A globally recognized oil and gas expert called Donald Trump’s energy promises “one of the dumbest statements that Donald Trump has ever made.”
That’s saying a lot.
Globally recognized oil and gas expert Matt Randolph, who is also known as “Mr. Global” on social media, is the vice president and principal partner of Oklahoma-based Sentinel Energy. That company describes itself as “an integrated, employee-owned and self-funded group of companies remediating and responsibly managing oil and gas brownfields.”
Randolph has a lot of videos setting the record straight about the oil and gas industry from his point of view. Yes, he profits when the industry is doing well, so that’s important to note.
Here’s why this matters: Donald Trump presented this as his “energy policy.” It is not an actual policy; it’s an empty promise that if delivered as he promised, would be disastrous. Randolph says Trump’s promise of slashing energy and electricity prices by half at least would mean the U.S. would be totally reliant on foreign oil because there would be no U.S. Oil and gas industry left, production and job losses would drop at the fastest rate in history, U.S. GDP would turn negative the first month, and we would enter a recession.
Watch here:
#trump #gasprices #hilarious #trending pic.twitter.com/y2KtH4yR7P
— Mr Global (@Matthewcanwrite) August 16, 2024
TRUMP: I’m announcing today that, under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half. At least.
RANDOLPH: He is going to cut energy prices by at least half, at least half within 12 months. What would that look like? So the current price of gas is 344, on a national average. So we’re talking about $1.72 a gallon on a national average gas. What would it take to get $1.72 a gallon gas on a national average?
I’ll put it to you this way. It never got there under his administration, even under Covid, the lowest it got on a national average was $1.93 in the month of April, 2020. You would need oil to be about $20 a barrel to cut the price of gas in half. You don’t just cut the price of oil in half, because some of the cost in a gallon of gas are fixed costs. So $20 a barrel oil.
What does that mean? That means you are totally reliant on foreign oil because there is no U.S. Oil and gas industry left after that, production would drop at the fastest rate in history. Job loss would drop at the fastest rate in history. GDP in the United States would turn negative the first month, and we would enter a recession.
But he said energy, energy and electricity. What would happen to electricity costs if oil went to $20 a barrel, electricity costs would skyrocket at the fastest rate in history. Yeah, this dude don’t know shit about energy, like he’d know.. I can’t believe how little he knows. Anyway, currently, natural gas prices are lower than they’ve been in over 30 years. The reason natural gas prices are so low is because of all of the associated natural gas that we are producing with the extra oil production. That means natural gas production in the United States would collapse with the oil production and natural gas prices would skyrocket because we can’t rely on OPEC for natural gas. No, we can’t rely on anybody for natural gas. We’re on our own. So if that production plummets, that price skyrockets. We saw that after Covid, when natural gas went to 10 bucks in MCF. That was because natural gas production had cratered because we lost a lot of oil production as well as natural gas production.
Oh, and by the way, the cost of electricity in the United States did not drop one single year under his (Trump’s) administration. It went up every single year. For people that know and understand energy, like I do, this may be one of the dumbest statements that Donald Trump has ever made.
Randolph also explains why Trump’s “historic” OPEC 2020 deal actually raised prices until 2022, when it ended:
#trump #truth #oil #gas #wow pic.twitter.com/2ZZTi1Bwd6
— Mr Global (@Matthewcanwrite) August 16, 2024
Trump makes bananas promises like this based on the not actually true sales point that he will make the U.S. energy independent. He’s speaking to the “Drill, baby, drill” people, after all. So he’s promising to cut prices in half and make the U.S. independent. And apparently enough of his base believe this, even though his ‘great’ Saudi-Russia oil in which OPEC agreed to cut production, which ended in April 2022, lead to high rate counts.
Over here in reality, the U.S. is already energy independent. The U.S. leads global oil production for the sixth year in a row, according to Reuters. And crude oil production in 2023 broke the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million from 2019. So actually, under President Biden, the U.S. set a record for production.
As Randolph explained in the second clip, our peak oil prices were in April 2022 and prices fell when Trump’s deal ended. As we’ve been explaining for years, the U.S. does not control global oil prices for oil. We control natural gas market, but we can’t drill, baby, drill our way into cheap oil prices. If that worked, then prices would be dirt cheap right now.
The U.S. is producing record amounts under Biden not just to be energy independent, but for energy security at a time of tremendous global instability. Donald Trump’s “plan,” such as it is, would do the opposite. Donald Trump’s plan would make us dependent on foreign oil, which is the opposite of what he tells people.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
