. That’s what their models told them.By contrast, 85% of Americans, along with a few iconoclastic scholars and writers, said “corporations being greedy and raising prices to make record profits” was the cause of inflation. Why? Well it might have been because they noticed that CEOs were routinely telling investors that they were raising prices to increase margins, not to meet wage demands. Or it might have been because they experienced large and unexplained price increases in meat, rent, hotels, groceries and restaurants. Indeed, when the CEO of Wendy’s recently said Wendy’s was considering using AI to engage in dynamic pricing, the public outrage was palpable.It’s time to declare the debate over. In 2021, the total corporate profit increase was $730bn, or a little over $2,100 a person. That’s a large chunk of the inflationary increase in costs. Moreover, the price-fixing in the oil industry, which contributed roughly $200bn of that, isn’t an anomaly.Take post-Covid rent hikes. One software and consulting pricing firm for landlords, RealPage, specialized in telling its clients to hike rents more than they otherwise might. As of December of 2020, RealPage had nearly 32,000 clients, including “10 largest multifamily property management companies in the United States”. There are multiple antitrust suits accusing the private equity-owned firm of organizing a massive price-fixing conspiracy to inflate rents across the board.Beyond rent, the Biden administration or private plaintiffs now have credible antitrust claims against firms engaged in price-fixing in meat, hotels and large online sellers like Amazon. Corporations in a range of industries have made comments similar to those of Sheffield.Alex Cisneros, an executive for Red Roof Inn, told a trade outlet that Red Roof Inn was using a software package called STR from CoStar to systematically hike prices across the hotel industry. “Red Roof’s franchisees for the most part are making more money with less occupancy,” Hotel News Now explained. “Red Roof is now providing more data to franchisees to educate and get them comfortable commanding higher rates.”According to a lawsuit, an unnamed executive at Smithfield, a pork processor, summarized the advice he got from Agri Stats, a consulting firm that coordinates production in the industry, as: “Just raise your price.”Rent, meat, oil and hotels are big sectors, so criminal activity in the form of price-fixing to boost profits should bust through the illusions economists have about how our markets really work. There are also a number of concrete steps policymakers can take to respond to this price-fixing.The first is to arrest or sue the offending executives for criminal activity.The second is to strengthen price-fixing and merger laws, allow more private class-action suits, force judges to speed up cases and increase the budget of antitrust enforcers to make collusion more difficult.The third is to reform the Federal Reserve so policymakers there stop using macro-economic models that avoid considerations of profits and price-fixing.And the fourth is, frankly, political. One key reason there is action on these schemes is because Biden has prioritized antitrust enforcement. He hasn’t put enough into antitrust, and he doesn’t talk about it very often. But he should, or else Americans are likely to fall into the trap of thinking that what is good for big business is good for their pocketbooks, when the opposite is so often the case.
      Matt Stoller is a writer and former policymaker who focuses on the politics of market power and antitrust More

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      in US Politics

      Trump promised to scrap climate laws if US oil bosses donated $1bn – report

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      Donald Trump dangled a brazen “deal” in front of some of the top US oil bosses last month, proposing that they give him $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and vowing that once back in office he would instantly tear up Joe Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent any new ones, according to a bombshell new report.According to the Washington Post, the former US president made his jaw-dropping pitch, which the paper described as “remarkably blunt and transactional”, at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and club.In front of more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, he promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution. He would also overturn the Biden administration’s decision in January to pause new natural gas export permits which have been denounced as “climate bombs”.“You’ll get it on the first day,” Trump said, according to the Post, citing an unnamed dinner attendee.Trump’s exhortation to the oil executives that they were wealthy enough to pour $1bn into his campaign war-chest, at the same time pledging a U-turn on Biden’s efforts to combat the climate crisis, was immediately denounced on Wednesday by environmental groups.“$1bn for Trump, a devastating climate future for the rest of us,” said Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).Christina Polizzi of Climate Power told the Guardian that Trump was “putting the future of the planet up for sale”.“He is in the pocket of big oil – he gave them $25bn in tax breaks in his first term – and now it’s clear he is willing to do whatever big oil wants in a potential second term.”The former president’s exchange with fossil fuel giants also engaged the concern of groups monitoring the influence of money in politics. Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (Crew), a non-partisan government watchdog, said the conversation, as reported by the Post, “certainly looks a lot like quid pro quo”.Libowitz said the encounter was “about as blatant as I’ve ever seen. Politicians often give a nudge and a wink, they don’t say raise a billion dollars for me and I’ll get rid of the regulations that you want.”He added that Crew’s legal team were looking into whether this rises to the high legal standard of bribery.Trump’s close relations to the oil industry, and his hostility to federal regulations designed to reduce emissions that exacerbate the climate crisis, are well-known and longstanding. With six months to go until the presidential election, however, he is stepping up his efforts to attract campaign donations from the sector.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is also performing strongly in the polls. Having all but certainly secured the Republican nomination, Trump is often narrowly ahead of Joe Biden in surveys of the presidential race, including performing strongly in the key swing states that are vital to any candidate’s chances of victory. Trump’s solid performance comes despite a swath of legal woes, including currently being on trial in New York over an alleged hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.For their part, executives in big oil companies have been preparing for a possible Trump second term by drafting executive orders designed to be ready to sign as soon as he returns to office. Politico reported this week that the executives have clubbed together to produce off-the-shelf policies on increasing natural gas exports, supercharging drilling and extending offshore oil leases.The interplay between Trump and the oil giants as the election approaches underlines the vast gulf between the former president and the current occupant of the White House. According to an analysis by a group of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and LCV, the Biden administration has taken more than 300 actions towards greater public health and clean energy, more than any other administration in US history.Those measures included the first major climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has propelled record investment in clean energy including solar and wind and increased sales of electric vehicles. US energy emissions are slowly declining, by some 3% this year.Even so, the US is extracting more oil and gas than ever, reaching almost 13m barrels of crude oil a day – more than double the production levels a decade ago. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumers

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      Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumersPresident announces release of 15m barrels of oil from strategic reserve as he fights to keep gas prices in check before midterms Joe Biden has called on oil companies to pass on their massive profits to consumers as he announced the release of 15m barrels of oil from the US strategic petroleum reserve.Biden is fighting to keep gas prices in check ahead of November’s midterms. He blamed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the global spike in oil prices and said his administration was doing all it could to keep prices in check.“Gas prices have fallen every day in the last week,” said Biden. “That’s progress, but they’re not falling fast enough. Gas prices are felt in almost every family in this country. That’s why I’ve been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices.”He called on US oil companies to help. In the second quarter of 2022, the six largest US oil companies reported profits of $70bn, said Biden.“So far, American oil companies are using that windfall to buy back their own stock, passing that money on to shareholders, not consumers,” he said. “My message to all companies is this: you’re sitting on record profits. And we’re giving you more certainty. You can act now to increase oil production. You should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends – not while the war is raging.”The announcement of the latest oil release speeds up the sale of the last of the 180m barrels that Biden announced in March would be sold. The announcement comes after the oil-producing Opec+ nations said they would cut oil production, driving up prices, in a move that angered White House officials.Established in 1975 to help mitigate shocks in US oil supply, the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) is thought to be the largest emergency supply in the world. Stored in underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas, the SPR has capacity for 714m barrels of oil and is currently at its lowest level since 1984.The reserve now contains roughly 400m barrels of oil and Biden said more oil could be released if the situation does not improve. The administration has called the situation a “bridge” until domestic production can be increased and said the US will restock the strategic reserve when oil prices are at or lower than $67 to $72 a barrel.Biden faces political headwinds because of gas prices. AAA reports that gas is averaging $3.87 a gallon, down slightly over the past week, but up from a month ago. The recent increase in prices stalled the momentum that the president and his fellow Democrats had been seeing in the polls ahead of the November elections.An analysis Monday by ClearView Energy Partners, an independent energy research firm in Washington, suggested that two states that could decide control of the evenly split Senate, Nevada and Pennsylvania, are sensitive to energy prices. The analysis noted that gas prices over the past month rose above the national average in 18 states, which are home to 29 potentially “at risk” House seats.The hard math for Biden is that oil production has yet to return to its pre-pandemic level of roughly 13m barrels a day. It’s about a million barrels a day shy of that level. The 15m-barrel release would not cover even one full day’s use of oil in the US, according to the Energy Information Administration.The oil industry would like the administration to open up more federal lands for drilling, approve pipeline construction and reverse its recent changes to raise corporate taxes. The administration counters that the oil industry is sitting on thousands of unused federal leases and says new permits would take years to produce oil with no impact on current gas prices.Environmental groups, meanwhile, have asked Biden to keep a campaign promise to block new drilling on federal lands.Because fossil fuels lead to carbon emissions, Biden has sought to move away from them entirely with a commitment to zero emissions by 2050. When discussing that commitment nearly a year ago after the G20 leading rich and developing nations met in Rome, the president said he still wanted to also lower gas prices because at “$3.35 a gallon, it has a profound impact on working-class families just to get back and forth to work”.The Associated Press contributed to this storyTopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationOilOpecCommoditiesUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More