Trump nominee Chris Wright to lay out top 3 goals as energy secretary
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Liberty Oilfield Services CEO Chris Wright at Liberty January 17, 2018. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Chris Wright, President-elect Trump's nominee to lead the Energy Department, will celebrate his 60th birthday Wednesday by introducing himself to senators as a "science geek, turned tech nerd, turned lifelong energy entrepreneur."
Why it matters: Increased energy production is central to Trump's overall economic strategy, and he'll need an energy secretary who can translate his vision of an oil and gas boom into a practical reality.
Wright, who has met with nearly every member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will make it clear he wants to collaborate with them on shared goals, according to his opening statement.
- Data, he says, will be his guiding light. But he won't be shy about what he sees as a faulty mindset. "Previous admins have viewed energy as a liability instead of the immense national asset that it is," he will say.
- "Federal policies today make it too easy to stop projects and very hard to start and complete projects."
- "This makes energy more expensive and less reliable."
Driving the news: The Trump donor and CEO of Liberty Energy, a fracking services company, will tell senators on the Energy and Natural Resource Committee that he'll focus on three immediate tasks if confirmed as energy secretary.
- He plans to "unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore energy dominance."
- He will call for the U.S. to "lead the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs."
- He wants to "build things in America again and remove barriers to progress."
Between the lines: Wright's confirmation hearing is unlikely to be the R-rated affair that Pete Hegseth's was yesterday. But Wright doesn't keep his energy evangelism to himself.
- The hearing is expected to engender plenty of passionate politics from both sides of the aisle.
- The L.A. fires continue to rage. Democrats are eager to draw attention to climate change, while also extracting guarantees about President Biden's clean energy tax credits.
Zoom out: The Denver native and longtime energy entrepreneur is an unapologetic advocate for the oil and gas industry, seizing any opportunity to discuss how increased production can improve human lives across the globe. His critics are ready to pounce.
- He has called oil and gas critics "nuts," insisting that "there's no dirty energy, there's no clean energy, there's no good stuff, there's no bad stuff. Everything has tradeoffs."
- At a Washington event before the election, Wright downplayed the importance of renewable energy sources but he touted the advantages of nuclear power, saying it should go from 4% of energy production to 10%.
Zoom in: The committee hearing is likely to reflect the same divided opinions that dominated the presidential campaign.
- Democrats are expected to press Wright on the severity of climate change – and humanity's role in causing it.
- Republicans will likely focus on energy security and the potential economic benefit (and jobs) that the industry creates.
Wright has acknowledged that climate change is real but he has referred to it as a "challenge" and "far from the world's greatest threat to human life."
- Those views will draw scrutiny from committee Democrats who view climate change as an existential threat.
