Trump to declare national energy emergency, expanding legal options to address high costs

President-elect Donald Trump will declare a national energy emergency after his inauguration Monday to reduce energy costs, a new White House official told reporters.

The national energy emergency will “unlock a variety of different authorities” to produce more natural resources, the official said, without providing specifics on which authorities Trump will use. The president-elect has promised to cut energy costs in half in his first year in office.

“The national energy emergency is crucial because we are in an AI race with China, and our ability to produce American domestic energy is so crucial that we can produce the electricity and energy needed to remain at the forefront of global technology,” the report said. an official told reporters.

Trump is also preparing to sign an executive order specifically aimed at boosting energy production in Alaska, the official said, without providing details.

“Alaska is critical to our national security, given its geostrategic location, and it is a crucial location from which we could export LNG not only to other parts of the United States, but also to our friends and allies in the Asia-Pacific region,” the ministry said. an official said.

The United States has for years been the world’s largest crude oil producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. The CEOs of Exxon and Chevron said oil and gas production levels are based on market conditions and are unlikely to increase significantly in response to the White House decision .

“There’s still potential,” Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in a Jan. 8 interview. “But probably not growth at the rate we’ve seen over the last few years as some of these new shale plays start to mature,” Wirth said.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods told CNBC that U.S. shale production has not faced “external restrictions” under the Biden administration.

“Certainly we wouldn’t see change based on political change but rather on an economic environment,” Woods said in a Nov. 1 interview before Trump’s election victory. “I don’t think anyone develops a business strategy to meet a political agenda,” he said.

Woods said at the time that there were areas in the Gulf of Mexico that had not opened due to federal permitting. The Biden administration had planned the fewest oil and gas lease sales in history under a five-year program that runs through 2029.

“This could, in the long term, open up potential sources of supply,” Woods said of the increase in lease sales.

There are several emergency laws Trump could invoke on energy, said Glenn Schwartz, director of energy policy at consulting firm Rapidan Energy. Emergencies are often vaguely defined in federal law, giving the president broad discretion to use them as he sees fit, Schwartz said.

And Trump would likely encounter little resistance from the courts, because they are reluctant to challenge presidential decisions related to national security, Schwartz said.

“The bottom line is that even if Trump expanded his emergency powers in an unprecedented way, it is not clear that the courts would intervene to stop any of these resulting actions,” he said. ‘analyst.