NEW YORK: The co-chief executive officer of pipeline company Energy Transfer LP welcomed the election of Donald Trump as US president, saying his administration will bring “a breath of fresh air” for the oil and gas industry.
“We’re not arguing that we don’t need to be regulated,” Mackie McCrea said on the company’s quarterly earnings call.
“But what we’re asking for is reasonable, not onerous regulation that can be done in a matter of a few years instead of years and hundreds, if not billions, of dollars of getting projects in-line.”
Trump has promised to support drilling for oil and gas in contrast to the Biden administration, which curbed crude production in Alaska and the sale of offshore oil and gas leases.
Energy Transfer’s billionaire executive chairman and founder Kelcy Warren, who didn’t speak on Wednesday’s call, was a significant financial backer of Trump’s election campaign.
McCrea’s comments on the election are some of the first to made in public by a senior energy industry figure since Trump’s resounding victory. McCrea addressed the election at the end of the call.
“I was hoping somebody would ask a question about” it, he said, before going on to criticise the Biden administration over immigration. “Look at all the drugs and the gangs and everything and they’re doing it for one reason: for the political power,” he said. “And just how insane and how sick is it that one of our parties is so enraged for political power that it is willing to create safety issues for our country?” — Bloomberg
