President-elect Donald Trump has promised to make oil great again, and he’s assembled a Cabinet full of fossil-fuel-enthusiasts to get the job done. But there’s a limit to what he and his team can actually do, write Mike Soraghan, Heather Richards, Carlos Anchondo and Shelby Webb. Plus, it’s not as though the industry has suffered greatly under the Biden administration. It has enjoyed record-setting oil and natural gas production, the approval of an oil drilling project in Alaska called Willow and a path to completion for the long-embattled Mountain Valley pipeline. Still, industry leaders have chafed at recent pollution restrictions, a new methane fee and a pause on natural gas exports — not to mention President Joe Biden’s trillion dollar climate agenda. So, what can and can’t Trump do about it? Rolling back regulations
Trump can, and is expected to, unravel Biden-era environmental rules. One likely target is the nation’s first-ever fee on excess methane emissions, which was finalized last week. The U.S. oil and gas industry emits more than 6 million tons per year of methane, a major driver of climate change that is several times stronger than carbon in its heat-trapping ability. Under Biden’s 2022 climate law, oil and gas operators will be required to pay $900 per metric ton of excess methane they emit. While Trump can’t nix the fee without rewriting the law (which Congress may do), he is expected to make it easier for companies to qualify for exemptions. Drilling and exporting
While Trump has promised to boost drilling to lower prices (in the realm of $2 a gallon of gasoline), he can’t force companies to produce — and they may not want to. To make gasoline that cheap, oil companies would have to cut the cost of a barrel by two-thirds, potentially creating a supply glut, which is bad for business. But Trump can end the Biden administration’s pause on the export of natural gas and speed up the permit process for companies planning to ship the fuel overseas. Reliance on foreign oil
While U.S. companies are producing a record amount of crude oil, they still rely on foreign imports, which are easier to refine domestically. One of Trump’s campaign promises was to raise tariffs on imported goods to help pay for domestic tax cuts. But he won’t be able to tax imported oil without causing gasoline prices to spike and wreaking general havoc on the U.S. oil refining industry.
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