The oil industry’s fortunes have been withering on President Donald Trump’s watch, with dozens of oil companies falling into bankruptcy as weak crude prices take a toll on the sector he contendsThough some of those industry woes were emerging last year as companies grappled with a glut of oil, people in the business say they were made worse by the president’s trade wars and mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I don’t think it’s one of these things where we as an industry get in a room and say, ‘Man that was a good four years,’” said one industry executive who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to give their opinion to the media. “It was more like ‘meh.’”POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen people tied to the industry — from oil executives in Oklahoma and North Dakota to lobbyists and lawyers in D.C.
Though some of that pain stems from the pandemic, the industry was wobbling even before Covid-19 struck. Companies ended 2019 on a weak note, shutting down drilling rigs and laying off workers because of overproduction of oil. Like other powerful corporations, oil and gas companies also scored an unequivocal win from the corporate tax cut that the GOP-controlled Congress passed in 2017, which reduced the rates that companies pay on profits from 35 to 21 percent.
The reversal shocked the oil and gas industry, which had been expecting the administration to open those areas to drilling after the election. In the Trump era, those courtroom setbacks have included a federal judge in Montana ruling against oil and gas leasing plans approved by an agency head who never received Senate confirmation and the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of EPA’s proposal for how to determine if a business’ groundwater discharge violated the Clean Water Act.
The administration did get some help from a federal judge earlier this month on one of its biggest priorities: The judge ruled that Barack Obama’s Interior Department had exceeded its authority in requiring companies to curb emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from oil and gas operations on federal land. The ruling came just in time to prevent the Obama-era regulation from going back into effect, after another federal court had rejected the Trump administration’s effort to replace it.
The Trump administration, in contrast, has gone all out in promoting natural gas exports — even to China. Regulators approved gas export projects at a faster clip, and Trump himself touted the benefits of LNG from the U.S. during a 2017 trip to Beijing. Trade tensions effectively killed most of the growth potential for U.S. natural gas exports and have far outweighed anything good the administration has offered the LNG industry, others in the industry said.
We're officially disclosing all the evidence, let's start with the correspondence between Biden and CCP.
And Biden etal will abolish the oil industry.
So this is the “Trump will destroy oil and gas just like Joe” response. 😂
And... before the pandemic?