President Donald Trump on Feb. 14 issued an executive order formally creating a National Energy Dominance Council, a White House panel that will coordinate and steer energy policy “to achieve energy dominance.”
Trump vowed to establish a Cabinet-level energy council during the campaign to “unleash American energy,” primarily oil and gas production.
The National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC) will be chaired by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the former North Dakota governor. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will serve as vice chair. Other members will be drawn from the Cabinet and key government agencies.
According to a White House fact sheet circulated before the executive order was formally issued, the NEDC “will advise President Trump on strategies to achieve energy dominance by improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation across all forms of American energy.”
The council’s first mission will be to devise a “National Energy Dominance Strategy” that trims federal regulation, boosts private sector investments, and advances innovation.
The White House said the NEDC would hasten the reversal of Biden administration energy policies it said were responsible for raising “overall household energy prices,” including gasoline, by 30 percent.
Among immediate actions will be lifting restrictions on offshore oil leases across vast swaths of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and in the Gulf of America, referred to as the Gulf of Mexico, its previous name, on leasing charts, contracts, and documents used by industry.
“Over the last four years, it is estimated that our nation produced over 2 billion fewer barrels of oil than anticipated [had President Trump’s energy policies been kept intact] … a vast quantity of lost supply that could have lessened the burden of energy prices on American families,” the White House said.
Clearing regulatory obstacles in production is not the biggest issue confronting domestic operators—the United States already leads the globe in natural gas production.
The global market is the biggest influencer in determining how much companies will or won’t drill.
There are more than 9 million acres of federal public lands leased for oil development idling across the West.
The second-biggest challenge in making Trump’s “drill baby drill” energy policy a reality is expanding pipeline capacity that can move and store it, and rapidly building out the capacity to export liquefied national gas (LNG).
In a day one Jan. 20 executive order, Trump lifted the Biden administration’s LNG export pause, expedited the LNG export license process to one-sixth the time previously required, and reduced permitting time for drilling on federal lands.
Trump has also commissioned the NEDC to address and reverse U.S. dependence on China for a range of critical minerals, “which has put our nation’s supply chain at risk, as exemplified by China’s recent weaponization of its resources through bans on exporting germanium, gallium, and antimony to the United States.”
