Trump just made more promises to oil industry campaign donors

In a rambling fundraising pitch to oil executives in Houston on Wednesday, former president Donald Trump promised them he would immediately approve their projects and expand drilling in a second term — just as he worked to expedite the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines soon after taking office in 2017.

Trump said that if he returned to office in January, he would issue “immediate approvals for energy infrastructure. That’s pipelines, power plants,” according to the detailed notes of one attendee at the fundraiser, who shared on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

“I approved the Keystone pipeline, and I approved the Dakota Access pipeline,” Trump said at the fundraiser at Houston’s Post Oak hotel, according to the notes.

The event, organized by three oil executives, underscores how Trump is courting an industry that ranked as a main beneficiary of his time in the White House, as he seeks to narrow President Biden’s fundraising advantage. Less than 24 hours later, Senate Democrats launched an investigation of Trump’s fundraising dinner last month at his Mar-a-Lago Club, where he asked oil executives to steer $1 billion to his campaign and pledged to reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental policies.

One co-host of Wednesday’s fundraiser was Kelcy Warren, the billionaire chairman and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the builder of the Dakota Access pipeline. During the GOP presidential primary, Warren donated tens of thousands of dollars to one of Trump’s main rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Now, Warren appears to be firmly in Trump’s camp. In addition to co-hosting the Houston fundraiser, where attendance cost $250,000 per person, Warren has donated $800,000 to the Trump campaign throughout the 2024 campaign cycle. The event lasted many hours and included pictures. The speech lasted about an hour, and Trump mingled with attendees, taking pictures with high-dollar contributors.

On Thursday, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Finance Committee launched a joint investigation of the Mar-a-Lago meeting last month. The senators voiced concern that Trump’s request at the dinner may have been a quid pro quo and may have violated campaign finance laws, although experts say his conduct probably did not cross the threshold of being illegal.

[What Trump promised oil CEOs when he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaign]

During his speech on Wednesday, Trump did not ask the oil executives for a specific amount of campaign donations, according to the notes from the attendee.

“Be generous, please,” he said to end his speech, after making a series of policy promises and touting his energy record. One person involved in the event said it raised more than $25 million.

Trump said he would “lift the natural gas export ban, cancel all unnecessary energy-killing regulations ... (and) open up more federal lands” to drilling, the notes said, drawing cheers from the audience.

Trump told attendees that he would immediately reverse Biden’s pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Lifting the pause could directly benefit Energy Transfer Partners, whose pipelines serve several LNG export terminals that ship the fuel overseas. The company also clashed with the Biden administration last year when it refused to extend a permit for its LNG export terminal in Lake Charles, La.

Another co-host of the Houston fundraiser was Harold Hamm, the executive chairman of the oil giant Continental Resources and a pioneer of the country’s fracking boom. During the event, Trump lobbed a joke at Hamm about his singular focus on fossil fuels.

“He’s my original oil guy that taught me so much about oil,” Trump said of Hamm, according to the attendee’s notes. “This guy knows more about oil and gas ... That’s all he knows. That’s the problem. He’s so boring to be with, you know, because all he wants to talk about is oil and gas.”

The third co-host of the fundraiser was Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum. Hollub has touted what she calls “net-zero oil” — a seemingly paradoxical term that refers to oil produced using carbon dioxide captured from drilling.

Spokespeople for Energy Transfer Partners, Continental Resources and Occidental Petroleum did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not directly answer questions about the fundraiser. In an emailed statement, Leavitt said that “President Trump is supported by people who share his vision of American energy dominance to protect our national security and bring down the cost of living for all Americans.”

Despite the oil industry’s complaints about Biden’s policies, the United States is now producing more oil than any country ever has, pumping nearly 13 million barrels per day on average last year.

At the Houston fundraiser, Trump again griped about wind energy, claiming that wind turbines kill bald eagles and that wind “doesn’t work,” according to the notes from the attendee, and made clear his preferences.

“So we have wind, but we want natural gas. Natural gas is clean and strong and powerful, and more gasoline and oil,” Trump said, according to the notes. He also praised North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who is orchestrating much of his energy policy and attended the event.

Trump promised the oil executives that he would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. His administration auctioned off oil and gas leases in the refuge, one of the nation’s last unspoiled wild places, days before Trump left office.

“I had ANWR approved in Alaska. It’s the biggest oil farm,” he said, incorrectly stating the refuge holds an oil reserve “equivalent of Saudi Arabia, they think.” The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated somewhere between 4.3 billion and 11.8 billion barrels of oil lie underneath the refuge’s coastal plain, whereas Saudi Arabia has an estimated 267 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, according to the coalition of oil-producing nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The Jan. 6, 2021, lease sale on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge generated little industry interest, and the Biden administration later suspended those leases, saying Trump officials had done an “insufficient analysis” of how drilling would affect critical habitat for threatened polar bears and migrating caribou. Three of the winning bidders later pulled out, and last year, the Interior Department canceled the remaining seven leases, though it is legally obligated to hold a second lease sale there by the end of this year.

Returning to a familiar theme, Trump bashed electric vehicles at the Houston fundraiser. He promised to “end the EV mandate immediately” — mischaracterizing ambitious rules that the Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized. The rules require automakers to reduce emissions from car tailpipes, but they don’t mandate a particular technology such as EVs.

The batteries in electric trucks, Trump complained, are too big and too heavy. “It’s a massive battery. The battery’s bigger than a freaking army tank,” he said, according to the attendee’s notes.

He also mocked energy-efficient and water-saving appliances, calling them a “scam” and “the energy hoax.”

Despite his gripes with EVs and efficient appliances — and with Biden’s ambitious climate agenda more broadly — Trump assured attendees that he is a “big believer in the environment.”

“During the Trump administration, we had the cleanest air,” he said.

The fundraiser covered a range of other topics. He bragged about his golf game — saying he had improved over the past 25 years — and railed against the trial in New York and the other criminal indictments, the attendee said. He gave a slide presentation about other topics, such as immigration and foreign policy, the attendee said.

“We’re going to build the greatest Iron Dome over our country,” he said. “Israel has it.”

He regaled the crowd with a long story about his impeachment in 2019 — over withholding foreign aid to Ukraine as he asked the country’s leader to investigate Hunter Biden — and called Ukraine a “very corrupt country.” He said that he called Ukraine’s president in 2019 only at the request of Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas who was the energy secretary.

“So I was impeached, and I said, thanks a lot, Rick,” Trump said.

He spent several minutes focused on how the special counsel questioned President Biden’s memory and mental faculties while not charging him with holding classified documents as part of a report released earlier this year.

“It’s probably the worst exoneration I’ve ever seen,” he said, vowing to use the special counsel’s report in the campaign.

He bragged about his ability to save Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from impeachment, saying his critics backed down after Trump weighed in to defend Paxton.

Trump said he went after Dade Phelan, the speaker of the House in Texas, who led Paxton’s failed impeachment.

“I went after somebody that was not your friend. Not for that reason, but because he was not into voter fraud that was taking place in Texas,” he said, repeating false claims of fraud.

Trump repeated his false claims of the 2020 election being stolen and said that Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley was the most important person in the room because he is “going to stop the cheating.”

“We call it save the vote, guard the vote, stop the steal,” he said, referring to what the RNC needed to be doing. The RNC has launched a program called “Bank Your Vote” to bring in early votes.

He said he picked Whatley for the job because he did not lose North Carolina “in the middle of the night” like he did some other states, when he alleged more ballots came in to cost him the election. Before his current position, Whatley was chair of North Carolina’s Republican Party.

“If you talk about it, you’re a denier,” he said of his false claims of the 2020 election, according to the notes. “I’m the greatest denier in history.”

Trump also said he was trying to post on Truth Social less frequently after midnight.

“I never go beyond 2 o’clock. 3 o’clock is like magic. They say he was truthing at 3 in the morning,” he said. “They make you look like a little bit of a nut job.”