Trump's Trials - Oil companies expected a big business boom under Trump. Now they're worried

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Many oil and gas company executives, particularly the larger ones, initially celebrated Trump's return to the White House. But lately, that optimism for higher oil company profits appears to have faded amid growing fears of a recession. NPR's Kirk Siegler has the story.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and you're listening to Trump's terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. It's going to be a very aggressive first hundred days of the new Congress. An unpredictable, transformative next four years. The United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. Each episode we bring you NPR's coverage of President Trump acting on his own terms. And that means sometimes doing things that no American president has tried before. NPR is covering it all in stories

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Listen to the 1A Podcast from NPR and WAMU. I'm Michelle Martin. The Interior Department says it's fast-tracking approvals for oil, gas, coal, and mineral projects on federal land, cutting down environmental reviews from years to weeks. Oil and gas executives expected President Trump's return to the White House would make things easier, but optimism for higher profits has started to fade. As part of a series on how Trump's early policies are playing out across America, NPR's Kirk Sigler reports from northwestern New Mexico.

The San Juan Basin is this huge swath of barren brown desert that first boomed in the 1950s when the federal government opened it to speculators and oilmen seeing green dollar signs. Some 40,000 wells now pockmark the the rolling high desert hills of the four corners, many still reliably pumping up light, sweet crude and natural gas through the old iconic pump jacks, this one named Popin' Johnny. But this basin has struggled lately as the major international companies left to drill on private land in southern New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota. drill on private land in southern New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota. Today it's the smaller independents like Sean Dugan still hanging on. He's the young and cheerful third-generation owner of Dugan Production in Farmington.

Are you guys here until you're done? He sees potential for another boom out here. There's still a lot of natural gas left beneath us and the hope is all the new data centers being built down in Phoenix will need cheaper, gas-powered electricity. But then he smirks, watching men in grubby overalls move huge, long steel pipes. Your poly pipe, which is what these pipelines are made out of now, that all comes from the Asian markets. Duggan says the cost of doing business out here was already expensive, and President Trump's trade war is making it worse. — And so it's like now you're checking the tariff rate.

You wake up, check the tariff rate. — He used to spend 80 grand on a load of these pipes from Korea. Now he figures it could be up to 120,000. Dukin wants to plan for 10 years out, but now he doesn't know what's happening tomorrow. It just kneecaps you when all this uncertainty and volatility is in the air. I think the whole tariff thing is going to backfire on Trump. George Sharp is the investment manager for Marion Oil and Gas, one of the San Juan Basin's oldest operators. You know, Trump's drill baby drill and lower oil prices are not simpatico.

In other words, he says, if Trump tanks the economy and oil prices hover at or below the cost of production, you can remove all the regulatory barriers you want, but companies aren't going to drill new wells. Build baby build. You know, they want manufacturing to be built here in the U.S. Well, there's not a manufacturing center that exists here in the U.S. that doesn't have a supply chain that's worldwide. Trump lost New Mexico, but he did rack up big wins in rural counties like this.

Sharp and others here do hope the Build Baby Build push will make it easier to get a new gas pipeline built from here to Mexico. The mayor of Farmington told me the America First energy agenda has brought renewed optimism to his town, built to top one of the richest gas and coal fields in the U.S. On the day Trump issued four new executive orders to revive America's coal industry, I'm riding with local environmentalist Dave Fostek to the top of a hogback for what turns out to be a bit of an apocalyptic view. So here we are up on top.

Four Corners Power Plant about 11 o'clock and then San Juan Generating Station off to our left at 9 o'clock. The enormous San Juan coal plant currently being dismantled is a hulking gash of twisted metal and steel glaring in the desert sun. And that Four Corners plant on the Navajo Nation is supposed to be decommissioned in 2031, but Trump has promised to stop coal plants from closing. People here are tired of seeing Farmington in the headlines as a town that's depopulating. There's opportunities, but it's hard.

It's hard to find an area like this that has been so dependent on oil and gas trying to transition to something else. Farmington has tried to diversify by promoting tourism and outdoor recreation on all this public land around here. But those jobs don't pay nearly as much. With virtually no new drilling here for now, most of the oil field work is in servicing existing wells. Or there's work decommissioning them to prevent the leaking of methane. Yes, these guys, they're about to start laying down production pipe, start cleaning the hole and get ready to start popping cement probably tomorrow.

Alex Prieto is grateful for the job in a time when so much feels uncertain. He's able to stay local and not have to travel to oil patches out of state like in the past. I love it. Just keep my head busy and I provide for my family, which is the most important thing. We're happy, Prieto says, as long as we're working. But no one seems to be preparing for a lot of new hiring here at this point, despite promises of a new oil and gas boom on federal land. Kirk Ziegler, NPR News, Farmington, New Mexico. federal land. Kirk Ziegler, NPR News, Farmington, New Mexico. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the incoming Trump administration

on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detro. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.