Oil Billionaire Advisor Harold Hamm Calls For Tariffs On Oil Imports; Congressional Members Introduce Oil Bailout Legislation

President Trump has made it clear to the American public that bailing out big oil is one of his administration’s top priorities even if that means driving up gas prices for American families. Over the weekend, Trump signaled that he is considering very substantial tariffs on oil imports, which would drive up prices at the pump for American consumers. Several Congressional members have called for similar measures, including introducing legislation yesterday that would provide $3 billion in tax dollars to allow Strategic Petroleum Reserve purchases.

Trump’s billionaire oil whisperer and mega-campaign donor Harold Hamm, chairman of the oil and gas fracking corporation Continental Resources, has been one of the most outspoken advocates, telling the conservative Washington Examiner blog that tariffs on Russian and Saudi Arabian oil is the president’s “biggest weapon.”

“Billionaire big oil CEOs are more important to President Trump and some members of Congress than American families and workers,” said Jayson O’Neill, Director of Western Values Project. “Trump’s energy dominance policy – his justification for decimating America’s public environmental protections – has completely failed and Americans are going to be paying for it at the pump.”

While no production cut has been agreed to by either Saudi Arabia or Russia, a virtual meeting of key oil-producing countries is scheduled for Thursday. Trump tweeted last week that he had made a push for production cuts with his ‘friend’ MBS, the Saudi Crown Prince. 

Production cuts would primarily benefit oil and gas corporations and push gas prices up at the pump. Trump quickly followed up that tweet claiming production cuts could be as high as 15 million barrels and that they would be ‘Good (GREAT) news for everyone!’ 

Despite Trump’s best efforts to bail out his big oil pals, unilaterally lowering royalty rates and colluding with domestic oil producers to limit production could run afoul of the law, leaving the Administration with few options. 

Trump’s Department of Energy is even looking to lease space in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) after failing to secure funding in the CARES Act. With U.S. oil production hovering around 13 million barrels per day, producers would max out SPR storage in short order, making the idea nothing more than a desperate attempt to alleviate the oil glut caused by Trump’s failed ‘energy dominance’ policy. 

The President and his administration have deep ties to the Saudi Royal Family but those ties haven’t been enough to move their production needle downward. Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s former oil lobby firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, still represented Saudi Arabia at the end of last year according to lobbying disclosure information reported on by the Huffington Post.

Learn more about the special interests fueling the Trump Administration at Accountable.US and their ongoing efforts to carve out more big oil and coal bailouts at WesternValuesProject.org, a Montana-based Accountable.US project focused on public lands conservation.