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President Trump's First 100 Days In Oil And Gas: Elections Really Do Matter

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President Donald Trump's 100th day in office is this Saturday, and the debate is raging about what he has or has not accomplished during that short period of time, which in the past has traditionally been a sort of "honeymoon" period for new presidential administrations.  It's highly debatable whether or not this particular President received any sort of honeymoon at all, since such periods in the past have involved semi-favorable coverage from the press and a good deal of cooperation from congress, but that's another subject for another writer.

My mission here at Forbes.com is to talk about public policy related to energy in general, and oil and natural gas in particular.  Focusing strictly on that area of policy, it seems to me that President Trump, through his 98th day in office, has already become the most impactful president in my lifetime , which, since I'm pretty old, goes back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Shortly after he took office in 2009, former President Barack Obama famously told the Republican congressional leaders, “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” Those words are as true today as they were then, and those who deal with public policy matters in the oil and gas industry are finding out that the 2016 election mattered in a really big way.  You might even say it was "Yuge".

Throughout his campaign, Candidate Trump focused on energy policy more than any previous candidate from either political party.  At every rally, he talked about his America First Energy Plan, specifically bringing up things like the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, the need to promote the production of more domestic energy resources, his plan to lessen U.S. reliance on oil imports from the Middle East, and his plan to reverse some heavy-handed Obama-era regulatory actions, like the EPA's Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.

Not since the 1980 candidacy of Ronald Reagan have Americans seen a nominee of either major party focus so much of his campaign messaging on oil and gas-related issues.  It was a truly striking thing to observe.

There have been times when the industry's lobby in Washington DC has begged past Presidents to make some positive mention of an issue critical to the business in their annual State of the Union Address to congress.  It was considered a huge "win" several years back when, after he had made his standard call for congress to repeal literally every tax treatment specific to oil and gas in the IRS code, President Barack Obama whipped out a single sentence praising natural gas.

There was no need to beg President Trump to make positive mention of the domestic oil and gas industry during his Address to Congress in February.  As in his campaign speeches, he spent a good deal of time in that address discussing the array of specific actions he had already taken and others he planned to take in order to stimulate production of the nation's massive oil and gas resources.

In contrast to some other past presidents, who talked at some length about such things but then didn't really take much action, President Trump has walked his talk where oil and gas is concerned .  His America First Energy Plan consists of the following major elements related to oil and natural gas:

  • Jump-start major pipeline projects that were unjustly stymied by the Obama Administration – DAPL, Keystone XL
  • Jump-start leasing programs and streamline permitting processes on federal and Indian lands and waters
  • Roll back major Obama-era regulatory actions
  • Stimulate the domestic industry through tax reform
  • Increase imports from Western Hemisphere nations – Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, etc.

The President did not waste time upon assuming office.  Indeed, on just his fourth day in the White House, he issued his executive order designed to ensure the completion of both the Dakota Access Pipeline and the northern extension of the Keystone XL Pipeline system.  He has since issued other executive orders that would have a stimulative impact on the oil and gas industry in the U.S.

On WOTUS, he ordered the EPA to suspend the rule and rewrite it in the coming months, and attempted to pull the government's court appeal related to the regulation.  But the Supreme Court announced it will move forward with a hearing on the rule, even as EPA is rewriting it.

The President had planned to use the 20 year-old Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind a raft of last-minute regulations shoved through the system late in the Obama Administration, but lack of Senate action has limited that opportunity.  Still, the President has signed 13 CRA resolutions thus far - which is 12 more than had ever been signed into law by previous presidents - and a handful of those relate to the oil and gas industry.

Where the CRA has failed to produce results, past presidents might have just moved onto other matters.  In contrast, President Trump has resorted to other means of putting his priorities in place.  He has ordered the Bureau of Land Management to rewrite and re-propose regulations pertaining to venting and flaring of natural gas, and to hydraulic fracturing operations on federal lands.  And he ordered the Interior Department to rescind the Obama Administration's last-minute regulation that would dramatically change the manner in which federal oil and gas royalties are valued.

The President's tax plan, introduced this week, would also have a stimulative impact on the independent producers who drill the vast majority of oil and gas wells in this country.  Lower tax rates, combined with the President's stated intent to allow either accelerated depreciation or outright expensing of capital costs, would significantly improve the ability of such producers to raise the capital they need to increase domestic production.

Taken as a whole, President Donald Trump has already, in his first 98 days in office, taken more actions to positively impact the domestic oil and gas industry of any president in at least my lifetime, possibly ever.  He has done all of this in the face of a withering media assault, aggressive obstruction from congressional Democrats, and with limited cooperation from congressional Republicans.

As recently as November 8, 2016, the U.S. oil and gas industry's outlook was one of increasingly restrictive federal regulation, diminishing access to capital and the ability to permit and build transportation infrastructure, higher administrative costs, rising imports and falling output.  A little more than six months later, acting to a great extent without outside assistance, President Trump has changed that outlook to one of greater predictability, greater access to capital, streamlined ability to build infrastructure, higher domestic production and lower imports.

Elections truly do have consequences, and for the oil and gas industry, the 2016 election has already been the most consequential in modern times.  And that's just the first 98 days.  Imagine what might happen if congress ever gets its act together.

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