“Donald Trump has said he will immediately fill up the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve if he becomes president in November, a move that could boost oil demand by hundreds of millions of barrels,” the Financial Times reports.
Said Trump: “We don’t need energy from any other country. We have to fill up the strategic reserves again. It is the lowest number it has ever been.”
Politico: U.S. oil output notches fresh record in August.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign pledged the likely Democratic presidential nominee would not ban fracking, rejecting what it called ‘false’ accusations by Donald Trump that she would prohibit the technology if elected president,” Politico reports.
“Fracking technology has helped U.S. drillers reach record oil and gas output.”
“The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding permitting and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies,” Reuters reports.
“Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power sector to fight climate change and Republicans viewing it as a way to ensure reliable electricity supply and create jobs.”
“Donald Trump suggested to oil executive donors this month that he could ease the Federal Trade Commission’s scrutiny of their industry’s mergers and acquisitions if he returns to the White House,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s remarks, which have not previously been reported, indicated that he may try to influence the FTC, an independent agency, on behalf of his supporters.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said he is opposed to President Biden’s new China tariffs due to inflation concerns, the Washington Post reports.
Said Polis: “If we are reducing our ability to get the solar panels we need to power our clean energy economy, everybody winds up paying more for electricity through their utility, and it slows the clean energy transition.”
“In a rambling fundraising pitch to oil executives in Houston on Wednesday, former president Donald Trump promised them that he would immediately approve their projects and expand drilling in a second term — just as he worked to expedite the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines soon after taking office in 2017,” the Washington Post reports.
CNN: Senate Democrats launch investigation into alleged Trump “quid pro quo” with oil executives.
“The Biden administration said Tuesday that it is releasing 1 million barrels of gasoline from a Northeast reserve established after Superstorm Sandy in a bid to lower prices at the pump this summer,” the AP reports.
“Federal regulators on Monday approved sweeping changes to how America’s electric grids are planned and funded, in a move that supporters hope could spur thousands of miles of new high-voltage power lines and make it easier to add more wind and solar energy,” the New York Times reports.
“The new rule by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate electricity transmission, is the most significant attempt in years to upgrade and expand the country’s creaking electricity network.”
“As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted.”
“Giving $1 billion would be a ‘deal,’ Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him.”
“Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid.”
Financial Times: Big Oil boomed under Biden. So why does it hate him?
New York Times: “The political war over electric vehicles has been fueled by an incendiary mix of issues: technological change, the future of the oil and gas industry, concerns about competition from China and the American love of motorized muscle.”
“And in the rural reaches of America, where few public charging stations exist, the notion of an all-electric future feels fanciful — another element to the urban-rural divide that underlies the nation’s polarization.”
“Gas prices have spent the last 10 days bouncing around within a two-cent range, currently averaging at $3.10 a gallon nationwide. But the median average is $2.79, as the national number is heavily influenced by higher prices on the West Coast,” CBS News reports.
“You won’t hear President Biden talking about it much, but a key record has been broken during his watch: The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has,” the Washington Post reports.
Playbook: “That, of course, is helping reduce inflation. Nationwide, the average gallon of gasoline now costs $3.11, per AAA.”
Gas prices will fall in 2024 for the second year in a row, according to GasBuddy projections, CNN reports.
GasBuddy, which had a forecast for 2023 that proved to be eerily accurate, expects U.S. gas prices will average $3.38 a gallon in the key election year of 2024.
“Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change,” Politico reports.
“Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.”
“States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds. While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction.”
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said he thinks coal plants should not be “permitted anywhere in the world,” The Hill reports.
“Climate envoy John Kerry previewed new U.S. ambitions for producing nuclear fusion energy during a visit to Massachusetts on Monday,” Axios reports.
“The full announcement at the COP28 summit later this month is expected to coincide with a renewed U.S. effort to deploy nuclear energy — a campaign whose targets may be hard to achieve without fusion projects.”
“Gasoline prices have fallen for 60 consecutive days — the longest streak of declines in more than a year — letting American drivers pass on savings at the pump to consumer retailers during the US economy’s all-important holiday season,” Bloomberg reports.
“A gallon of gasoline now costs $3.25 on average in the US, more than 60 cents below the year’s peak in mid-September and about 30 cents cheaper than this time last year.”
“A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline last year,” the Washington Post reports.
“The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that has spawned multiple criminal investigations and that U.S. and Western officials have called a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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