As American oil floods the planet, the biggest domestic players producing it are happy that the Biden administration’s relationship with the industry is less frosty than anticipated. The Wall Street Journal reports that they’re not getting everything they want, it but maybe more than they had expected when Biden was elected.
“If you want a game plan, you want people who have played the game,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told The Journal. “I think there’s been a pragmatic approach that’s been brought into the administration.”
Biden leaned heavily on environmentalist rhetoric during the 2020 Democratic primary and general election, in which fighting climate change was a major priority for his supporters. And though the Biden White House has been trying to shore up its clean-energy bona fides with major investments via the Inflation Reduction Act, known as “The Green New Deal” signed into law in 2022, it hasn’t exactly been tearing down oil derricks to replace them with wind turbines and solar panels.
In 2023, partially for legal reasons, Biden approved the 600 million-barrel Willow oil drilling project in Alaska despite a campaign promise not to do so. Environmental activists decried the potential greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife harm that could come from the exploration. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland defended the administration by saying it was “a very long and complicated and difficult decision to make.”
And despite recently banning new natural gas exports to help reach climate change mitigation goals, the Associated Press reports that Biden just last week approved the Sea Port Oil Terminal project in Texas that is expected to become the largest deepwater oil export terminal in the United States, capable of shipping out 2 million barrels of crude oil per day.