Former President Donald Trump asked oil industry executives last month to donate $1 billion to aid his campaign to retake the White House, three people familiar with the conversation told POLITICO — a request that campaign finance experts said appeared troubling but is probably legal.
The oil industry has a long list of policy actions it would want Trump to take, including dismantling parts of President Joe Biden’s green agenda and rolling back pollution regulations that threaten to crimp their profits. Oil executives are also preparing some highly specific requests for Trump, including executive orders they hope he would sign if reelected.
At the very least, the $1 billion ask points to problems with laws governing money in politics, said Erin Chlopak, senior campaign finance director at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center.
Trump’s request is “shocking,” said an oil executive.
Originally Posted by VitaMan
It's very possible Trump was just pointing out the obvious, not agreeing to grant favors in return for campaign donations. Biden campaigned in 2016 on banning drilling on federal leases. He said he'd stop issuing new leases, but who's going to apply for a lease anyway if you can't drill on it. He also said he'd put the U.S. on the path to eliminating or massively shrinking its domestic oil and gas industry, although he certainly didn't expect to accomplish that during his first term.
And Biden followed through by suspending issuance of drilling permits on federal leases, and issuance of leases period, on his first day in office.
Then the justice system and reality intervened. The price of gasoline increased from $2.40 per gallon when he took office to $3.00 by early May, 2021, and peaked at $5.00 in June, 2022. Biden not only was going to be stymied by the courts, but his positions became political suicide. So he backed off, and incredibly started criticizing the oil and gas industry for not drilling enough wells! That's even though he intends to put the industry on the road to extinction! Every heard of stranded assets Joe?
Biden is now shrewder. He has implemented changes in EPA fuel efficiency requirements that will largely force internal combustion vehicles off the road, but they won't kick in gear until after the 2024 election. He's also suspended issuance of permits for new LNG facilities. Since the lead times are very long for building LNG infrastructure, this would appear to be a shrewd move, catering to the green lobby without costing jobs before the election. However, it may lose him Pennsylvania's electoral votes.
Finally Deb Haaland is worth a mention. Maybe she would have been a great head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but her main qualification for Secretary of the Interior was that she's an anti-pipeline protester and full supporter of Elizabeth Warren's energy platform, including banning fracking. She was responsible for suspending issuance of drilling permits and leases.
No wonder oilmen support Trump. Trump's biggest supporter in the industry is Tim Dunn of Crownquest, a Permian Basin producer, who has pumped $5 million into Trump PAC's. The others are relative pikers though. George Bishop with Geo Southern Energy put in $1 million, and Kelcy Warren, who owns midstream businesses, comes in at number 3 with $850,000.
That said, Dunn in my view is giving money to Trump more to support a conservative social agenda than safeguard the domestic oil and gas industry, although the later matters to him too. Now that he's got a deal to sell out to Occidental Petroleum and exit the oil and gas business, he doesn't have much of a financial incentive to back Trump.
There's no way that Trump gets anywhere close to $1 billion from oil and gas though. Biden may get more from venture capital and other contributors with green energy interests than Trump gets from fossil fuels.
One caveat, Trump's going to get a lot of small dollar contributions from the 11 million Americans workers directly and indirectly dependent on oil and gas for their jobs. Biden, Warren, Sanders, AOC et al represent an existential threat to them. I still don't think that gets Trump to $1 billion.
