Trump Picks Fracking Boss As Next Energy Secretary

Donald Trump has nominated Chris Wright, who runs the Colorado-based oil and natural gas fracking services company, Liberty Energy, to lead the Energy Department. Like many other Trump picks, Wright, LIberty's CEO, has no previous Washington experience, and instead has made a name for himself as a vocal proponent of oil and gas, saying fossil fuels are crucial for spreading prosperity and lifting people from poverty. And in news that will surely infuriate the green lobby and brainwashed progressives everywhere, Wright has said that the threat of global warming is exaggerated.

“Chris has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy,” Trump said in a statement Saturday. “He has worked in Nuclear, Solar, Geothermal, and Oil and Gas. Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence, and transformed the Global Energy Markets and Geopolitics.”

In response to the nomination, Wright said on X that "my dedication to bettering human lives remains steadfast, with a focus on making American energy more affordable, reliable, and secure. Energy is the lifeblood that makes everything in life possible. Energy matters.  I am looking forward to getting to work." He is spot on.

Trump said Wright, if confirmed, would also sit on the newly formed Council of National Energy that will be chaired by Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee to lead the Interior Department.

The Energy Department has a multi-faceted mission that includes helping to maintain the nation’s nuclear warheads, studying supercomputers and maintaining the US’s several hundred million-barrel stockpile of crude oil (his appointment likely means that the US will aggressively ramp up its refilling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve). The DOE also plays a key role in approving projects to export liquefied natural gas, something that was paused during Biden’s administration. Trump has vowed to undo the pause.

While the department has little authority over oil and gas development, Wright will play a leading role in helping Trump carry out his energy priorities.

Trump’s selection of Wright, whose company is among the largest providers of fracking services globally, is a show of support for the hot-button oil and gas extraction method that Trump frequently touted during the campaign to attack his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris who had previously vowed to ban fracking, even if she subsequently flip-flopped on the issue, just like on every other hot topic.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg points out that Wright’s company published a 180-page paper this year that concluded climate change “is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life,” and that “hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized.”

“There is no climate crisis. And we are not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video posted on his LinkedIn page. “Humans, and all complex life on earth, is simply impossible without carbon dioxide — hence the term carbon pollution is outrageous.”

Wright holds engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. He describes himself on his Denver-based company’s website as a “tech nerd turned entrepreneur and a dedicated humanitarian.”

Trump named Wright with backing from Continental Resources Chairman Harold Hamm, a Trump energy adviser and donor. Hamm said in an interview with the Houston-based trade publication Hart Energy that Wright was his choice for the job.

If confirmed by Congress, Wright would play a leading role in Trump carrying out his campaign pledge to declare a national emergency on energy. Trump has cast such a declaration as helping increase domestic energy production — including for electricity — which he says is needed to help meet booming power needs for artificial intelligence.

Under the first Trump administration, the Energy Department played a critical role in the president-elect’s efforts to revive US coal power, an initiative he’s hinted he may attempt again.

Wright would also oversee Trump’s promise to refill the nation’s emergency cache of crude oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a capacity of more than 700 million barrels, reached lows not seen since the 1980s following the Biden administration’s unprecedented drawdown of a record 180 million barrels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While Wright has warned that subsidies for wind and solar drive up power prices and increase grid instability, he does support alternative energy.

“I’m not here to protect market share for oil gas,” he said during a 2022 interview with Bloomberg Television. “We should do credible things, mostly driven by market forces. But shoveling subsidies at wind and solar, which are 3% of global energy, that’s not meaningfully going to change greenhouse gas emissions. But it is going to drive electricity prices up.”

Wright is on the board EMX Royalty Corp., a global mining royalties firm, according to his company bio, and his company is an investor in geothermal energy and sodium-ion battery technology. More importantly, Wright serves on the board of small modular reactor developer Oklo, which we first recommended to our premium subscribers back in May and have pushed aggressively every since as a long-term investment.

We have feeling that the record number of OKLO shorts that has been built up in recent weeks amid the stock's unprecedented meltup will be hurting very badly come Monday.