Energy
Trump’s 1,000 Words About Energy
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
As a person who spent 40 years doing policy and government affairs work in the oil and gas industry, I have always paid close attention to what presidential nominees of both parties have to say — or do not say — about energy in their acceptance speeches.
The vast majority of the time, it has been much more about what they did not say.
Many such speeches since I first started paying attention to such things in 1980 (Reagan vs. Carter) said literally nothing at all on the topic. Most other nominees limited energy-related talk to a sentence or two.
In most election years, energy and its costs are just not a top-of-mind topic for most Americans. But that has all changed now in the wake of the Biden administration’s heavy focus on inflation-causing green subsidies and the rising public awareness of the central role that mushrooming energy costs play in prices for groceries and every other aspect of their lives.
So, after being stunned by how much time former President Donald Trump dedicated to the energy subject during his acceptance speech Thursday evening in Milwaukee, I decided to plow through the transcript of that 90-minute speech to figure out just how many words he had to say on the topic. Amazingly, the number comes to right at 1,000 words. It is impossible to know for sure, but I would speculate that is the most words ever spoken about energy by any nominee in such a speech in American history.
In addition to the predictable promise to bring a return to the “Drill, baby, drill” oil and gas philosophy that characterized his first presidency, the former president spoke at length on other plans for a second one.
- He openly mocked some elements of Biden’s Green New Deal agenda, at one point noting: “They spent $9 billion on eight chargers, three of which didn’t work.” He then called Biden’s obsession with forcing electric cars on a reluctant public “a crazy electric band-aid.”
- Trump promised to end Biden’s “EV mandates” on the day he is sworn into office. Given that some of the web of EV-promoting policies implemented by the Biden administration come via regulatory actions, achieving a full pullback will be a little more time-consuming than that.
- He talked at length about plans by Chinese companies to flood the American EV market with cars either made in Mexico or shipped from China into the U.S. through Mexico, saying the United Auto Workers union “should be ashamed” for continuing to support Biden and other Democrats while this is taking place.
- He accused the Biden administration of spending “trillions of dollars” on “the green new scam. It’s a scam. And that has caused tremendous inflationary pressures in addition to the cost of energy.”
- Trump noted that: “Under the Trump administration just three and a half years ago, we were energy independent” — which is factually accurate. The US did produce much more energy than it consumed throughout his presidency, and was a net exporter of oil, natural gas and coal in many months during that time.
- Trump continued: “But soon we will actually be better than that. We will be energy dominant and supply not only ourselves, but we will supply the rest of the world.” Well, maybe not the rest of the world, but surely much of it. It is a political speech, after all, so a little hyperbole fits.
- Trump further criticized the Biden White House for reversing the hard line he took with Iran while president, saying: “I told China and other countries, ‘If you buy from Iran, we will not let you do any business in this country, and we will put tariffs on every product you do send in of 100 percent or more.’ And they said to me, ‘Well, I think that’s about it.’ They weren’t going to buy any oil. And…Iran was going to make a deal with us.”
There was much more energy-related content in his speech, but you get the gist: A second Trump presidency would start by reversing as much of the Biden Green New Deal agenda as possible and go from there.
It is safe to say no presidential nominee has ever been as focused on energy as Donald Trump is today. We will see if it pays off for him in November.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Alberta
IEA peak-oil reversal gives Alberta long-term leverage
This article supplied by Troy Media.
The peak-oil narrative has collapsed, and the IEA’s U-turn marks a major strategic win for Alberta
After years of confidently predicting that global oil demand was on the verge of collapsing, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has now reversed course—a stunning retreat that shatters the peak-oil narrative and rewrites the outlook for oil-producing regions such as Alberta.
For years, analysts warned that an oil glut was coming. Suddenly, the tide has turned. The Paris-based IEA, the world’s most influential energy forecasting body, is stepping back from its long-held view that peak oil demand is just around the corner.
The IEA reversal is a strategic boost for Alberta and a political complication for Ottawa, which now has to reconcile its climate commitments with a global outlook that no longer supports a rapid decline in fossil fuel use or the doomsday narrative Ottawa has relied on to advance its climate agenda.
Alberta’s economy remains tied to long-term global demand for reliable, conventional energy. The province produces roughly 80 per cent of Canada’s oil and depends on resource revenues to fund a significant share of its provincial budget. The sector also plays a central role in the national economy, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and contributing close to 10 per cent of Canada’s GDP when related industries are included.
That reality stands in sharp contrast to Ottawa. Prime Minister Mark Carney has long championed net-zero timelines, ESG frameworks and tighter climate policy, and has repeatedly signalled that expanding long-term oil production is not part of his economic vision. The new IEA outlook bolsters Alberta’s position far more than it aligns with his government’s preferred direction.
Globally, the shift is even clearer. The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook, released on Nov. 12, makes the reversal unmistakable. Under existing policies and regulations, global demand for oil and natural gas will continue to rise well past this decade and could keep climbing until 2050. Demand reaches 105 million barrels per day in 2035 and 113 million barrels per day in 2050, up from 100 million barrels per day last year, a direct contradiction of years of claims that the world was on the cusp of phasing out fossil fuels.
A key factor is the slowing pace of electric vehicle adoption, driven by weakening policy support outside China and Europe. The IEA now expects the share of electric vehicles in global car sales to plateau after 2035. In many countries, subsidies are being reduced, purchase incentives are ending and charging-infrastructure goals are slipping. Without coercive policy intervention, electric vehicle adoption will not accelerate fast enough to meaningfully cut oil demand.
The IEA’s own outlook now shows it wasn’t merely off in its forecasts; it repeatedly projected that oil demand was in rapid decline, despite evidence to the contrary. Just last year, IEA executive director Fatih Birol told the Financial Times that we were witnessing “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” The new outlook directly contradicts that claim.
The political landscape also matters. U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House shifted global expectations. The United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement, reversed Biden-era climate measures and embraced an expansion of domestic oil and gas production. As the world’s largest economy and the IEA’s largest contributor, the U.S. carries significant weight, and other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom, have taken steps to shore up energy security by keeping existing fossil-fuel capacity online while navigating their longer-term transition plans.
The IEA also warns that the world is likely to miss its goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 °C over pre-industrial levels. During the Biden years, the IAE maintained that reaching net-zero by mid-century required ending investment in new oil, gas and coal projects. That stance has now faded. Its updated position concedes that demand will not fall quickly enough to meet those targets.
Investment banks are also adjusting. A Bloomberg report citing Goldman Sachs analysts projects global oil demand could rise to 113 million barrels per day by 2040, compared with 103.5 million barrels per day in 2024, Irina Slav wrote for Oilprice.com. Goldman cites slow progress on net-zero policies, infrastructure challenges for wind and solar and weaker electric vehicle adoption.
“We do not assume major breakthroughs in low-carbon technology,” Sachs’ analysts wrote. “Even for peaking road oil demand, we expect a long plateau after 2030.” That implies a stable, not shrinking, market for oil.
OPEC, long insisting that peak demand is nowhere in sight, feels vindicated. “We hope … we have passed the peak in the misguided notion of ‘peak oil’,” the organization said last Wednesday after the outlook’s release.
Oil is set to remain at the centre of global energy demand for years to come, and for Alberta, Canada’s energy capital, the IEA’s course correction offers renewed certainty in a world that had been prematurely writing off its future.
Toronto-based Rashid Husain Syed is a highly regarded analyst specializing in energy and politics, particularly in the Middle East. In addition to his contributions to local and international newspapers, Rashid frequently lends his expertise as a speaker at global conferences. Organizations such as the Department of Energy in Washington and the International Energy Agency in Paris have sought his insights on global energy matters.
Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.
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