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A top executive at Diamondback Energy Inc. called on President Donald Trump’s administration to explain how the global trade war will help shale producers, a rare instance of public pushback from a US oil boss.
“This administration better have a plan @SecretaryWright,” Kaes Van’t Hof, president of Diamondback, said April 6 in a post on X. He added that US shale is “the only industry that actually built itself in the US, manufactures in the US, grew jobs in the US and improved the trade deficit (and by proxy GDP) in the US over the last decade … smart move.”
A spokesperson for the Energy Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Van’t Hof declined to comment beyond the X post.
His comments are among the first public statements from an executive in the shale patch since Trump announced additional tariffs on countries around the world. Industry bosses delivered scathing, anonymous, opinions on the administration’s energy agenda in last month’s Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey.
West Texas Intermediate, the US oil benchmark, has fallen more than 15% since Thursday to trade near $60 a barrel. That’s well below the $65 threshold that many companies need to profitably drill new wells in Texas and surrounding states, according to the Dallas Fed survey.
Diamondback, which last week closed on its $4.2 billion acquisition of closely held Double Eagle, is the biggest independent oil producer in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. Van’t Hof will take over as CEO at Diamondback’s annual meeting this year.
— With assistance from Ari Natter
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