The head of a North Dakota oil and gas commission has been critical of policies enacted by the Bureau of Land Management and the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency Trump said he’d dismantle if elected.
Advertisement
“I think it’ll be pretty high-level”.
The Paris climate agreement is also a bad deal, he said.
The fossil fuel industry is typically supportive of Republicans, and Trump began courting its support over the past few weeks.
Trump insisted that allowing companies to drill into untapped natural gas and oil reserves beneath USA land and coastal waters would be a massive economic boon that would create millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue. She also says the demand for clean energy will help America gain in global trade. He has also threatened to renegotiate a global climate pact reached in Paris previous year.
A representative from the Trump campaign could not be reached for comment. Trump asserted the agreement gives foreign powers the authority to moderate USA energy. While calling wind turbines “very, very expensive” to build and maintain, Trump said he is “OK” with subsidies. If elected, Trump would not send a single taxpayer dime to the United Nations to support the Paris Climate Agreement.
Mr. Trump targeted Ms. Clinton, who, in a slip, had promised to put “coal miners out of business”, while speaking about climate mitigating policies. Trump fans were anxious to get in.
Trump also took aim at another Democrat – President Barack Obama.
The Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has promised the opposite, and has projected jobs in clean energy, saying sustainable and renewable energy will help the USA gain in global trade. TransCanada would have to fork over “a piece of the profits” in exchange for the go-ahead to build. “Let’s take a piece of the action for you folks”, he said.
Environmentalists were ready to pounce even before Trump delivered his remarks. “If it doesn’t pass this test, that rule will not be under any circumstances approved”, he said.
Trump promised to scale back energy regulation on all fronts.
Trump then turned to criticizing President Obama’s energy policy.
“Disconnecting the USA from the global energy market would be very damaging and harmful to both US consumers and US producers”, he said.
North Dakota is at the heart of America’s oil boom and now is the second largest oil-producing state after Texas, thanks largely to huge reserves in the oil-rich Bakken region and advances in fracking and other drilling technology. And that’s exactly what Trump has now done.
“I would absolutely approve it, 100 per cent, but I want a better deal”, Trump said at press conference at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, N.D.
Noting that the United States energy dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal, Trump said America has 1.5 times as much oil as the combined proven resources of all OPEC countries.
The statement is a reversal of the Obama administration’s rejection of the pipeline previous year.
The controversial pipeline had become a flashpoint for US environmentalists.
Asked about that at a press conference ahead of the energy speech, Trump instead blamed coal’s problems on government regulations that “have gotten out of control”, as well as proposed Obama administration policies that have yet to come into effect.
Trump has already gone on record saying he believes global warming is a hoax, that his administration would revive the United States coal industry, and that he supports hydraulic fracturing – an environmentally risky drilling technique that has triggered a boom in United States production.
Clinton and her rival for the Democratic nomination, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, meanwhile, have advocated a sharp move away from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy sources to cut pollution and slow climate change. He wants America to make use of its vast energy resources.
“I want to be energy independent”, he added, saying he wants “to sell our energy to other places”, and that the Keystone pipeline should be approved. Revenue in energy states like North Dakota have plummeted along with the price of oil.
In a hastily-called media event, North Dakota Republicans, who just threw their support to Trump, put the Candidate over the top for delegate count. More than 7,000 people were expected to hear Trump’s speech.
Advertisement
The presumptive Republican nominee has already won the backing of oil magnate T. Boone Pickens, shale billionaire Harold Hamm and coal company Chief Executive Officer Robert Murray, who has repeatedly sued the Obama administration for climate regulations that affect his industry.
