(Bloomberg) — Oil executives have emerged as an increasingly important source of funding for Donald Trump, as industry titans open their wallets to bolster the Republican nominee’s campaign for a second term in the White House.
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The billionaires backing Trump include Kelcy Warren, chief executive officer of pipeline operator Energy Transfer LP; Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources Inc.; and Jeff Hildebrand, CEO of Hilcorp Energy Co.
Trump sought more support last week with fundraisers in Midland, Texas, the heart of the prolific Permian Basin, and Houston, the self-styled “energy capital of the world.” The latest swing builds on May events with donors in Dallas and Houston and a closed-door energy roundtable with executives at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Oil executives and employees have grown in significance for Trump as his fundraising base has narrowed. The industry is now his fourth-biggest source of cash, up six places from the 2020 election cycle, according to campaign data analyzed by OpenSecrets.
The dynamic underscores the tightening bond between the oil industry, the GOP and its standard-bearer Trump. Although energy bosses have long looked to Republican allies in Washington to advance policy priorities, that focus has intensified with the decline of oil-patch Democrats in the House and Senate.
Oil chiefs have become “almost a bottomless well of cash” for Trump, said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the watchdog group Public Citizen. “The oil companies are flush — and they’ve got a very mature lobbying and influence pipeline into DC.”
Trump is promising to make it easier to “drill, baby, drill” and to repeal Biden-era pollution curbs on autos and power plants. He’s also promised to immediately end President Joe Biden’s pause on new natural gas-export licenses.
“Kamala Harris is controlled by environmental extremists who are trying to implement the most radical energy agenda in history and force Americans to purchase electric vehicles they can’t afford,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign. “President Trump is supported by people who share his vision of American energy dominance to protect our national security and bring down the cost of living for all Americans.”
Earlier in the campaign, oil luminaries such as Hamm and Hildebrand were cool to Trump’s bid for another term. A skeptical Hamm contributed to GOP rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, while Hildebrand and his wife Melinda together cut checks to at least five other Republican presidential candidates.
But as the Republican field narrowed, donors coalesced behind Trump. They included Parsley Energy Founder Bryan Sheffield, who sent $844,600 to the Trump 47 political action committee in May.
Trump is “pro-energy” and “pro-business,” Sheffield said in an interview. “But I don’t think he’s ever put us at the top of the list.”
Even so, Sheffield added, Trump is far better for the oil industry than Vice President Harris.
Trump’s industry appeals have drawn notice on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have zeroed in an April meeting with executives in Florida. During the session, he scoffed at wind power, said he’d undo some environmental regulations and asked the group to raise $1 billion, a massive sum for any group of donors to contribute, according to people familiar with the exchange.
Oil and natural gas interests have given just a small percentage of that monumental ask, giving just $22.4 million so far to Trump’s campaign, the Republican party and an allied super PAC, according to OpenSecrets, with most of the money coming from a small number of donors writing hefty checks. Just 6% of the total was raised by the campaign, which can accept donations of up to $3,300 per election from an individual, while 57% went to super PACs, which can accept donations in unlimited amounts.
Where Harris is expected to build on Biden-era policies encouraging a shift away from fossil fuels, Trump has been a relentless ally for them.
That was never more apparent than in spring 2020, when an oil-price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, coupled with a pandemic-driven crash in energy demand, triggered the worst crude-market collapse in history. After years of prodding OPEC to pump more crude, Trump pivoted to leading a once unthinkable quest to raise fuel prices, encouraging the world’s top producers to slash output.
Industry leaders gathered at the White House in April 2020 to lay out their concerns.
Hamm, who’d served as an unofficial energy adviser to Trump, praised the president for keeping up his “friendship” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “I know those haven’t been easy sometimes,” Hamm told Trump, “but at this time it is particularly needed.”
Oil titans ringed the table — including Hamm, Warren and Hildebrand.
Many of them had seen their personal fortunes drop along with the price of crude. Since the first signs of a standoff between Russia and OPEC four weeks earlier, Hildebrand’s net worth shrank by almost 90%, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Hamm’s net worth was cut almost in half to $3 billion as Russia and Saudi Arabia flooded global markets with crude in a battle for market share. Warren’s net worth shrank by 38%.
At the White House, Trump promised the oil executives he’d divulge more about his talks with Putin and bin Salman once reporters left the room. “I’ve spoken to both of them, and we’ll tell you about that in a little while,” Trump said.
Within days, Trump had brokered an agreement among the so-called OPEC+ alliance to slash output by at least 10 million barrels a day, shaving a 10th of global supply.
Trump’s Oil Deal: The Inside Story of How a Price War Ended
The deal wasn’t enough to prevent the historic price collapse later that month, when benchmark US oil futures tumbled to roughly -$40 a barrel. But in the longer term it effectively curbed supplies through April 2022. Fuel demand recovered as the worst of the pandemic passed, and retail US gasoline prices climbed through summer 2022, becoming a political liability for Biden.
Some of the oil leaders who met with Trump in April 2020 now rank among his largest donors. Warren and his wife have steered $5.8 million to Trump’s campaign, the Republican Party and his allied super PACs this cycle, according to disclosures analyzed by Bloomberg. In 2020, they ultimately contributed more than twice that: $12.2 million.
The Hildebrands have supported Trump with at least $1.4 million since his 2016 campaign, including $81,600 in the current contest — though the couple’s recent donations to the Trump 47 political action committee have yet to be disclosed.
Hamm has provided at least $1.7 million overall, including $968,000 this year, and his company Continental Resources supplied another $1 million to MAGA Inc.
A representative of Hamm declined to comment for this story. Neither the Hildebrands nor the Warrens responded to reporters’ inquiries.
The big checks from oil donors are even more important to Trump than before. Trump spent $32 million more than he raised in August. And in September, Trump’s campaign spent just $72 million on paid media — less than half the $192 million expenditure by the Harris campaign, according to AdImpact. Meanwhile, Trump’s allied super PACs, funded by deep-pocketed donors, helped pick up some of the slack, spending $21 million more on media than his campaign.
Trump still boasts about the 2020 OPEC+ intervention. “Remember that little period when you were getting almost free gasoline?” he asked Iowans last year. “We had to call OPEC and we had to call Russia, frankly, and Saudi Arabia. We said: ‘We have to get the price up.’ But we saved all those companies.”
Congressional Democrats cast a different picture.
“He was brokering his own deals with Russia and Saudi Arabia to keep US oil prices from bottoming out,” said Representative Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. “Whether he was working on behalf of the American people or his closest ‘Big Oil’ campaign donors, I hardly think we need to ask at this point.”
–With assistance from David Wethe, Stephanie Lai, Elizabeth Elkin and Shelby Knowles.
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