Oil Titans Uneasy Over Tariffs and Crude Prices Meet With Trump

The chief executives of more than a dozen oil companies will deliver a message of gratitude — as well as caution — when they meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Industry leaders say they have plenty of reasons to give thanks. Trump is an unabashed champion of US oil and gas production who has vowed to unleash the industry’s potential. Two months into office, he’s already taken steps to begin unwinding policies that increased operational costs and reduced demand for fuel.

But for the at least 15 oil bosses set to visit Trump at the White House, there also are warning signs on that path to energy dominance. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has floated a $50-per-barrel target for crude that’s too low to sustain some US production. The president has spent days enthusiastically praising oil price declines that came after he pushed OPEC+ to boost output and the cartel obliged.

Meanwhile, the president’s threatened tariffs are stoking industry concerns about potential economic declines even as the levies raise costs for the materials oil companies use to refine gasoline and drill wells.

“I suspect operators are enthusiastic about new market opportunities” posed by Trump, said Kevin Book, managing director of the Washington consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. But they’re also likely “concerned about demand headwinds from a trade war. And, generally speaking, in the oil patch, higher prices go over better than lower ones.”

The meeting is set to be the first of its kind since Trump’s second inauguration and his creation of a new National Energy Dominance Council to shape policy. Participants are set to span the industry’s full spectrum, including integrated oil companies (Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Shell Plc, BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, Hess Corp.); independent producers (Diamondback Energy Inc., APA Corp’s Apache, Occidental Petroleum Corp., Continental Resources Inc.); refiners (Marathon Petroleum Corp. and Phillips 66); a pipeline operator (Enbridge Inc.) and an oil field service firm (Baker Hughes Co.).

The president and administration officials are likely to discuss the role energy plays in helping fuel American innovation, as the US seeks to win a global race to dominate the power-hungry artificial intelligence industry, a senior White House official said.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the head of Trump’s energy dominance council, and Wright, the energy secretary who is the panel’s vice chair, also are expected to attend.

Details on the meeting were shared by people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the gathering is private. The session is seen as a chance to open lines of communication. It’s also an opportunity to talk about Trump’s vision for unleashing American energy and how to achieve that, the people said.

Industry executives are expected to praise Trump’s early moves, including his decision to end a Biden-era permitting pause that halted new authorizations to export American natural gas overseas. Similarly, they’re set to express gratitude for Trump’s rhetoric on energy, which is helping sow confidence among investors and justify long-term spending plans.

“President Trump’s energy agenda has set our nation on a path toward energy dominance,” Bethany Williams, spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, said in an emailed statement.

API, which took the lead in arranging the session, already laid out parts of its blueprint for achieving Trump’s energy vision with detailed policy recommendations for 10 agencies last December.

A top industry priority is streamlining permitting and limiting judicial review of federal authorizations years after approvals have been issued — a shift that could provide more certainty for development. While some changes can be made administratively, they’re seen as more durable if passed by Congress and enshrined in law.

Some oil industry leaders also are warning that Trump’s promise to slash energy prices isn’t compatible with increasing domestic crude production. And investors have shown little patience for unrelenting spending on new drilling.

It’s not clear how sympathetic the president is to that dynamic. Last October, while he was still campaigning for the presidency, Trump boasted that energy prices will plummet because oil companies would aggressively ramp up drilling. “If they drill themselves out of business, I don’t give a damn,” Trump said at the time.

The president’s top economic advisers see lower energy prices as critical to offsetting any inflationary pressures from his use of tariffs to reshape global trade flows.

But Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, who is set to be in the meeting, told Bloomberg News last week that prices of around $80 per barrel are needed to unlock some production.

On Tuesday, West Texas Intermediate crude, the US benchmark, closed at $66.90, down from $75.89 Trump’s first full day in the White House this year.