Analyzing Pres. Trump’s Energy Executive Orders

Someone very savvy was behind it and clearly took in a lot of input from those of us who know how to get things done. Here are some of the provisions of particular note:

• States that the broad policy is to encourage exploration and production on federal lands and waters and protect America’s energy dominance and security.

• Lifts the ban on LNG exports by directing the Department of Energy to move forward with export approvals.

• Requires agencies to review all existing regulations, settlements, and other agency actions that burden energy development. This is particularly helpful as we seek to address the last-minute agency actions from the Biden administration that Charlotte has been writing about the last few weeks. It also helps us with remedy for our litigation related to leasing and various rules.

• Directs the Interior Department and other agencies to eliminate delays, including NEPA and judicial delays, and expedite permitting, with emphasis on pipeline permits.

• Starts the process of rescinding the damaging Biden NEPA Phase 2 Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations and streamlining implementation of the NEPA reforms we won in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which the Biden administration had distorted into more NEPA obstacles.

• Eliminates electric vehicle (EV) mandates and other provisions that limit consumer choice in light bulbs and various home appliances.

• Revokes several Biden EOs regarding climate change, subsidies, and environmental justice, among others. Regarding climate, there are some particularly aggressive actions:

• • Eliminates the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and other efforts to implement a social cost of carbon. For those of us who geek out on the particulars, it gets down to the level of calling out the monkey business on discount rates in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Circular A-4. Like I said, they had some smart people working on this!
  • Directs EPA to reconsider the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases!
  • Terminates the “green new deal” by halting the disbursement of funds under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for such things as EV charging stations and presumably renewable subsidies and climate grants while a 90-day review is conducted. Funding from both Biden-era laws was over two trillion dollars, although likely only a fraction can be clawed back.

• Includes several measures to spur mining of critical minerals.

• Ceases the American Climate Corps program completely, which didn’t affect us but always struck me as a bit Maoist, with untrained young people spreading the gospel of climate justice.

Energy Emergency

In other Executive Orders, the declaration of an “energy emergency” is rightly not justified with respect to our industry but rather to grid reliability issues, critical minerals, and lack of refining capacity and pipelines in the Northeast and West Coast—a callout that is somewhere between trolling and true. The order directs agencies to exercise any lawful emergency authorities they have to facilitate energy permitting, including Endangered Species Act consultations in emergencies.

Other Orders

President Trump also signed orders on Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential and a temporary withdrawal of offshore wind leasing, which seems like tit for tat for Biden’s last-minute withdrawal from oil leasing of 625 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. The Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements is the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and any commitment under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Those are the highlights as I see them, but there’s a lot packed in there. We’ll be working with the new administration to help implement many provisions, particularly on our bread-and-butter permitting and leasing issues.