WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Friday, Daily on Energy readers! The Trump administration remains confident that “drill, baby, drill” can happen this year, even as producers and drillers grow more distressed over current market conditions.
Today’s newsletter also takes a look at new research that reveals we might not be able to safely store as much carbon dioxide as previously thought. Plus, if you missed it earlier in the week, keep reading to find out what President Donald Trump’s former energy secretary has to say on the administration’s crackdown on offshore wind.
Thanks for keeping up with us all week, wishing you a restful and enjoyable weekend!
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Meeting energy demand is at the front of everyone’s mind with Congress back in session, and Democrats are reigniting their pushback against the Trump administration’s crackdown on wind power.
“We’ve had a number of hearings about the drastic increase in demand for energy and the drastic need for the energy soon, and the idea of the administration blocking any development that can provide the energy we desperately need, particularly on a timely basis, just doesn’t make sense,” Democratic Sen. Angus King of Maine told Callie this week. “It’s not in the national interest.”
TRUMP’S ENERGY DOMINANCE COUNCIL STANDS BY ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’ DESPITE INDUSTRY WOES: President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council has no plans to ease up on the administration’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda, even though producers have warned the president’s own policies could be hurting drillers in the long run.
Quick reminder: There is growing doubt among oil and gas producers that they will be able to increase drilling levels in current market conditions. The active rig count in the U.S. is down by over 40 compared to last year, the oil major ConocoPhillips is preparing to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce, and production prices have gone up as the president’s tariffs on products like steel remain in place. Fossil fuel executives have warned that if oil prices continue to drop, hitting the low $50s, companies will have to accelerate cost-cutting measures.
“And despite all of this, we keep hearing from the administration about how “great” it is that prices are low at the pump. Yes, consumers benefit in the short term, but at what long-term cost?” Kirk Edwards, an Odessa oilman and president of Latigo Petroleum, wrote in a post to LinkedIn this week, later adding, “So much for ‘drill, baby, drill’.”
The details: Energy Dominance Council executive director Jarrod Agen affirmed the president’s agenda during a fireside discussion with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington yesterday. Agen appeared to brush aside these concerns, saying he believes “drill, baby, drill” can 100% happen this year. He said the council is considering solutions like co-mingling rigs to increase production without building new infrastructure.
“At the end of the day, the President wants prices at the pumps to be low and that doesn’t always coordinate with what the industry wants,” Agen said, adding, “we’re going to do what the President wants.”
WHITE HOUSE COMPLETES REVIEW OF PROPOSED ROLLBACK OF BIDEN PUBLIC LANDS RULE: The Office of Management and Budget has concluded its review of the Interior Department’s proposed rescission of the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule imposed by the Bureau of Land Management under the Biden administration.
Through the rule, the Biden administration made conservation and land restoration a top priority for public lands under BLM control, directing the agency to manage for landscape health and limit the organizations and individuals who can obtain mitigation leases on these lands.
Environmentalists and climate activists had praised the rule, saying it would put conservation efforts on an equal playing field with infrastructure development. Meanwhile, Republicans, fossil fuel advocates, and farmers had pushed back, saying it would upend the shared multi-purpose use of public lands and endanger food and energy security.
The Interior Department quietly moved to withdraw the rule earlier this year. OMB has teed up the agency to officially walk it back, noting that its concluded action regarding the proposal is “consistent with change.”
While the agency has not publicly made an announcement on the decision, it has already been praised by those in the mining industry.
“The Biden administration unlawfully placed conservation above all else, enacted unwarranted land withdrawals and 180-degree reversals of fully approved projects,” the National Mining Association said in a statement. “This new rule reinstates the balance of federal land use intended by Congress, ensuring that our vast resources can meet today’s soaring energy needs and become the secure mineral supply chains for American industry.”
SHAREHOLDERS BACK EMERGENCY RIGHTS ISSUE FOR DANISH WIND GIANT: Offshore wind developer Orsted won over shareholders today for its plan to shore up finances through a $9.4 billion emergency rights issue to support its U.S.-based projects throttled by Trump.
The details: The company first announced the rights issue in early August, after its value took a dive by around 30%. Orsted said at the time it was issuing new shares as it was unable to complete a partial divestment of the Sunrise Wind project in New York. By the end of last month, however, the rights issue was sized to further strengthen the company’s capital structure and ability to execute on its plans to complete the Revolution Wind project in Rhode Island, which is 80% complete and was halted by the administration.
A sweeping majority of Orsted’s shareholders voted in favor of the company issuing new shares earlier today. As the company moves forward with strengthening its portfolio, executives have revealed that Orsted will be moving its focus back on projects in Europe and pull back on international expansions.
“The capital increase gives us a strong financial foundation and we need that to rebuild our business,” CEO Rasmus Errboe said, according to the Financial Times.
Orsted saw its shares jump by 4% today following the shareholder meeting.
GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG FINDS FEMA CUTS REDUCE EFFECTIVENESS OF DISASTER RESPONSE: The Government Accountability Office determined this week that the Trump administration’s cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency are putting the country at greater risk of being underprepared when responding to natural disasters.
The details: The government watchdog released a report this week reviewing the agency’s readiness to respond to disasters like severe hurricanes and wildfires, as the president has threatened to dismantle the agency entirely.
The report, which is just the first in a series addressing federal disaster response readiness, found that roughly 2,500 FEMA employees left the agency between January and June of this year, a 10% decrease in its workforce.
Departures have only continued since the mid-summer, as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said she fired more than two dozen employees within the last two weeks over inappropriate conduct and violation of security protocols. Late last month, the agency also suspended at least 30 individuals who signed their names on a letter created by existing and former employees criticizing the administration.
The administration’s crackdown on FEMA and winding down of its operations have sparked fears over its ability to respond to natural disasters. GAO’s report released this week affirmed those concerns.
“Given continued demands on the federal response workforce and recent staff reductions, the federal government will likely need to meet its disaster response mission with fewer available resources this year,” GAO wrote in the report. “Should the U.S. experience a similar catastrophic peak hurricane season in September and October 2025, as it did in 2024, meeting response needs could be a major challenge.”
The watchdog went on to emphasize that staffing cuts seen at the agency could very well “reduce effectiveness of federal disaster response for upcoming disasters.”
LARGEST-EVER IMMIGRATION RAID AT HYUNDAI ELECTRIC VEHICLE PLANT: A Hyundai electric vehicle and battery plant in Georgia was the target of an immigration raid that a Homeland Security Investigations official said was the largest-ever single-site enforcement action, CBS reports.
Authorities detained 475 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, many of them Korean.
Hyundai began making EVs last year at the plant, which Gov. Brian Kemp had touted as the largest development project in the state’s history. The automaker had partnered with LG Energy Solution on a neighboring battery plant supposed to open next year.
BAD NEWS FOR CARBON CAPTURE? A study published today in the journal Nature concludes that the total amount of carbon that could be stored safely after being captured is much lower than thought.
Researchers from Imperial College London and elsewhere found that the risks of earthquakes, engineering failures, and territorial disputes means that less than 1,500 gigatonnes of CO2 can be stored safely around the globe, far less than the 40,000 previously estimated, the Financial Times reports.
That is less than the level of sequestration eventually needed to limit global warming in line with the Paris agreement in line with estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Carbon storage should be treated as a “scarce resource” rather than “an unlimited solution to bring our climate back to a safe level,” study author Joeri Rogelj told the publication.
INDIA DEFIANT ON PURCHASING RUSSIAN OIL: India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the country will continue to import Russian oil as long as it is advantageous, brushing off the increasing pressure from the Trump administration.
“We will undoubtedly be buying,” Sitharaman said in a television interview, according to Bloomberg.
She likewise dismissed the accusation from Trump adviser Peter Navarro that India is “laundering” Russia’s oil at the expense of the West.
Diplomats are “astonished that such kind of expression is being used for India,” she said, adding that “those in the diplomatic area will respond or deal with it.”
The background: India is the world’s largest buyer of Russian seaborne oil. It has come under the Trump administration’s crosshairs as the U.S. has tightened sanctions and measures meant to deprive Vladimir Putin of funding for his war in Ukraine. Most notably, Trump imposed tariffs of 50% on India as a response for the oil purchases, a form of “secondary” tariff that represents a new level of intensity for the overall sanctions measures.
Early this morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that “we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick ramped up the rhetoric in an interview on Bloomberg today, saying that India’s purchases of discounted Russian oil are “just plain wrong. It’s ridiculous and they need to …decide which side they want to be on.”
He then faulted India for being part of the bloc known as BRICS, short for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, saying that “India doesn’t yet want to open their market, stop buying Russian oil, and stop being a part of BRICS, right – they’re the vowel between Russia and China.”
ICYMI – FORMER TRUMP ENERGY CHIEF WARNS WAR ON WIND SETS ‘DANGEROUS PRECEDENT’: As Trump tightens his chokehold on the offshore wind industry, the president’s first-term energy secretary is warning that it could be setting an example for future administrations to target fossil fuels.
The details: Former secretary Dan Brouillette issued the warning during an appearance on Fox Business this past Tuesday. Brouillette was pressed on why the administration would move to cancel an offshore wind project like Revolution Wind, that is roughly 80% complete.
“I disagree with this decision,” Brouillette started off, noting that he understands concerns regarding how subsidized the wind industry has been and how those federal funds can be reallocated to pay down the national debt.
“But pulling a permit at this stage of the process sets an unfortunate precedent,” he said. “It creates a whiplash effect that I think in the long term will freeze investment. Future administrations may use this very same tactic against our [liquefied natural gas] exporters here in the United States, or even other fossil fuel energy producers. I think it’s a very dangerous precedent and sets up some incredibly bad whiplash.”
Brouillette explained that he doesn’t disagree with the president’s overall desire to move away from wind energy, but said the administration should keep its focus on future projects rather than those that are nearly complete.
GOP pushback: The former energy secretary isn’t the only Republican speaking out as a number in Congress have also been voicing concerns. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski told Politico this week that investors across industries will need certainty from the administration that their projects won’t be stopped at the eleventh hour. Three Senate Republicans – Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and John Curtis of Utah – are currently maintaining holds on the president’s nominees to the Treasury Department over the administration’s actions against clean energy.
RUNDOWN
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