Energy 202 – Trump administration has new buzzword for energy
IN THE Trump administration, “energy dominance” has replaced “energy independence” as the go-to phrase for describing the federal government’s broad energy goals - in President Donald Trump’s case, to promote as much oil, gas and coal development as possible.
For years, if there was anything Republicans and Democrats could agree on regarding energy policy (or at least the way they talked about energy policy), it was that the US needed to be “energy independent.”
That bipartisan byword was used to describe efforts to reduce US dependence on foreign fuel - mostly by encouraging domestic energy production whether it be extracting fossil fuel or developing alternative energy sources. Ever since the 1970s, when wars in the Middle East periodically choked oil supplies and spiked gasoline prices, the catchphrase has been politically potent in this country.
But more recently, the slogan has lost its cache among voters. Gas prices were relatively low throughout the presidential campaign, and the United States is now far less dependent on oil from abroad over the past decade as a result of the shale- gas fracking boom.
That’s given the Trump administration a rhetorical opening to trumpet the hat-ready slogan.
This week, for example, when announcing the new head of a offshore drilling safety office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the pick helps “set our path toward energy dominance.” In April, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told onlookers at the opening of a carbon- capture project in Texas that Trump “has made it very clear to me that he doesn’t just want America to be energy-independent; he wants America to be energy-dominant.”
Where does “energy dominance” come from? The Cabinet officials are taking cues from the president. Trump dropped the phrase in his first major speech on energy policy delivered last May in North Dakota, in the heart of US oil and gas country, and made it an underlined cornerstone of his energy policy as a presidential candidate.