Photo: Moment RF
The oil and gas industry in America is hoping President-elect Donald Trump will bring it back to life and be even more powerful than it was during his first term.
Trump has already promised to reverse a lot of Biden Administration moves in regards to American energy and environmentalism. It's almost certain we'll see repeals on electric vehicle mandates and new permits to export liquified natural gas. Also, who could forget one of Trump's biggest campaign promises in "drill baby drill."
Research Fellow and Economist at the Heritage Foundation EJ Antoni told Fox Business that Trump will have a lot of red tape to cut down to unleash the "liquid gold" beneath our feet.
"A lot of the infrastructure is already there, it's just not being used," said Antoni. "We are only using the most profitable wells today, but we still have an increasing number of wells that we are not using."
Oil production has been going up but well count hasn't and there's an increase of wells that aren't being used at all.
"If you can get rid of that excess taxation and regulation, you could increase production relatively quickly," Antoni said.
Former Trump Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said there's no reason the U.S. can't produce more than what it is currently.
"I think we can produce a lot more than we are today, the exact number is hard to know because we need to figure out how much reserves we have, but we do have more than we had 10 and 20 years ago," Brouillette said.
More important than how much we produce is how costly it is to produce oil in the U.S. The hope is too that with more energy production in the U.S., costs will fall dramatically as a result.
Antoni said the American people have a lot to look forward to with energy costs going down thanks to Trump's proposed plans and can be thankful that the Biden-Harris administration is heading out the door after four years of bad energy policy.