HOUSTON: The US energy secretary vowed Monday to reset federal energy policy to favor fossil fuels and deprioritize climate change as industry leaders gathered at their biggest event since President Donald Trump returned to office.
\nIn the conference\u2019s opening session, Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited the Trump administration\u2019s moves to cut red tape that is delaying oil projects and promote liquefied natural gas exports as examples of a pivot away from policies pursued under former president Joe Biden.
\n\u201cThe Trump administration will end the Biden administration\u2019s irrational quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens,\u201d Wright told a packed auditorium for the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) conference.
\nSince returning to Washington seven weeks ago, Trump and his team have overhauled the existing economic order at a dizzying pace, launching trade wars against allies and hollowing government agencies the president and his allies dislike.
\nTrump made energy policy a central part of his agenda with his day-one \u201cUnleashing American Energy\u201d executive order, promising during his inaugural address to \u201cend the Green New Deal\u201d in favor of \u201cthat liquid gold under our feet.\u201d
\nBut Mark Brownstein, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said Wright\u2019s tone was \u201clong on rhetoric,\u201d adding, \u201cat some point the administration needs to get off the campaign stump speech and get on with the business of governing.\u201d
\nBrownstein described many CERA attendees as uncertain about investments, not only because of Trump\u2019s shifting position on energy and climate change, but also the nearly daily pivots on tariffs.
\n\u201cThe energy industry is a capital-intensive business and what they need to deploy capital at scale is certainty and consistency,\u201d Brownstein told AFP.
\nCERA\u2019s opening day coincided with deep stock market losses after Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a US recession.
\nProtesters held boisterous demonstrations outside the event in Houston. Advocacy group Oil Change International blasted the oil industry for pollution near industrial facilities and for fossil fuel investments that are worsening climate change.
\nEnergy played a key supporting role in Trump\u2019s 2024 presidential campaign, in which he pointed to higher gasoline prices as a reason more production was needed, embodied by his slogan: \u201cDrill, baby, drill.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s January 20 executive order represents a potentially wide-ranging attack on tax incentives which had been embraced by energy companies to advance billions of dollars of energy transition projects.
\nThese projects were connected to laws enacted under Biden to mitigate climate change.
\nSome pundits think Trump will stop short of actions canceling existing projects where workers have been hired, including many in conservative districts.
\nAppearing just after Wright, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth warned that \u201cswinging from one extreme to the other\u201d on policy is \u201cnot the right policy approach in a long cycle industry like this.\u201d
\nWirth welcomed Trump\u2019s executive orders on permitting reform, but said \u201cwe need to see some of this stuff put into legislation so that it\u2019s more durable and it\u2019s not at risk of being swung back in another direction by a future administration\u201d with different priorities.
\nWright downplayed the upheaval on trade policy after his remarks, noting Trump dropped many of his most impactful tariffs in his first term.
\nIt\u2019s \u201ctoo early to say on tariffs, but I feel quite confident having a smart businessman every day working for America writ large, not an interest group or a particular industry,\u201d Wright said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty optimistic about the outcome.\u201d
\nWright said there were \u201cvigorous\u201d closed-door debates about tariffs within the administration, rejecting the idea that there was ideological uniformity on the issue.
\nHe also suggested the Trump administration wouldn\u2019t challenge all Biden administration renewable energy projects, saying that while he wouldn\u2019t have picked some of the same projects for loans, \u201cwe inherit a loan book… and we follow the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOUSTON: The US energy secretary vowed Monday to reset federal energy policy to favor fossil fuels and deprioritize climate change as industry leaders gathered at their biggest event since President Donald Trump returned to office. In the conference\u2019s opening session, Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited the Trump administration\u2019s moves to cut red tape that is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78251,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78226\/revisions\/78251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}