XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns

This is a good thing.

'Trump plans to unleash fossil fuels and mining in 2025, unraveling
Democrats green new deal'

<https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/trump-will-open-doors-fossil-fuels-and-mining-2025-obstacles-and-challenges>

'Coming with the new year is a new president with a very different
vision on energy than President Joe Biden, who campaigned on a promise
to “end fossil fuel.”

President-elect Donald Trump is dismissive of the immediate “climate crisis” narrative that drove much of Biden’s energy policies. He
promises to establish American “energy dominance” and focus policy on bringing down the cost of energy.

While Trump can overturn Biden’s industry-punishing executive orders and create a friendlier regulatory environment for the oil, gas, coal and
mining industries, experts say there are economic and technical limits
to what the outcomes of his policies will be. Looking ahead to 2025 and
beyond, here’s what we might expect for energy and industry in the
second Trump administration.

Market forces
During a speech at the Economic Club of New York luncheon in September,
Trump said he would end the Biden-Harris administration’s “anti-energy crusade and implement a policy of energy abundance, energy independence,
and even energy dominance.” This would include, he said, getting the
price of gasoline down below $2 per gallon, which would decrease the
cost of all goods and services.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country,
including Russia and Saudi Arabia [and] will be using it. My plan will
cut energy prices in half or more than that within 12 months of taking
office. It will be an economic revival of our country like no one has
ever seen before,” Trump said before his campaign proved successful in
the November election.

Trump has shown a commitment to these energy pathways by nominating
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for Interior Secretary, who led the third
highest oil-producing state in the U.S. Trump also nominated Liberty
Energy CEO Chris Wright for Energy Secretary. If the Senate confirms
him, Wright will be the first Energy Secretary who has actually worked
in the energy industry.

While his picks speak to Trump’s commitment, there are other challenges
that may not mean an increase in oil and gas production. Despite Biden’s promise to destroy the oil and gas industry, the U.S. reached
record-high production levels. Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer and
editor in chief of Shale Magazine, said that this high production under
Biden will have economic consequences limiting further increases.

"Unfriendly regulatory environment"
“Low gas prices are not what will make them go out and produce oil,”
Rapier told Just the News. The reason production is so high is because
prices are high, Rapier explained. While Biden limited drilling and
exploration on public lands and created an unfriendly regulatory
environment, the high oil prices allowed the industry to thrive within
that framework.

A similar thing, Rapier said, happened during the Obama administration.
While Obama was no friend of oil and gas, high prices drove innovation
in the American oil and gas industry leading to what’s commonly referred
to as the Shale Revolution. However, there comes a point when supply
meets demand.

“So what Trump will do, he will make available areas that were put off
limits by Biden. He will sweep away some of the rules that were put in
place, like methane emission rules and some things like that. But I
don't expect that to spur a lot of drilling. I expect it to be dictated
mainly by prices,” Rapier said.

Drill, baby, drill
Rapier said that oil and gas executives are telling him that they’re not expecting the new administration will affect their drilling plans a lot.
Over the last several months, oil production has flattened out,
suggesting that producers are easing back on the throttle.

“I could see production potentially declining next year. I didn't think
that was likely a year ago, but it's really going to depend on prices,” Rapier said, adding that if prices stay below $70 per barrel, as they’ve
done for much of the past few months, he expects investments in
increased production to diminish.

Alex Stevens, manager of policy and communications for the Institute of
Energy Research, told Just the News that market signals will ultimately
shape production under the new administration, but the administration
will make investments safer.

“I think the main point of ‘drill baby drill’ is to signal to American energy producers that they will have the freedom to invest in new
production so long as the market signals that it is needed. In this environment, markets will be better able to adapt to changes in supply
and demand because regulatory red tape will not be in the way,” Stevens
said.

One area that Trump will have a positive benefit, both Stevens and
Rapier said, with respect to liquified natural gas exports. Biden had
placed a moratorium on export permits to nations without free trade
agreements with the U.S., which includes European countries.

The official reasoning of the Biden-Harris administration was that a
full study of the overall impacts of LNG exports was needed to be done
to determine if increased exports are in the public interest. The
Department of Energy released the study in mid-December, with critics questioning its conclusions. Trump is expected to overturn the
moratorium upon taking office without regard to the DOE study.

“I think that'll have a significant long-term impact, because we do have
a lot of natural gas we can still produce. We have become the largest
LNG exporter in the world, and that was threatened by the pause in the
LNG exports,” Rapier said.

Mine, baby, mine
As with oil and gas, the Biden-Harris administration did no favors for
the mining industry, including blocking a road in Alaska that would have allowed access to potential mining developments and canceling leases for
a mining project in Minnesota.

There is a key difference between mining and oil production. The times
between exploration and production in oil and gas are measured in years,
but in mining, it’s measured in decades. While a “mine, baby, mine” administration will help, the impediments to domestic mining go far
beyond the machinations of the Biden-Harris administration.

David Hammond, a mineral economist with decades of experience as a
mining consultant, told Just the News that the benefits to mining of the
Trump administration will be marginal.

“I think there's a number of things that Trump can do, but the impact on
them is going to be in the near term, almost, you almost won't be able
to see it,” Hammond said.

If a mining project is far along in the application process, the Trump administration could speed things up to bring it online. It can take 10
years just to get the federal permits needed for a mining process. While
Trump can have an influence, permitting reform will require
Congressional action, and past attempts haven’t gone smoothly. Stevens,
with the Institute for Energy Research, said Congress will likely pursue “meaningful” permitting reform in 2025.

“By meaningful permitting reform, I mean changes to ESA [Endangered
Species Act], time clocks on environmental impact statements, and a wide
range of reforms that will go well beyond the permitting talks that were
being discussed towards the end of the year. There will likely be some
give and take there with the repeal of the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]
being the focal point for negotiations,” Stevens said.

Waiting decades
Even if those processes are expedited under Trump, or if Congress passes effective permitting reform to shorten that time, Hammond said
litigation can delay mining projects for many years.

Additionally, there are the technical difficulties in opening a mine. As
an example, he points to the Resolution Copper mine in Arizona, which
has been in the permitting process for over a decade. Even if Rio Tinto,
the owners of the mine, were handed permits and all litigation was
immediately dismissed, a near fantasy scenario, Hammond says it would be another decade before construction was complete and the mine producing.

“By the time we engineer it, and we develop the underground workings,
and we get the mill built, and we get the tailings put in — without any
more obstruction by the enviros — it still will be another 10 years
before we're going to produce a single pound of copper,” Hammond said.

There’s no guarantee in four years that a new administration will
continue Trump’s mining-friendly policies, so there is no certainty what regulatory environment Rio Tinto will face when it’s ready to begin production.

Likewise, there’s no guarantee what mineral prices will do. Lithium
prices, for example, have completely crumbled in the past couple of
years as demand for electric vehicles failed to keep up with federal
mandates. In October, a lithium mine in Nevada won final approval.
Production is still a few years away, but due to falling prices, the
project may no longer be economically viable.

Trump has promised to roll back EV mandates, and Congress may do away
with EV tax credits, further lowering lithium demand. Trump’s policies
may also lower demand for solar panels and wind turbines, which will
decrease demand for rare earth and other minerals.

Hammond said that one area Trump could have lasting positive benefits on
mining is in shortening the permitting time needed for exploration. If
it were quicker, there would be a lot more exploration done, which would
help the industry identify potentially economical mineral deposits.

Climate leadership
Frank Lasee, president of Truth in Energy and Climate and author of
“Climate and Energy Lies,” told Just the News that however his policies play out, Trump’s lasting impact will be the shift in the national
narrative on climate and energy.

During the Biden years, questioning if climate change is causing a
crisis justifying the rapid elimination of fossil fuels earned skeptics
the dreaded “climate denier” label. After Trump called climate change a hoax, Democrats were quick to slap the label on him. Voters, apparently, weren’t particularly bothered by the position.

“I think that one of the biggest things Trump's going to do is the
leadership effect of continuing to say, this is a climate crisis hoax.
There isn't a climate crisis. And he'll talk with the American people
about that,” Lasee said

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