Trump's Win is Neither an Oil Gusher nor a Green Crusher: Election 2024 - Bloomberg

Presidents rarely remake the energy sector, which is beholden to the more powerful currents of price and profit.

Drill, Baby, Chill.

Photographer: Anthony Prieto/Bloomberg

The greenest president in US history will be succeeded by his anti-green predecessor. Another lurch in the never terribly stable field of US energy policy is guaranteed, but remember that like gray, green comes in different shades. It is worth checking assumptions on what the switch from President Joe Biden to President-elect Donald Trump means for energy.

The first thing to recognize is that, in a sector this big and capital intensive, presidents mostly inherit rather than create from scratch. Biden wanted to move the US away from fossil fuels but began with an economy overwhelmingly dependent upon them. Even two terms wouldn’t have changed that, and the renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Biden to pivot somewhat back to immediate security and affordability concerns. He ended up approving a major new oil development in Alaska and presiding over the third-biggest increase in US oil and gas production of any administration in history. The biggest one of all time was under his old boss, toasted with gusto in the Houston-area country clubs, former President Barack Obama. Red and blue is not as useful a guide here as you might think.