President Donald Trump is delivering on promises that affect the leaders of the nation’s oil and gas companies — the ones they like and the ones they don’t.
On Wednesday, they get to sit down and talk about it.
In his breakneck first two months, Trump has killed off some of the regulations the oil barons hated, signed death warrants for others and put in motion tax breaks they love. But he’s also started a trade war that could threaten the economy and the supply chains that they rely on.
Then there’s the question of what “drill, baby, drill” really means — good times for oil companies or low prices for consumers? Some of the sector’s closest observers don’t have answers yet.
“Even though the administration is broadly supportive of the oil industry, its policies could indicate a period of turbulence ahead,” said Ed Crooks, vice chair for the Americas at Wood Mackenzie, in a blog post earlier this week.
The meeting Wednesday afternoon is expected to include some of the leading members of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s main trade group. Mike Sommers, API’s CEO, is scheduled to be among those in attendance. Multiple fossil fuel companies declined to comment on whether they would be sending a representative to the meeting.
“We appreciate the opportunity to discuss how American oil and natural gas is driving economic growth, strengthening our national security and supporting consumers with the President and his team,” Bethany Williams, an API spokesperson, said in a statement.
The White House didn’t provide a comment to POLITICO’s E&E News in advance of Wednesday’s gathering.
Mahyar Sorour, who directs the Sierra Club’s Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy, said the meeting shows the “quid pro quo” between Trump and his donors in the oil industry.
“We must find ways to expand access to clean, affordable energy instead of continuing to pad the profits of API members and oil and gas executives,” Sorour said.
Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental group Evergreen Action, said Trump has simply handed off most of his energy policy to the oil and gas industry. Moffitt said the president’s policies are “very much in line with what Big Oil wants.”
But while Trump’s full-throated cheerleading for fossil fuels has revived the spirit of oil leaders, his pinballing trade policy has fueled uncertainty for many.
In a Tuesday speech in New York, Vice President JD Vance said Trump is “dead serious” about rearranging the country’s trade regime.
“We believe that tariffs are a necessary tool to protect our jobs and our industries from other countries, as well as the labor value of our workers in a globalized market,” he told a crowd at the American Dynamism Summit.
Industry has voiced concern about Trump’s 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports, for example, which is likely to push up the cost of new pipelines and other infrastructure. The Trump administration has also announced plans to impose a lower 10 percent tariff on Canadian energy products that aren’t covered by a previous trade agreement with the United States.
Besides fears about tariffs, the disagreement between Trump and his industry allies on oil prices is starting to slip into the open. Trump and his team want them lower. The oil industry wants them higher.
During the presidential campaign last year, Trump said he’d cut the cost of energy in half within 18 months as he pushed his plan to boost domestic drilling. But oil companies don’t necessarily want to drill more, and they don’t want the price of oil to go down any more than it already has.
So far, crude has been going Trump’s way. And the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.078 per gallon Tuesday in the U.S. — almost 39 cents cheaper than a year earlier, AAA reported.
The price of U.S. benchmark oil dropped from nearly $77 a barrel the day after Trump’s inaugural in January to settle at less than $67 per barrel Tuesday. But that’s bad news to oilmen like Harold Hamm, executive chair of Continental Resources and one of Trump’s favorite oil executives.
“There are a lot of fields that are getting to the point that’s real tough to keep that cost of supply down,” Hamm told Bloomberg Television last week in an interview. “When you get down to that $50 oil that you talked about, then you’re below the point where you’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill.’”
But Trump advisers want it at least that low. Earlier this month, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, said that’s part of the administration’s strategy for lowering inflation.
“If we can get oil alone back down to $50 a barrel from where it is now about $70, that will be enough to shave off a percentage point off the inflation rate,” Navarro told Fox News.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who founded and led an oilfield services company before joining the Trump administration, is also pushing for lower prices. But he hasn’t publicly set a target.
The benchmark U.S. natural gas price, on the other hand, is trading higher than in recent years at about $4 per million British thermal units. And the average price is slated to climb higher in 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information. Administration.
Wednesday’s White House meeting also comes on the heels of multiple Trump administration favorable decisions for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects. Those include a conditional authorization for the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana and an export permit extension for Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas.
Wright also recently traveled to southern Louisiana with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to tout Venture Global’s expansion plans for the Plaquemines LNG facility, as well as Trump’s energy agenda. Trump also ended the so-called pause that former President Joe Biden had placed on new LNG permit approvals for exporting gas to countries without a free-trade agreement with the U.S.
In a letter this month, Virginia-based Venture Global asked to start the prefiling process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the third phase at the Plaquemines project. That plan would expand the facility’s production capacity by 18 million metric tons.
In a filing, Venture Global said that under an anticipated project schedule it would get its FERC authorization in September 2026 and could start construction that fall.
