Oil sector support moves up election agenda

摘要

Republicans and Democrats are drawing up energy-sector battle lines ahead of this year’s presidential election. But President Donald Trump’s championing of oil and gas has become more of a fnancial support programme in the Covid-19 downturn. The White House has dusted of an armada of lending programmes, tax relief, royalty cuts and oil purchases as it tries to help the oil and gas industry survive the collapse in prices. Trump claims his leadership was a key factor in the US becoming the world’s top oil and gas producer in 2018. “We have become the number one energy [producer] in the world, through me,” he says. But the 2mn b/d drop in domestic crude output since the virus hit and a wave of bankruptcy flings have crimped Trump’s claim to US energy dominance and fuelled eforts to intervene.