[Salon] Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/01/trump-plans-to-install-a-fracking-ceo-to-head-the-energy-department-and-declare-a-national-emergency-on-energy-to-gain-vast-powers/

Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 20, 2025 ~

Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, celebrated his 60th birthday on January 15 by providing ludicrous answers during his Senate confirmation hearing. The periodic screams and outbursts from activists in the hearing room punctuated the Orwellian proceedings.

At one point a young woman leapt to her feet and screamed out: “I’m 18 years old and I want a future!” Screams of “LA is burning” erupted periodically. Other activists held up bright yellow signs with bold black lettering that read: “Big oil profits, LA burns.” All disruptors were quickly escorted from the hearing room by Capitol Police.

The young activists had good cause to be outraged. As their fellow citizens in Los Angeles return to the smoldering ruins of thousands of homes destroyed by 100 mile per hour winds and dry brush fueling raging wildfires – during a period that should be the rainy season in L.A. – millions of other Americans are experiencing record-breaking cold following the hottest year in recorded history in the U.S. in 2024.

Trump’s answer to catastrophic climate change from fossil fuel emissions is to put his big donors from the fossil fuels industry in charge of the U.S. energy agenda. Even more alarming, according to a Bloomberg report this morning, Trump plans to declare a national emergency on energy, unlocking vast powers for himself such as “policy shifts that would enable new oil and gas development on federal lands, while directing a rollback of Biden-era climate regulations….”

Wright would appear to be an ideal nominee for the Trump administration. He smiled his way through outrageous answers – under oath, no less – during his confirmation hearing.

Before becoming Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright was the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy Inc., one of the largest fracking services companies in the United States. Wright is also a climate change denier, posting a video on LinkedIn last year where he states: “There is no climate crisis. What about extreme weather you ask? We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods….”

Despite Wright’s financial disclosure form showing that he owns 41 separate investments in energy companies, including $65 million (as of last Friday’s closing price) in Liberty Energy Inc., when asked during his confirmation hearing if he was “aware of any personal holdings, investments or interests that could constitute a conflict of interest or create the appearance of such a conflict should you be confirmed and assume the office to which you’ve been nominated by the President,” Wright gave the mind-numbing answer: “I am not.”

At the end of this article is a list of the energy-related assets that Wright would be required to divest if he is confirmed as Energy Secretary, according to his Ethics Agreement.

However, nothing prevents Wright from returning to his post at Liberty Energy after he leaves public office. That gives him a built-in incentive to maneuver things in its favor during his time in office.

Wright states on his financial disclosure form that he will continue to participate in Liberty Energy’s defined contribution plan, although the company will not make contributions on his behalf should he become Energy Secretary. Staying in this plan when he could roll it over to his own IRA sounds like Wright does plan to return to Liberty Energy.

In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on April 10, 2024, in which Wright criticized an SEC rule to force publicly-traded companies to disclose climate change information, Wright described Liberty Energy as follows:

“Liberty was founded in 2011 with a relentless focus on developing and delivering next-generation technology for the sustainable development of unconventional energy resources. Our business revolves around partnering with the leading oil and gas producers in the United States and Canada to unlock their vast underground shale oil and natural gas reserves through hydraulic fracturing [another name for fracking]. Liberty began as a pure-play provider of hydraulic fracturing operations. We have grown into an integrated supplier of all the supporting services that are required to execute the frac operations…Liberty employs over 5,000 people and fracs roughly 20 percent of the onshore wells drilled in the United States and Canada. We are proud to say that about 10 percent of total primary energy production in the United States comes from wells frac’d by Liberty.”

Because Wright’s biggest customers at Liberty Energy are Big Oil companies, and there is the possibility he will return to Liberty Energy, Wright also has a built-in conflict of interest to favor those companies in his decision-making as Secretary of the Energy Department.

Sierra Club Director of Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy, Mahyar Sorour, released the following statement on Wright’s nomination:

“Chris Wright is the personification of ‘conflict of interest.’ He’s spent decades getting rich from polluting, dangerous fracking for methane gas and has denied the impacts to our health and the climate along the way. Wright made it clear that, if confirmed, he’d hinder clean energy investment and promote fossil fuels like LNG exports, further enriching himself and his fellow oil and gas CEOs while we continue to pay the price with more pollution and higher energy costs. As Americans from coast to coast are living with the catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, the last thing we need is a climate-denying fossil fuel executive at the helm of our nation’s energy policy.”