Trump’s Administration Can Supercharge America’s Energy Comeback Even Further

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Curtis Schube

One of the first executive orders President Trump issued was “Unleashing American Energy.”

It begins an effort to undo the harm caused by the Biden administration’s unprecedented assault on the American energy sector. It overturns President Biden’s own destructive executive orders, including those canceling oil leases and prioritizing environmental regulations over the good of the economy and producing reliable energy.

It also orders that unduly burdensome energy regulations be rescinded. Trump’s EO forthrightly states that its goal is to encourage energy production “to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader.”

This executive order takes the nation in a whole new direction. It orders the agencies to audit their policies to weed out burdensome regulations that impact energy development. It terminates the infamous Green New Deal. It prioritizes employment and economic impacts in energy policy. It also revokes a Jimmy Carter Executive Order to reduce the burden on environmental studies that notoriously hold up energy projects.

One reform that met less pomp and circumstance, but is not lacking in impact, is permitting reform. President Trump’s Order instructs agencies to “eliminate all delays within their respective permitting processes including … the use of general permitting and permit by rule.”

This type of permitting reform should impact all American lives for the better. We all know how difficult permits can be to obtain, even if on a smaller scale than energy. When making an addition to a house, for example, one must submit it to government and pray that everything is correct.

Then, the waiting game begins as the government reviews the application, requires possible alterations at the its whim, then, eventually at some point, the project can move forward. It can be expensive and time consuming, and sometimes may deter people from even trying.

The same applies on a larger scale. Permits for major projects, like an oil well, can take years, even a decade or longer, to jump through all of the hoops. And, as the federal government is the gatekeeper to many different varieties of activities that require a permit, whoever is in charge of the executive branch can cripple a project.

Permits by rule and general permits simplify the process drastically and ease the burden on both the applicant and the government. They are simple and predictable. For both types of permits, the government will first pre-determine the required criteria for someone to meet before the permitted conduct can commence. The government will promulgate the standards for all to see and know.

The applicant, knowing exactly what is required to perform the permitted conduct, can get a project moving quickly. For a general permit, no contact with the government is even needed. A permittee can begin a project so long as it satisfies the pre-set standards.

For a permit by rule, the applicant simply has to certify to the government, in writing, that all the criteria have been met. In response, the government can only check to see if the correct certifications are made and then either approve it or return the certifications with an explanation of which ones are not met. This is done in a short period of time, such as 30 days.

In both cases, the government has no discretion on a case-by-case basis. Instead of focusing its efforts as a gatekeeper for permits, the government will only focus on permittees who have not met the criteria, but after the permittee has begun its project. The government’s role is focused on enforcement actions.

Both sides benefit from this system. For those who behave correctly, the permitting process does not hold up projects. For the government, the resource drain for overseeing permitting is drastically reduced. The government only has to focus its attention on the minority of parties.

This system also has a built-in deterrent. If a permittee were to begin a project, only to have the government shut the project down at a later time through an enforcement action, the permittee would lose a significant investment.

The true benefit is to the American people. If energy companies can have a quick and expedited form of permitting, then the supply of energy can expand quicker. This makes the cost of energy, and all products, cheaper. In the wake of natural disasters, rebuilding can happen quicker. Infrastructure can be put in place faster. The benefits go on and on.

Permitting reform, such as that referenced in President Trump’s Executive Order, is a fantastic first step toward a more efficient government. His agencies should take full advantage and convert as many permits as possible to a permit by rule or general permit as soon as possible.

Curtis Schube is the Executive Director for Council to Modernize Governance, a think tank committed to making the administration of government more efficient, representative, and restrained. He is formerly a constitutional and administrative law attorney.

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Tariffs Coming April 1 ‘Unless You Stop Allowing Fentanyl Into Our Country’

Published on January 29, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

Canada should expect Tariffs starting April 1

Secretary of Commerce-designate Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee that the threat of imposing a 25% tariff was to get Canada and Mexico to “respect” the United States and stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.

President Donald Trump nominated Lutnick, who rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald after the financial services firm suffered massive losses in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, to serve as Secretary of Commerce Nov. 19. Lutnick told Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing that the threatened tariffs were intended to “create action” on two major issues.

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“The short-term issue is illegal migration and worse, even still, fentanyl coming into this country and killing over a hundred thousand Americans,” Lutnick said. “There’s no war we could have that would kill a hundred thousand Americans. The president is focused on ending fentanyl coming into the country. You know that the labs in Canada are run by Mexican cartels. So, this tariff model is simply to shut their borders with respect, respect America. We are your biggest trading partner, show us the respect, shut your border and end fentanyl coming into this country.”

“So it is not a tariff, per se,” Lutnick continued. “It is an action of domestic policy. Shut your border and stop allowing fentanyl into our country, killing our people. So this is a separate tariff to create action from Mexico and action from Canada, and as far as I know, they are acting swiftly and if they execute, there will be no tariff. If they don’t, then there will be.”

Drug overdoses killed 105,007 Americans in 2023, which is slightly fewer than the 107,941 who were killed in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized over 55 million fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, CBS News reported.

One kilogram of fentanyl can reportedly kill up to a half-million people, according to the DEA.

Almost 22,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the U.S. border in fiscal year 2024 with another 4,537 pounds being seized in fiscal year 2025 to date, according to statistics released by United States Customs and Border Protection. Upon taking office on Jan. 20, Trump issued several executive orders, including designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, declaring a national emergency on the southern border and setting policy on securing the border.

Daily Caller

Trump’s ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Agenda Will Likely Take On An Entirely New Shape

Published on January 29, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

During his campaign and since taking office, President Donald Trump often repeated his desire to bring back the same “drill, baby, drill” oil and gas agenda that characterized his first term in office.

But that term began 8 long years ago and much has changed in the domestic oil business since then. Current market realities are likely to mitigate the industry’s response to Trump’s easing of the Biden administration’s efforts to restrict its activities.

Trump’s second term begins as the upstream segment of the industry has enjoyed three years of strong profitability and overall production growth by employing a strategy of capital discipline, technology deployment and the capture of economies of scale in the nation’s big shale play areas. Companies like, say, ExxonMobil and Oxy and their peers are unlikely to respond to the easing of government regulations by discarding these strategies that have brought such financial success in favor of moving into a new drilling boom.

This bias in favor of maintenance of the status quo is especially likely given that the big shale plays in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford Shale, Bakken Shale, Haynesville and the Marcellus/Utica region have all advanced into the long-term development phases of the natural life cycle typical of every oil and gas resource play over the past 175 years. Absent the discovery of major new shale or other types of oil-or-natural gas-bearing formations, a new drilling boom seems quite unlikely under any circumstances.

One market factor that could result in a somewhat higher active rig count would be a sudden rise in crude oil prices, if it appears likely to last for a long period of time. Companies like Exxon, Chevron, Oxy and Diamondback Energy certainly have the capability to quickly activate a significant number of additional rigs to take advantage of long-term higher prices.

But crude prices are set on a global market, and that market has appeared over-supplied in recent months with little reason to believe the supply/demand equation will change significantly in the near future. Indeed, the OPEC+ cartel has been forced to postpone planned production increases several times over the past 12 months as an over-supplied market has caused prices to hover well below the group’s target price.

But it is wrong to think the domestic oil industry will not respond in any way to Trump’s efforts to remove Biden’s artificial roadblocks to energy progress. Trump’s efforts to speed up permitting for energy projects of all kinds are likely to result in a significant build-out of much-needed new natural gas pipeline capacity, natural gas power generation plants and new LNG export terminals and supporting infrastructure.

Instead of another four years of “drill, baby, drill,” the Trump efforts to speed energy development seem certain to result in four years of a “build, baby, build” boom.

Indeed, the industry is already responding in a big way in the LNG export sector of the business. During Trump’s first week in office, LNG exporter Venture Global launched what is the largest energy IPO by value in U.S. history, going public with a total market cap of $65 billion.

With five separate export projects currently in various stages of development, all in South Louisiana, Venture Global plans to become a major player in one of America’s major growth industries in the coming years. Trump’s Day 1 reversal of Biden’s senseless permitting pause on LNG infrastructure is likely to kick of a number of additional LNG projects by other operators.

The Trump effect took hold even before he took office when the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation entered into an exclusive agreement in early January with developer Glenfarne to advance the $44 billion Alaska LNG project. The aim is to start to deliver gas in 2031, with LNG exports following shortly thereafter.

America’s oil and gas industry has demonstrated it can consistently grow overall production to new records even with a falling rig count in recent years. Now it must grow its related infrastructure to account for the rising production.

That’s why Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra is likely to transform into “build, baby, build” in the months and years to come.

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.