“Trump’s Oil and Gas Donor Doesn’t Really Want ‘Drilling, Baby, Drilling’“. That’s the head of a Wall Street Journal news report on November 22 about what American oil and natural gas producers think about energy policy.
That headline isn’t entirely misleading, as the story goes on to say that oil and gas producers are concerned about producing too much oil – for the obvious reason that it would drive down prices. Competitors rarely like competition.
But here’s something is misleading: the subheading. It reads: “Fossil fuel magnates helped bring the president-elect back to Washington. Now they are trying to record the use of their products for years to come.”
Wow, I thought. Are they trying to force people to use oil and natural gas? That would suck.
Actually, they aren’t. What they’re actually trying to do, according to Benoit Morenne and Collin Eaton, the authors of the story, is get the U.S. government to stop blocking the use of energy that isn’t produced directly by oil and natural gas. In their third paragraph, Morenne and Eaton write:
They are pushing for policies that would limit fossil fuel use, such as more easily allowing pipelines and terminals to transport fossil fuels to new markets. They also support repealing the Biden administration’s policy aimed at putting more electric vehicles on the road.
It is true that it becomes easier to sell more fuel if the existence of pipelines and terminals is facilitated. But notice the second sentence, where they concede my point. They want to abolish Biden’s policy to ‘put more electric vehicles on the road’.
And what are those policies? Morenne and Eaton won’t tell you.
I’ll tell you. The policies they want to end are mandates requiring the production of electric vehicles and subsidies to people who buy them. In other words, Biden did that locked up EVs and they want that end include that.
But that doesn’t really fit into the story, does it?
I said above that the headline, unlike the subheading, is not completely misleading. But it is somewhat misleading.
Morenne and Eaton write:
Trump has promised to impose tariffs on trading partners, a move that some in the energy sector fear could affect the price of steel, a key component of the good build.
With more expensive steel, fewer wells would be built. This means that less oil and natural gas is produced than otherwise. Morenne and Eaton see how that concern from oil producers is evidence that at least some of them do Doing do you want to produce more? Apparently not.