Big Oil ‘concerned’ by Trump’s travel ban

Multinationals scramble to adjust

HOUSTON • Oil-services giant Halliburton Co. told employees to stay put. An oil trade group is concerned by the proposed border tax. Another global oil company is reconsidering whether to place a crude trader in Houston. And universities that train energy workers across the country estimated that hundreds of students may be affected.

Of all the energy sectors that may feel the pain of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including temporarily banning people from seven majority-Muslim countries and raising border tariffs, oil and natural gas companies — industries he vowed to help during his election campaign — stand to be hit the hardest. The American Petroleum Institute said this week it was “concerned” by Trump’s border tax adjustment.

“Oil and gas is going to have the most heartburn from this,” Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at University of Texas at Austin, said by phone. “Other parts of the energy sector, like the electricity sector, are more domestically situated with its workforce and its assets.”

Just last week, Trump said during a speech that he’d work to “unleash the full power of American energy.” On Monday, energy companies — from oil and gas explorers to electric utilities — withheld comment while working to assess the impact of his immigration order on their businesses.

A separate order that would impose a tariff on Mexican goods may hurt refineries that use imported crude, according to Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, representing the oil and gas industry.

“We’re continuing to do an analysis and we’ll be working with the leaders on the Hill once we figure out its broader implication,” Gerard said.

Meanwhile, Halliburton warned workers not to travel to the U.S. if they are from any of the countries named in Trump’s order, including Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.

“The company is notifying employees of these nationalities that travel to the U.S. is inadvisable during the travel restriction period,” said Lawrence Pope, Halliburton’s chief human resources officer.

Chevron Corp. said in a statement that it’s still reviewing the executive order, adding that it “values the contributions” of all employees, regardless of their countries of origin or religion.

Monday was “a reversal of the initial trade that was based on the idea that Trump would be a traditional Republican, and that his anti-immigration and trade restructuring promises were just to get elected,” said Bill O’Grady at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis, which oversees US$6.1 billion.

Energy companies may think twice about basing jobs in the U.S., said George Stein of New York-based recruiting firm Commodity Talent LLC. Stein said he knows of one “international oil company” that’s already reconsidering posting a new crude trader in Houston.

Another unintended consequence: The countries targeted by Trump’s ban may end up retaliating by refusing to work with U.S. oil and gas companies, according to Webber. Supervisors in Houston could be prevented from visiting employees and clients in nations affected by the executive order, he said.

Iraq’s parliament had already urged its government to bar U.S. citizens from entering the country in response to Trump’s entry ban. Halliburton and Exxon Mobil Corp. do business there. On Wednesday, however, Iraq reversed its decision, averting a disruption to the oil industry of OPEC’s second-biggest producer. “We won’t apply the same rules,” Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said. “Fighting terror is a strategic issue for us.”

Trump’s ban could have consequences for the next generation of U.S. energy leaders, Webber said. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston and Texas Tech University — all of which run programs that train energy professionals — have a total of almost 700 students, faculty and scholars from the countries listed in Trump’s ban.

MIT said Monday that two of its students are stranded abroad and barred from re-entering the U.S. University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston were among those that advised affected students to refrain from international travel.

“If the best students in the world aren’t joining the American workforce,” Webber said, “’then they will go somewhere else.”

Major U.S. energy trade groups had yet to take a stance on Trump’s immigration order on Monday.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers declined to comment, and Edison Electric Institute similarly didn’t have a statement.

Neal Kirby of the trade group Independent Petroleum Association of America, said it’s not taking a position and that the impact on the group’s members would be “a company-by-companyspecific” situation. Similarly, the American Petroleum Institute’s firm are handling that individually on a company-by-company basis, Gerard said.