Trump promised riches from ‘liquid gold’ in the US. Now fossil fuel donors

Kelcy Warren was among the top donors for Donald Trump’s 2024 White House bid, personally pouring at least $5m into the campaign and co-hosting a fundraiser for the then presidential hopeful in Houston.

Trump’s win appears to already be benefiting Warren and Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline and energy firm of which he is co-founder, executive chair and primary shareholder.

“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said in his inaugural address.

Though domestic fossil fuel production reached record levels under Joe Biden, his policies to boost renewable energy still sparked fear among oil and gas companies, said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. “There was a threat of moving toward a net zero world … maybe not now, but there was an idea that would happen if Democrats stayed in the White House,” said Jones.

For Warren and other oil billionaires, Trump removed that fear, Jones said.

Energy Transfer Partners reported a year-over-year increase in profits in the first quarter of this year. In an earnings call last month, company top brass praised the new administration and more supportive regulatory environment.

Among Trump’s moves that have benefited the company: a day-one move to end Biden’s pause on liquefied natural gas exports, which enables Energy Transfer to proceed with a long-sought-after LNG project in Lake Charles. On 13 May, Trump’s Federal Energy Commission (Ferc) also granted a three-year extension for the LNG project, which the company said was necessary for the project to succeed.

In the week after the Ferc decision, Warren’s wealth rose by nearly 10%, noted Sarah Cohen, who directs the climate and wealth inequality-focused non-profit Climate Accountability Research Project (Carp).

“That decision wouldn’t have been possible under Biden’s LNG pause,” said Cohen, who calculated the change using the Bloomberg billionaires index.

Since that Ferc decision, Energy Transfer Partners has also secured a 20-year deal to supply a Japanese company with up to 1m metric tons of LNG a year.

Other Trump orders to “unleash American energy” and declare an energy emergency to promote fossil fuels despite already booming production, for instance, are set to benefit Energy Transfer Partners by making it easier to expand the use all kinds of fossil fuels, thereby boosting the demand for pipelines.

Also fueling that demand: the projected boom in datacenters. Energy Transfer Partners has received requests to power 70 new ones, the Guardian reported in April, marking a 75% rise since Trump took office.