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What the Oil and Gas Industry Expects from Trump

On rumors from fossil fuel insiders, the LA wind forecast, and Davos

01/15/2025

What the Oil and Gas Industry Expects from Trump

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms brought transportation chaos to Sydney and left 120,000 homes without power • Greece may resort to filling hotel pools with seawater instead of fresh water due to extreme drought • A clipper storm will bring some snow to the Great Lakes and parts of Appalachia today and tomorrow.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Strong winds continue to fan LA fires

Winds in fire-ravaged Los Angeles were weaker than expected yesterday, but are forecast to pick up again today as firefighters continue to battle ongoing blazes. The National Weather Service issued another “particularly dangerous situation” warning indicating extreme red flag fire weather in large parts of LA until 3 p.m. Wednesday. The Palisades fire is just 18% contained, and the Eaton fire is 35% contained. Some 88,000 people are under evacuation orders, and the death toll has reached 25. Conditions are expected to ease tomorrow, but another round of Santa Ana winds could emerge next week, the NWS said.

National Weather Service

2. Trump planning executive orders on energy

Lobbyists for the oil and gas industry widely believe President-elect Donald Trump will issue a suite of executive orders targeting energy policy shortly after his inauguration. According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump is expected to “instruct agencies to begin unwinding President Biden’s limits on drilling offshore and on federal land.” Other moves to watch for include:

Rolling back tailpipe emissions rules
Resuming approvals for natural gas export facilities
Transforming agencies including the EPA, and the departments of energy and the interior
Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
Creating a new national energy council
Declaring a national energy emergency in order to fast-track permits for new energy projects
And of course, a ban on offshore wind turbine activity, which Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reported yesterday

Trump’s team has apparently discussed his plans with energy industry insiders, but these are not set in stone. “Energy clearly was on the ballot, and we’re going to make the case that energy won,” Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told the Journal.

3. Trump DOE nominee Chris Wright to face Senate confirmation hearing

President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, Chris Wright, is scheduled for his Senate confirmation hearing today at 10 a.m. EST. He will face questions from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Democrats had asked the panel’s chairman, Republican Sen. Mike Lee, to postpone the hearing due to missing paperwork from the Office of Government Ethics that includes financial disclosures. Lee postponed the hearing for Trump’s pick for interior secretary, Doug Burgum, for a similar reason. Wright is currently the CEO for fracking powerhouse Liberty Energy. The Sierra Club called him a “climate denier who has profited off of polluting our communities and endangering our health and future.”

4. Extreme weather ranks 2nd on list of global risks for 2025

The World Economic Forum put out its annual report of global risks ahead of next week’s summit in Davos. Extreme weather events, which were at the top of the list last year, moved down a notch into the second position, below armed conflict. Twenty-three percent of the 900 or so expert respondents ranked state-based armed conflict as the number one risk facing the globe in 2025, whereas 14% chose extreme weather events:

WEF

Last year, 66% of respondents ranked extreme weather as the top risk, and 53% chose AI-generated misinformation. Looking ahead over the next 10 years, the climate crisis looms very large: Experts ranked extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems, and natural resource shortages as the top risks facing the globe through 2035. The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting runs from January 20 - 25. President-elect Trump is expected to give a virtual address on the 23rd.

5. Nobel laureates call for ‘moonshot’ solutions to global hunger

A group of more than 150 Nobel laureates composed an open letter calling on governments to support the development of “moonshot” innovations to avert a looming hunger crisis. The letter warns some 700 million people are already going hungry, and the problem will only worsen as the population grows. The global food shortage has many causes, but the letter cites climate change as a major challenge and calls for “planet-friendly” technologies to boost food production. “We know that agricultural research and innovation can be a powerful lever, not only for food and nutrition security, but also improved health, livelihoods, and economic development,” said Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food Prize Laureate and outgoing U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security. “We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today’s crisis will become tomorrow’s catastrophe.”

THE KICKER

Global EV sales were up by 25% last year compared to 2023, according to research group Rho Motion. In the U.S. and Canada, sales rose by 9%, compared to a 40% jump in China.

Yellow

Jessica Hullinger

Jessica Hullinger is a freelance writer and editor who likes to think deeply about climate science and sustainability. She previously served as Global Deputy Editor for The Week, and her writing has been featured in publications including Fast Company, Popular Science, and Fortune. Jessica is originally from Indiana but lives in London.

Hotspots

Another Solar Company Trying Gas-Powered Data Center on Federal Lands

And more of the week’s top news around project development.

Jael Holzman

09/25/2026

Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Ada County, Idaho – Trump’s push for more data centers on federal lands is causing a lot more ruckus and catching another solar company in the cross-fire.

Last week, D.C. news outlet The Washington Sun first reported that a subsidiary of solar developer Arevia Power submitted a right-of-way application for a data center project on federal lands in Idaho, a fact the Bureau of Land Management confirmed in a statement to me Thursday. The project is currently in a preliminary phase of permitting and a public notice can be expected this year, a Bureau of Land Management representative told me.
Until the initiation of any National Environmental Policy Act review, information on the data center is scarcely available on public websites. So here’s what BLM told me about it in a statement: the data center project will be 4 million square feet and include a 3,226-acre parcel of federal land. An additional 514 acres will be needed for a 10.6-mile “electrical load line corridor.” The data center complex will include a substation, stepdown electrical yards, a water connection, and a 450-megawatt on-site natural gas-fired power facility. The project is expected to use upwards of 600 megawatts though, which explains the potential load lines.
The Sun story also claimed the Arevia project will connect to a “sprawling utility-scale” solar project. BLM has previously said the data center is in some way “linked” to an Arevia solar farm proposed on federal lands north of Twin Falls, Idaho.
Arevia Power did not respond to a request for comment on the project nor the reported inclusion of gas generation along with solar, which I could not find discussed on their website. This is not the first time I’ve seen reports of this kind of activity from a solar developer. On August 3, I reported that solar developer Clearway canceled a proposal submitted to the Bureau of Land Management to transform a solar application into a data center and gas project – after we made the existence of the proposal public.
On Thursday I spoke with Heather Tied-Nelson, acting communications lead for the Bureau of Land Management Idaho field office, briefly over the phone about the project. “It’s all so very early in the process. We’re working with the company to try to finalize their plan of development and probably publish a notice of intent to begin the planning process later this fall or winter,” Tied-Nelson told me. Then I asked whether the data center was tied to Arevia’s solar efforts and if this was another solar farm-for-data center application swap kind of situation. She replied: “I can’t speak to that.”

2. Carbon County, Wyoming – Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: The Trump administration just delayed a large fossil-free power project after criticism from a powerful Republican senator. But this time, it’s hydropower.

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