Trump Taps Fracking Executive and “TV-ready Evangelist for Fossil Fuels” for Energy Secretary
Chris Wright, Chief Executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking company based in Denver, has been outspoken in challenging climate change pseudoscience and championing sound energy policy.
President/President-elect Donald Trump has tapped the head of an innovative fracking firm to serve as the next Department of Energy Secretary.
Chris Wright is the Chief Executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking company based in Denver. Wright’s appointment is on-brand for Trump’s new template for candidates: Wright is innovative, embraces new approaches to energy development, and is not connected to the Deep State.
More importantly, for Americans who appreciate accessible, reliable, and inexpensive energy, Wright does not believe the “climate crisis” hysteria.
The ire from progressives just drips from The New York Times announcement of this pick. The digs at his “lack of government experience” are completely hilarious.
Mr. Wright, who calls himself “a tech nerd turned entrepreneur,” is a media-friendly evangelist for fossil fuels who promotes a feel-good message that oil and gas can lift people out of poverty, while disparaging climate science.
In a video posted on LinkedIn last year, Mr. Wright declared, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
Mr. Wright, who has no government experience, caught the attention of Mr. Trump in part through his appearances on Fox News. He also appears frequently on podcasts and social media videos, often using language and imagery associated with progressive causes to link oil and gas with issues like the fight for women’s equality.
Mr. Trump announced Mr. Wright’s appointment in a statement and praised him as a “leading technologist and entrepreneur in energy.” He said in addition to leading the Energy Department, Mr. Wright would also be a member of the newly formed council of national energy.
As I said, completely-on-brand for Trump 2.0.
Wright founded the company in 2011. Since he has been at the Helm, Liberty Energy has grown into into one of the largest fracking companies in the United States.
Under his leadership, Liberty Energy reached a significant milestone in September 2021 by achieving 24 hours of continuous 24-hours of continuous pumping time with zero non-productive time for an oil company in the Permian Basin (a region that should be now familiar to Legal Insurrection Readers). It is currently the fourth largest oilfield service company in North America and its annual revenues were $41 billion in 2022.
What were the qualifications of Biden’s Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm? She was the Governor of Michigan and endeavored to foist sustainability priorities on the automotive companies. And let’s not forget how she ran the Department: Declaring war on our appliances and using her privilege to jump to the head of a charging station line.
Wright isn’t afraid of challenging climate virtue signalling, either. In 2021, Liberty Energy launched a campaign praising high end sports apparel company, The North Face, for using petroleum products in their clothing while criticizing the stance on sustainability. The energy firm commissioned billboards and videos highlighting The North Face’s reliance on fossil fuels for their products.
After North Face refused to put an oil and gas company's logo on a jacket, CEO of Liberty Energy Chris Wright decided to thank the clothing manufacturer for using so much oil and gas in their products.
READ: https://t.co/juMFmx7xqZ pic.twitter.com/IrURJfB9gN
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 5, 2021
The billboards were incredible.
Love how our new Energy Secretary handled the virtue-signalling climate cultists doing the marketing for a high-end apparel firm. pic.twitter.com/h9raUoWcbt
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) November 17, 2024
I have longed for representatives of the fossil fuel industry to fight the underhanded tactics used by climate-crisis promoters. In a LinkedIn video, Wright shows he will be a champion of sane energy policy.
“There is no climate crisis….and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either.
“Humans and all complex life on Earth is simply impossible without carbon dioxide. Hence the term “carbon pollution is outrageous.
“Carbon dioxide does, indeed, absorb infrared radiation, contributing to warming. But calling carbon dioxide “pollution is like calling out water and oxygen, the other two irreplaceable molecules for life on Earth.
“There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy. All energy sources have impacts on the world, both positive and negative.”
Energy enables all human activity and is too important to cheapen the dialog using these 5 deceptive, alarmist terms….climate crisis, energy transition, carbon pollution, clean energy, and dirty energy.
I wish Wright all good success, as he will be undoing the destruction wrought under both Obama and Biden.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Wow, Trump’s Cabinet picks just keep getting better and better!
The Democrats(and their trained seals in Big Media) consider any Trump nominee who hasn’t had his or her snout in the government trough for the last twenty years to be “inexperienced”, and thus “unqualified”.
Funny that nobody has ever before called cabinet and other appointees “inexperienced” for not being subject-matter experts or for having nothing but work experience in government jobs. Government experience has always been the sine qua non that determines qualification for a government job.
“Lack of government experience” really means: “Lack of beltway corruption and grift”
Keep in mind that Trump had no government experience
Trump picks another winner. Fantastic. Ah the memories. In the early 1990s I accidentally had an office where I was surrounded by engineers and physicists working on DOE’s oil shale project. Now get this. Dig up large chunks of oil shale rock, rubbleize, cook in a giant retort to extract the trace amounts of oil. Each step is extremely energy intensive, and creates an environmental mess. We would have wrecked the Southwestern US. Needless to say this crazy idea went nowhere. Later private industry developed in-situ hydraulic fracturing. Bingo. The US became a major petroleum supplier to the world, and the whole notion of “peak oil” went away.
“Fracking” has enemies. The most amusing one: The Union of Reform Rabbis. I read their position paper, and thought: “you guys are Rabbis not petroleum engineers.” What a bunch of clowns.
I hope Chris Wright can at least reform the DOE, and perhaps do away with most of it. I hope he will fund serious physics-based research on global warming, one of the great hypes of all time. Everyone should read Steve Koonin’s book “Unsettled.” One of the best physics-based treatments of so-called “climate change.”
Trumps picks keep on getting better.
They’re not even rabbis.
Some years ago an earnest young thing knocked on my door and asked me to sign a petition against fracking. He was obviously prepared for a no, and armed with arguments to overcome people’s objections. He was prepared for me to say I didn’t want to get involved, I didn’t want to be on a list, I didn’t know enough about the issue, etc.
But when I told him I wouldn’t sign because I’m for fracking he was completely stunned. Flabbergasted. It was as if I’d told him I was from Mars. It had never occurred to him that anybody could be for fracking.
We need to start building lots of COAL plants. Coal is the easiest, most secure, cheapest electricity generator around. Lots and lots of coal plants.
Conservatives have been scared off from even talking about coal for the past 20 years. It’s crazy. We need coal and we have coal – a thousand years worth of it.
I agree more coal is desirable. Cheap and with the current technology, pretty clean.
But no one will take the risk. Before construction is finished, there would likely be a liberal POTUS and it would be halted. It takes many years to plan, site, desig and build while jumping thru all the regulatory hoops. Unfortunately, the coal ship has sailed. But nuke….
Also, with fracking, gas for peak load power.
Reliable energy is the key to reliable growth and prosperity. Oil, nuclear and coal are the quickest ways to move the needle. And please dismantle the vast majority of wind turbines. They are a blight on the landscape and harmful to birds, and marine life.
If those enviro clowns wanted to do something useful like make the argument that old coal power plants should be replaced by the new generation of nuclear plants I’d listen as that would be a good discussion.
Let’s look at this from another perspective, shall we?
Islamic terrorism is every bit the existential threat to the west that it was on 9/11/01. It’s just that we have been numbed to its specter.
If you need to be reminded of this I point you to a little problem the Israeli have been dealing with in a particularly vicious portal to hades that begins with the letter G.
That terror runs on money, money that Muslims have for no other reason than there’s oil under their deserts.
As a matter of national security, we should build out our petroleum industry and infrastructure both vertically and horizontally to not only be completely self-reliant on all products derived from petroleum, but also to drive the price of petroleum down to the point where radical Islam has no money to terrorize us.
Ditto to blunt any threat from China and Russia as well.
Oil being transported by pipeline and rail in interstate commerce does not need to transit the Strait of Hormuz or any other Islamic choke point.
In the immortal words of a lady from the Great White North, “Drill, baby! Drill!”
We already have the proof in our pocket. On day one, Biden killed Keystone, then began selling off our strategic reserve, then did everything he could to hobble our petroleum industry.
Then he found himself short of petroleum. Had to crawl, hat in hand, asking some Saudi shiekh to give him a special deal. The shiekh told him to f off. Gee, who could have predicted that?
I believe you have nailed it — that is, the reason why the Left is against energy independence: because the enemies of all that is good would lose a major funding source. We know they don’t care about the environment, or the human lives that live in it. It’s all about the Benjamins. And the destruction of all that is not communist. #unhumans
I do not fully understand the complexity of the markets, but I believe fuel margins are higher when price per gallon is higher.
I sold my oil and gas stock and put that into the broader index funds.
Democrats — all REEEEE because Trump is putting a fracking evangelist in charge of our energy?
F you, dudes. You put a tranny in charge of our health and a torturer in charge of our justice.