“No fracking, no fracking, no fracking. All of a sudden [Biden] gets a nomination, he says, ‘There’s got to be fracking.’ For Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota … your energy jobs are gone if they get in. Just remember I said it.”
– Donald Trump, “Donald Trump White House Rally Speech Transcript October 10: First Event Since COVID Diagnosis.”
Consistency applies to Donald Trump and his energy positions unlike his rival. As such, the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, has endorsed Trump for reelection.
But there are disappointments and room for improvement with Trump energy policy. Ethanol’s continuing grip on the transportation market continues under his watch. Protectionism that reaches the energy industry (steel pipe for pipelines, for example), should be relaxed. And the very latest–the One Trillion Trees Executive Order, establishing the One Trillion Trees Interagency Council–is window dressing in the scheme of things.
Florida Campaign Rally (October 12, 2020)
“He goes to Pennsylvania, for a year and a half, he’s against fracking. Today, he gets the nomination through a little luck because she didn’t get out. So she took all of Bernie’s votes, right? But gets enough — but the following day, he said I’m in favor of fracking, but he’s not and it doesn’t matter because the radical left will never let Pennsylvania and Texas and Oklahoma and North Dakota and Ohio, never let them frack….
“Read my lips, there would be no fracking. That didn’t work out too well. So now [Biden] goes and he says there will be fracking.”
Labor Day Remarks (September 7, 2020)
“[Joe] Biden has also pledged to demolish the U.S. energy industry and implement the same policies causing blackouts in California. He wants to have things lit up with wind. He’ll have to talk to China, Russia, India, and lots of other countries, because they’re not doing that. And if they’re not doing it, it puts us at a tremendous economic disadvantage, and it doesn’t work.”
“You take a look at the [electrical] blackouts in California; it’s really rather amazing what’s going on there. They’ve tried to go, and that’s just with a small portion going that route. That doesn’t work, and it can’t fire up our big plants. We’re going to have this great industry that we’ve created. Can’t fire up our big plants.”
“And we got out of the horrible Paris Climate Accord that he’ll go back into because, you know, it sounds wonderful. It’s a disaster for this country. They’ve basically taken away your wealth, the Paris Climate Accord. And the other countries don’t have to adhere to it. China doesn’t kick in until 2030; they don’t have to do anything until 2030. We had very high standards. We would have had to close, under some scenarios, 25 percent of our businesses in order to qualify under this ridiculous Paris Climate Accord. It sounds good. It was very bad, very expensive.”
2020 Council for National Policy Meeting (August 21, 2020)
“We ended the Obama-Biden administration’s war on American energy. And the United States is now the leading producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. It’s a big thing.”
“And remember this: If you look at what they’re doing — Biden — he wants to end fracking, end petroleum products — end petroleum. No natural gas, no nothing. End everything. And that’s it. How does that work in Texas? How does that work in Pennsylvania?”
“I was in Pennsylvania yesterday, a place that [Joe Biden] said he was born in…. But they want to end fracking. They want to end drilling. They want to end everything. They want to end all of that. So I said — think of it: They want to end oil.”
“I withdrew from the one-sided … Paris Climate — I call it the Paris Climate disaster. This was a way of … of taking advantage of the United States. We wouldn’t be able to drill; we wouldn’t be able to frack; we wouldn’t have energy. Russia went way back into the dirtiest years. China didn’t even come into it until 2030 or 2035, and when they did, they came in very lightly. We came in immediately, and we would have had to close down many, many businesses in order to achieve the goals that they set, which are totally unrealistic. We would have — it was a disaster.”