Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Donald Trump signs a permit at the site of Double Eagle Energy’s oil rig in Midland, Texas, last month.
Donald Trump signs a permit at the site of Double Eagle Energy’s oil rig in Midland, Texas, last month. Photograph: Montinique Monroe/Getty Images
Donald Trump signs a permit at the site of Double Eagle Energy’s oil rig in Midland, Texas, last month. Photograph: Montinique Monroe/Getty Images

Big oil remembers 'friend' Trump with millions in campaign funds

This article is more than 3 years old
in Washington

Donations to support the president’s re-election have flooded in from a fossil fuel industry that has enjoyed three years of energy deregulation and tax cuts

In mid-June the oil pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren hosted a fundraising bash at his palatial Dallas, Texas, home that drew the presence of Donald Trump and raised $10m for the US president’s campaign coffers.

Warren’s fundraising gusher for Trump occurred after he and his wife had donated a hefty $1.7m since 2019 to Trump Victory, a fundraising vehicle for Trump’s re-election and the Republican National Committee, according to the non-partisan Open Secrets group.

All this campaign largesse comes after Warren’s company Energy Transfer notched a major win soon after Trump took office, winning regulatory approval to move ahead with the controversial and legally embattled Dakota Access pipeline.

The Dallas billionaire’s ties with Trump were boosted when Trump in 2017 tapped Rick Perry to be energy secretary; a former Texas governor, Perry sat on the board of an Energy Transfer subsidiary before his energy post, and afterwards in early 2020 joined another Energy Transfer board.

Warren’s fundraising skills, personal checks and access to top officials, underscore how fossil fuel billionaires and other energy moguls from Texas to New York to Oklahoma, have opened their wallets wide and raised cash to re-elect Trump, after three-plus years of enjoying Trump’s sweeping energy deregulation and tax cuts.

Since Trump took office his favorite Super Pac, America First Action, has raked in millions of fossil fuel dollars. The Super Pac has received $1m from the shale oil billionaire Harold Hamm and his company Continental Resources, and another $1m from the coal mogul Robert Murray, who runs the eponymous Murray Energy, according to Open Secrets.

The Super Pac has also pulled in $500,000 from the coal billionaire Joe Craft of Alliance Resource Partners, $750,000 from the Texas oilman Syed Javaid Anwar of Midland Energy, and $500,000 from John Catsimatidis, a top investor in United Refining Co, as Open Secrets and news reports show.

Moreover, Trump tried to reassure his fossil fuel friends of his support in early April when the pandemic was causing them economic pain. Trump huddled at the White House with a select group of industry moguls including Hamm, Warren and the Texas oilman Jeff Hildebrand to solicit ideas for new federal relief.

Afterwards, Trump pledged he would “make funds available to these very important companies”.

An oil drilling operation near New Town, North Dakota, on 1 July. Under Trump the Dakota Access pipeline received regulatory approval. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

Like Warren and Hamm, Hildebrand has given big bucks to help Trump. Hildebrand, who runs the Hilcorp Oil, and his wife have given $775,000 to the Trump campaign and allied committees since 2017, campaign records show.

Energy analysts see ample reasons why fossil fuel honchos have been staunch Trump donors.

“The fossil fuel industry and its leaders will continue to support Donald Trump because he will do anything he can to continue fossil fuel dominance of the American energy sector,” said David Bookbinder, the general counsel for the non-partisan Niskanen Center, which has advocated for more alternative fuels.

To be sure, were the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, to win the presidency it would be a sharp break with Trump’s pro-fossil fuels agenda. Biden has endorsed a $2tn green energy plan and has indicated he would roll back many of Trump’s regulatory breaks for fossil fuel companies.

Biden also has championed the Paris climate agreement of 2015 that aims to fight global warming by curbing fossil fuel emissions more aggressively. But Trump, who has called manmade climate change a “hoax”, denounced the accord as a “total disaster” for US competitiveness and withdrew the US from the agreement effective 4 November, the day after the election.

Biden has pledged that if he is elected, the US would rejoin.

Little wonder that Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee of Trump’s campaign and the RNC, has raked in $9.3m from fossil fuel donors in 2019-2020, while its counterpart Biden Victory has raised a meager $40,465 from fossil fuel donors in the same period, according to Open Secrets.

Still, Biden’s consistent lead in recent national polls coupled with Trump’s fears of losing any more ground to the challenger have kept him pressing fossil fuel allies for more funds, and reassuring them with new initiatives.

Donald Trump adjusts his jacket as he stands with Double Eagle Energy co-CEOs Cody Campbell, left, and John Sellers in Midland, Texas. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

On 29 July, Trump returned to Texas for more fundraisers in the fracking stronghold of Odessa which reportedly was expected to haul in $7m for Trump Victory.

Trump’s visit also showcased his oil industry bona fides by visiting and getting a photo op with two CEOs at a leading fracking company, Double Eagle Energy Oil Rig, in Midland where he enthused there were “a lot of big beautiful rights behind me”.

Trump’s latest Texas swing underscored its status as a must-win state that went heavily for Trump in 2016 but where some recent polls have shown him in a tight race with Biden.

Trump also let his Texas supporters talk policy in a more intimate setting: for $100,000 donors could join a roundtable policy discussion with Trump, and two top cabinet officials from energy and interior.

But perhaps to ensure that his fealty to fossil fuels can’t be doubted, Trump in mid-July announced major changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act to help speed up reviews for large pipeline and infrastructure projects.

Bill Miller, a major industry lobbyist and consultant in Austin, told the Associated Press that while many fossil fuel companies were hurt by the pandemic, parts of the industry had begun to recover. “It’s the kind of industry that remembers their friends through thick and thin, and Trump is their friend.”

Why Trump abandoning the climate fight puts the planet in even more danger – video explainer

Most viewed

Most viewed