Trump Rakes in Millions from Oil Industry, Outpaces Biden in Campaign Funds

• Bloomberg reported this week that the Trump campaign had raised a total of $76 million last month, which compared to a much lower $51 million for Biden.
• The oil and gas industry has contributed millions to the Trump campaign in 2024.
• While Trump was a notoriously unpredictable president as a whole, his support for oil and gas was, in fact, quite consistent.

The oil industry is contributing millions to the Trump presidential campaign, helping the Republican candidate top his rival Joe Biden's campaign war chest. And the Biden admin did a lot of this to itself.

Bloomberg reported this week that the Trump campaign had raised a total of $76 million last month, which compared to a much lower $51 million for Biden. Per the New York Times, the Trump campaign has raised $7.3 million from the oil industry since the start of the year. And they are organizing events to help raise even more money ahead of the November elections.

A lot of oil tycoons have been supporters of the Republican party. It is a sort of a tradition. But now, this support has become more marked in light of the Biden administration's energy policies—especially some of them.

According to the New York Times, whose authors spoke to industry sources, the oil and gas industry took the pause on new LNG terminal approvals rather hard. It appears to have taken it even harder than it took the IRA, the restrictions on federal land drilling, and offshore lease curbs. So it is getting behind Trump who has made it clear repeatedly that he is a big fan of hydrocarbons.

The president of the American Energy Alliance explained to the NYT that the LNG permit pause was "a wake-up call" for the industry, spurring it into action. "He could be potentially icing billions of dollars in long-term L.N.G. contracts. That's real. That's tangible," Thomas Pyle said.

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Bloomberg, meanwhile, reports that a group of oil executives, including Continental's Harold Hamm, Occidental's Vicki Hollub, and Kelcy Warren, the chairman of Energy Transfer, were organizing a fundraising luncheon this week, eyeing a sum of about $26 million for the Trump campaign.

The Bloomberg authors argue that Trump was inconsistent in his energy policies during is previous term as president. The argument implies oil executives would better think twice before pledging their support for him and giving his campaign money. The argument noted Trump's asking OPEC for more production and ending some policies that the oil industry did not want to end.

Yet, while Trump was a notoriously unpredictable president as a whole, his support for oil and gas was, in fact, quite consistent. That notably includes the first round of pandemic lockdowns when he managed to broker a production cut deal with OPEC+ to avoid a further decline in oil prices that were already decimated by the slump in demand.

Biden, conversely, has been consistently seeking to hurt the U.S. oil and gas industry—and he also asked OPEC for more production during the 2022 price rally. He did approve the Willow project, which is arguably one of the worst decisions he could make with a view to his main voter base, but he also signed that "pause" in new LNG terminal approvals.

His administration also tried to curb offshore leasing and decimated the amount of offshore acreage to be made available to the industry over the next five years. It also pledged billions in financial support to EVs, wind, and solar—direct though not really comparable rivals to oil and gas.

Many media authors, when faced with the Biden administration's energy policies record note that U.S. oil and gas production surged to new highs during the Biden administration. This is correct—only growth in production was slower than it was under Trump, and the argument could made that the industry expanded its output, not thanks to but despite, Biden administration policies over the past four years.

It is natural for the oil industry to be funding the candidate that, which unpredictable as a whole, has very predictably signaled he will be in the corner of oil and gas in the transition match. It was also to be expected—Biden signed a pledge to not accept any donations above $200 from any oil executive.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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