Unlike Joe Biden, the incoming president is overtly pro-fossil fuels. But the US oil and gas industry still sees risks ahead.

Welcome to our guide to the commodities powering the global economy. Today, senior reporter Jennifer Dlouhy writes about what lies ahead for the US oil and gas industry under Donald Trump.
The US will inaugurate a president Monday who has relentlessly extolled America’s oil and gas bounty while vowing to support higher production. He’s set to invoke emergency powers for that very end just hours after being sworn in.
So you could be forgiven for thinking Donald Trump’s second term heralds a golden age for Big Oil in Washington. Lobbyists in the nation’s capital don’t see it that way.
They’re bracing for a tumultuous tenure, with unexpected policy pivots along the way that could upend business plans in the time it takes to read a Truth Social post.
In what would be a great irony of Trump’s return to the White House, companies may come to find that it was easier to navigate through Joe Biden’s administration.
Biden, of course, was no friend of the fossil fuel industry. He made fighting climate change a cornerstone of his presidency and imposed regulatory limits on how and where drillers could operate. But at least the battle lines were clearly defined, and many policy moves were predictable.
Ahead of Trump’s return, energy lobbyists advised clients to calibrate their public comments on climate change and oil markets lest they draw unwanted attention from the White House.

They’ve also reached out to incoming administration officials, warning them that US oil drillers can’t afford to aggressively grow production without undermining crude prices. So much for “drill, baby, drill.”
Potential policy peril looms on the very first day of Trump’s term. It’s not immediately clear how he will use emergency powers to unlock production. He’s also threatened tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil.
Much of the US refining industry is optimized for those heavier crudes rather than lighter oil from Texas and North Dakota. Refiners told Trump allies and transition officials that raising the price of imported oil will increase expenses for everyone, jeopardizing the incoming president’s ambition to slash energy costs.
It’s unclear how far that message has traveled. Trump has a go-to cadre of industry supporters, including billionaire donors Harold Hamm and Kelcy Warren. But their expertise and fortunes are tied, respectively, to upstream production and pipelines, not refining.
It’s just one example of how the next four years may be as chaotic for US energy as any other industry.
—Jennifer Dlouhy, Bloomberg News
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