Daily Caller
Shale Execs Complain Of ‘Broken’ Prospects In New Survey
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
In his remarks at this week’s U.N. Climate Week conference, President Donald Trump reminded the U.N. general assembly that “we have an expression, ‘drill, baby, drill.’ You know, that’s what we’re doing.”
But according to almost 80% of the dozens of shale oil executives who responded to the third quarter survey of oil and gas companies by the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve, that’s all about to come to an end thanks in large part to the President’s focus on cutting oil prices as a means of controlling inflation.
“The uncertainty from the administration’s policies has put a damper on all investment in the oilpatch,” one executive said. Another warns that “drilling is going to disappear.”
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One upstream company executive was especially angry at the administration, writing that the business “has been gutted by political hostility and economic ignorance. The previous administration vilified the industry, buried it in regulation and cheered the flight of capital under the environmental, social and governance banner…Now the current administration is finishing the job.”
The confidential format of the Dallas Fed’s quarterly surveys encourages the executives to speak bluntly in their responses, and the airing of such grievances is often the result. Most would no doubt temper their language in a meeting with the President or his senior officials, and other respondents did just that, noting that their industry and companies have been buffeted this year by an array of factors, both domestically and internationally.
“There are a variety of issues affecting our business,” one respondent points out. “First, excess in the global oil market is restraining oil prices near term. Second, there is continued uncertainty from OPEC+ unwinding production cuts. Third, trade and tariff changes and the resulting geopolitical tensions.”
He or she isn’t wrong. While shale drillers and producers have no doubt been frustrated by the constantly shifting tariff situation as the White House works out trade deals with dozens of countries, there are other major market factors well beyond any U.S. president’s control. The uncertainty around tariffs has without question increased industry costs, especially as they relate to tubular goods and other steel and aluminum products that are integral to their operations. But at the same time, there can be little doubt that the monthly machinations of the OPEC+ cartel have created a much larger impact on driving down the price of crude oil and thus, driving down company profits.
As for the geopolitical tensions the responder mentions above, Joe Biden’s four years in office were chock-full of such issues, many of which were left behind for Mr. Trump to deal with and resolve. The simple truth is that there has never been a time during its 166-year history that the U.S. oil and gas industry didn’t have to deal with such complications.
The oil business is an infamously cyclical one, as anyone who has been in it for more than a year understands. I spent more than 40 years in the industry and would need to use fingers on more than one hand to total up the number of boom-and-bust cycles that took place during that span.
The fact is that drilling levels in the United States have been on a steady decline since late 2018 in response to prevailing market factors far more than to the policies of the Biden or Trump administrations. As I pointed out shortly after last November’s election, the maturity of every major shale play meant that there would be no revival of “drill, baby, drill” in a second Trump presidency regardless of the administration’s policy direction. It just was never going to be in the cards.
The grievances and frustrations aired by these executives are entirely understandable: It’s a tough business that is impacted for better or worse by public policies. But pointing the finger of blame at Trump is a simplistic reaction to a highly complex set of circumstances.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) deployed a significant number of agents to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, many of whom later complained that the bureau was driven by political bias, according to an after-action report obtained by Just The News.
The 50-page document shows the FBI sent agents to the Capitol during the riot, including inside the building, without clear instructions, Just The News reported on Thursday. The report, located by FBI Director Kash Patel’s team, was recently turned over to the House Judiciary Committee’s special subcommittee investigating the incident, according to the outlet.
In anonymous assessments submitted after the Jan. 6 attack, rank-and-file employees accused the bureau, under former Directors James Comey and Chris Wray, of being influenced by politics.
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“We are supposed to call balls and strikes, regardless of political pressure, now we can’t even be trusted to be on the field,” another employee wrote.
The report disclosed for the first time that the FBI had a total of 274 agents deployed to the Capitol after violence erupted. Wray, who preceded Patel as FBI director, declined to tell Congress how many, if any, agents were on the ground at the time, according to Just The News.
Many of the complaints came from agents within the bureau’s Washington field office (WFO).
“WFO is a hopelessly broken office that’s more concerned about wearing masks and recruiting preferred racial/sexual groups than catching actual bad guys,” one employee wrote.
Agents also described being thrown into the chaos with no clear instructions, no protective gear and no way to identify themselves to other law enforcement officers.
“I wish you all would pay more attention to our safety than what type of masks we wear. If you are going to deploy us to a riot situation, then give us the proper damn safety equipment–helmet, face shield, protective clothing–and training!” one employee wrote.
Other agents blasted what they called a blatant double standard between Jan. 6 prosecutions and the less aggressive approach to the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.
“The actions on January 6, 2021 were absolutely despicable and unacceptable in a civilized society. What is even more unacceptable was the hypocrisy displayed by the FBI and its leadership in their attempt to go after those involved in the Capitol Riots, while we as agents, watched cities burn across America during the summer of 2020,” one agent said.
“The conspiracy to commit crimes at the Capitol on January 6th, were also committed by bad actors during the summer riots of 2020 leading up to the election on November 3, 2020. Agents stood by on the ground in Washington, D.C. and observed stores being looted, burned, and ripped of anything of value,” the agent wrote.
While the FBI declined the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment, Patel posted on X Friday that the bureau is “continuing to deliver on our promise of ultra transparency.”
“The only reason you have answers is because we are finding and producing materials exposing corruption at record levels. Thank you to the men and women @FBI once again delivering for the American people,” Patel wrote. “No one else is on Mission like we are.”
The after-action report also highlighted growing frustration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, which one agent accused of pushing politically motivated cases.
“Currently, the US Attorneys office is dictating what it is that gets investigated. This is a dangerous precedent because we can barely get them to prosecute investigations that clearly meet thresholds needed for Federal prosecutions,” one agent wrote. “However, their willingness to conduct a search warrant on someone’s life for a misdemeanor seems ridiculous. It is unreasonable for the FBI to conduct investigations involving misdemeanor violations at a federal level … it is not our role.”
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued over 1,500 “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to people who were involved in the Capitol riot. The action fulfilled a long-standing promise made by Trump during the 2024 campaign.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
President Donald Trump’s apparent change in tune towards Ukraine shouldn’t be taken solely at face value, and may actually serve another purpose to further pressure all parties to come to the table, foreign policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Trump issued a Truth Social post Tuesday saying that Ukraine was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” and that he would continue sending NATO weapons to use in Ukraine. While many in the mainstream media characterized his statement as a notable “pivot,” experts told the DCNF that Trump may be giving Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin one last chance to end the war on peaceful terms, after which Trump may stand strongly behind Ukraine or wash his hands of the conflict altogether.
“I think it’s a tactical shift, but I don’t think his strategic purpose has changed,” George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the DCNF. There are parties that insist that it must be a battlefield victory, and there are those in Russia that believe that it ought to be a battlefield victory. His answer to them is, ‘okay, you don’t want to compromise? Go ahead, pursue your battlefield victory,’ and that’s one that I don’t think any of these people have really grappled with the reality of what that really means for them.”
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“If you read carefully, he talks about NATO as if it’s some separate entity to the United States,” Beebe told the DCNF. “I think the Europeans could not have failed to pick that up. And that by itself is, from Europe’s point of view, very concerning. And Trump basically said, ‘Okay, Europe, go ahead. Go to it. You defeat this paper tiger of Russia.’ But don’t expect … the United States to come running to defend you when the Russians shoot back at you.”
The White House has claimed that Trump’s statements towards Ukraine are part of a larger negotiating tactic. Trump has continued to pressure nations buying Russian oil to change their petroleum supply, most recently urging Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during their Oval Office meeting Thursday.
Wilson Beaver, senior policy advisor for defense budgeting and NATO policy at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF that his insistence on pursuing these trade negotiations surrounding the Ukraine war is evidence that Trump is nowhere near done with attempting to broker peace.
“One thing I would point to that shows just how committed he is: the tariffs put on India,” Beaver told the DCNF. “India has been making a lot of money buying oil from the Russians, and we’ve nicely asked them to stop for the past three years, and they haven’t. President Trump was frustrated with that, and he acted to try to get the Indians to stop funding Russia’s war in Ukraine, and this has had some follow-on negative effects for the U.S.-India relationship.”
When asked a question Tuesday on whether or not the president still trusted Putin to come to the peace table, Trump told reporters to wait “a month from now.” Trump also said that he would back NATO allies if Russia decided to expand its war to the rest of Europe.
This month, Russia has violated violated the airspace of Poland and Estonia multiple times, prompting condemnation from Europe and increased readiness among NATO nations for any potential escalation with Russia. Whatever Trump’s tactics are, Beaver believes his course remains steady despite perceived rhetorical changes.
“He’s very committed to a peace deal, a cease fire for Ukraine,” Beaver told the DCNF. “I think it was always in the cards that different tactics might have to be used to reach that end state, but the goal is the same.”
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