Trump turns to oil CEOs for $1B presidential donation: RPT

Former President Donald Trump is tapping Big Oil chief executives in an attempt to receive $1 billion in donations to his reelection campaign, according to the Washington Post. What is he promising in return?

Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman talks about Trump's talking points on broadening oil (CL=F, BZ=F) drilling, even though major energy companies are diversifying their portfolios and leaning into clean energy practices while maintaining drill sites.

Catch up on Yahoo Finance's interview with ExxonMobil (XOM) CEO Darren Woods from the 2024 Milken Institute Global Conference.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Market Domination Overtime.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

Donald Trump reported looking to tap oil executives to contribute $1 billion to his re election campaign.

That's according to the Washington Post for more on this.

Let's break to Yahoo Finance's senior columnist, Rick Newman.

Rick.

Hey guys.

Uh that's right.

Uh Big oil executives were meeting with Donald Trump down at Mar A lago.

Now, they didn't say they were willing to take this deal, uh you know, put in a billion dollars into his election campaign and get favorable treatment from the White House.

And I think that would be a pretty dumb idea.

Um What Trump doesn't seem to get is uh basically everybody including uh big oil CEO S acknowledges that climate change is a real thing and that we have to deal with it.

So I was just out at the Milken conference in Los Angeles.

There were a lot of panels on energy.

The CEO S of Exxon and Chevron were there and they were discussing as they have as they have been doing many times before the plans, they have to do their part with dealing with climate change.

Now, some of this might be greenwashing.

I'm not saying they're at the fore of the movement.

But they are getting into things like carbon sequestration trying to develop lower carbon emission ways to actually extract oil.

Um They realize this is just gonna happen.

I mean, we're going to have to do this.

It's happening all around the world and I don't think they want to go back to the smokestack days the way Donald Trump does.

I mean, he, in some ways he's just stuck in the 20th century drill, baby drill.

Uh Even the oil and gas industry has moved beyond that these days.

So it'll be very interesting to see whether they really get behind Trump.

I just want to give you guys one more stat here.

Uh The oil and gas energy, the energy sector has actually done way better under Biden than it did under Trump.

And I'll just give you the numbers.

I just looked these up today uh under Biden, the average profit margin in the energy sector has been 11% under Trump.

It was basically zero.

And if you exclude that wipe out year for the energy sector of 2020 the best you get under Trump is a 4.5% average profit margin.

So it's more than double that under Biden and guess why they're producing less the price higher and they're simply making more money.

So this idea that Trump's going to open up all this drilling and they're somehow going to make more money.

I don't think that is even a baseline assumption at this point.

Well, and it's interesting, Rick because, you know, I had the chance to catch up with Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon at Sarah Week and asked him about the IRA specifically and he said he's in favor of it staying in place, you know, while many of these oil execs might want the LNG export pause or ban to be lifted.

They want stability, you know, and corporate America in general seems to want stability.

They don't want to have to be whipsawed every four or eight years.

As, as, as the administration's turn over, they want stability and guess what else Julie?

They're doing fine.

They, they actually don't need anything from any political administration.

And uh yeah, they absolutely want that uh that LNG export pause gone.

And uh here's a prediction, I think it is going to be gone.

Uh Even if Biden wins, I think he's gonna end it after his re election because I think that's just a pretty bald so to climate activists and it's not even productive.

I mean, we, we need to be shipping gas around the world.

It's a base.

We don't have to geek out here, but you need gas even if you have, even if you have renewable energy.

And this is hugely important as an energy security thing because of what Putin is doing in Russia.

So the energy companies have figured they have, they are finding their place in the, in the uh green energy transition and guess what they also know.

Um the world is going to be needing uh petroleum and natural gas for the next 50 years.

Easily.

They're not going to have any problem with demand.

The emerging markets are coming online.

There's going to be plenty of demand for their product.

So there's not a lot else they really need.