elected president Donald Trump said on Saturday that oil and gas industry executive Chris Wright, a staunch advocate of fossil fuel use, would be his choice to lead the Energy Department.
Wright is the founder and CEO of Denver-based oilfield services firm Liberty Energy. He is expected to support Trump’s plan to maximize oil and gas production and seek ways to increase electricity generation, whose demand is rising for the first time in decades.
He will also share Trump’s stance against global cooperation on climate change. Wright called climate change activists are sounding the alarm and comparing Democrats’ efforts to fight global warming to Soviet-style communism.
“There is no climate crisis and we are not in the middle of an energy transition,” Wright said in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile last year.
Wright, who has no political experience, has written extensively about the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty.
He stands out among oil and gas executives for his freewheeling style and describes himself as a technologist.
Wright made a splash in the media in 2019 when he drank fracking fluid on camera to demonstrate that it wasn’t dangerous.
U.S. oil production has reached the highest level of any country under Biden, and it’s unclear how much Wright and the incoming administration can increase that.
Most drilling decisions are made by private companies operating on land not owned by the federal government.
The Department of Energy manages U.S. energy diplomacy, manages the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Trump wants to increase, and administers grant and loan programs to advance energy technologies, such as the Office of Loan Programs.
The secretary also oversees the US’s aging nuclear weapons complex, nuclear waste disposal and 17 national laboratories.
If confirmed by the Senate, Wright would replace Jennifer Granholm, who has championed electric vehicles, renewable energy sources such as geothermal energy, and carbon-free wind, solar and nuclear power.
Wright is also likely to be involved in allowing transmission of electricity, an energy source that is popular with both Republicans and Democrats but is expensive and difficult to permit, and the expansion of nuclear power.
Demand for electricity in the US is increasing for the first time in two decades amid the rise of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and cryptocurrencies.