Trump’s Energy Errors
President Donald Trump clearly supports the oil and gas industry, but he made several false and misleading boasts about his impact on the energy sector.
- The president suggested that a change in federal policy was responsible for a newly operational natural gas export terminal, saying past leaders’ “anti-American energy” policies had led the company to plan an import terminal instead. In fact, the exporting project, and several others like it, were approved by the Obama administration.
- Trump falsely claimed that liquefied natural gas exports were “heading south” before he took office. They increased more than 500 percent in President Barack Obama’s final year in office, as the first major exporting project began operations.
- He said U.S. energy exports “brought down our trade deficit by $215 billion.” That’s wrong. Energy exports have been rising, but the U.S. still imports more than it exports, and the overall trade deficit in goods and services went up by nearly 13 percent in 2018.
Trump spoke in Hackberry, Louisiana, on May 14 at the opening of Sempra Energy’s Cameron LNG project, a liquefied natural gas exporting facility.
LNG Project Approved by Obama Administration
Cameron LNG liquefied natural gas exporting project in the Lower 48 states to begin operations since 2016. All were approved under the Obama administration, after the “” took hold, when technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling led to increased domestic production. These facilities cool the natural gas into a liquid form and ship it to markets in Asia and Europe.
