Big Oil Has Big Plans For This Trump Administration

Internal documents from AXPC, a powerful fossil fuel trade group, lay out its strategy for demolishing climate policy and boosting oil & gas production under Trump 2.0.

By Emily Atkin, FieldNotes

This past August, some of the country’s most powerful oil and gas executives gathered at a swanky Houston hotel to discuss what they would do if their well-financed efforts to secure Republican control of Washington succeeded.

Fieldnotes obtained internal documents revealing the details of that closed-door meeting, which were reported on by the Washington Post last month. But now that Republicans will indeed control not just the presidency, but both chambers of Congress, it’s worth revisiting the oil and gas industry’s strategy to dismantle climate policy and boost fossil fuel production over the next four years.

The strategy is laid out in the “2025 Policy Roadmap,” a plan drawn up by the American Exploration & Production Council, or AXPC. AXPC is a trade organization made up of ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy, ConocoPhillips, and more than two dozen other oil and gas corporations. Each of these companies pays the group a quarter-million dollars a year to lobby on their behalf.

Oil pump oil rig energy industrial machine for petroleum in the sunset background for design

Taken together, the ideas outlined in AXPC’s roadmap would obliterate some of the government’s most powerful levers for tackling the climate crisis and protecting public health. And given AXPC’s ties to the MAGA movement, there’s good reason to believe its member corporations will get most if not all of what they want from Trump and his congressional allies.

Here’s a closer look at what AXPC and its members have planned for Trump 2.0.

Earlier this month, EPA finalized a fee on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. The fee, mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act, is the first direct charge that the federal government has ever imposed on greenhouse gas emissions. Some oil and gas corporations will soon have to pay $900 for every metric ton of methane they release, and the rate will increase to $1,500 in years to come. This creates a financial penalty on industry if it doesn’t stop emitting methane—a powerful heat-trapping gas responsible for about 30% of global warming.

AXPC really wants to kill the methane fee. In a slide presented to the board in August, the fee, also known as the waste emissions charge, ranks among the fastest moving, highest priority issues.