Donald Trump has raised more money from the oil and gas industry than at this stage of his previous campaigns for the US presidency, with a sharp increase in fossil fuel financing in the six months since he asked for $1 billion directly from oil executives and then promised he would scrap environmental regulations if elected.
Although the Republican candidate has not yet quite managed to reach that $1 billion figure, he has received $14.1 million from the oil and gas industry in the period through August 31, donation filings show. This is more than he got from the industry at the same stage of his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
The support of just a handful of oil executives has become crucial to the overall Trump campaign, with Kelcy Warren, the billionaire chief executive of the pipeline operator Energy Transfer, donating nearly $6 million to help elect the former president, and Timothy Dunn, the boss of the Texas-based oil company CrownQuest, which is handing over $5 million to a Trump-linked Super Pac.
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Harold Hamm, also a billionaire and founder of Continental Resources, has helped pump another $1.2 million into the campaign. Hamm reportedly picked up the phone to drum up industry support for Trump, whose campaign mantra was “drill, baby, drill” as he railed against the policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. “We have to do this because it is the most important election of our lifetime,” Hamm has said.
The oil and gas industry is now Trump’s fourth-largest source of money, up six spots from the 2020 election cycle, according to an analysis of donations to candidates and their affiliated groups by OpenSecrets.
Furthermore, more recent Federal Election Commission filings emerged this week and are still being fully analyzed. But Climate Power, a climate advocacy group, pointed out that the latest filings show Trump secured another $5 million from Energy Transfer’s Warren in September, as well as $400,000 from Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub and $400,000 from Jeff and Melinda Hildebrand of the oil and gas company Hilcorp.
The fundraiser follows an April dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where the former president asked and promised more than two dozen executives from companies including Chevron, Exxon and Occidental for $1 billion if elected to remove barriers to drilling. , abolishing a pause on gas exports and rolling back new rules aimed at curbing car pollution.
Democrats have called this apparent deal “the definition of corruption” and have launched a congressional investigation. Last month, Senate and House Democrats wrote a letter to eight oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute to complain about their “woefully inadequate” responses to a request for information about the alleged quid pro quo.
“Trump basically has a ‘for sale’ sign around his neck and we know the fossil fuel industry is very interested in political influence, so we need to know if this is a blunder or incitement to a crime,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic chairman. The Senate Budget Committee said this. However, Whitehouse admitted that the investigation would not progress before the election.
“Trump is talking really stupid nonsense about the climate, just shouting loudly at the fossil fuel industry that he will be their son,” he said. “The industry is becoming increasingly desperate to keep political control over Congress and the government in general, so we are seeing a significant increase in influence and money-seeking.”
In addition to watered-down regulations, an estimated $110 billion in tax breaks for the fossil fuel sector could also be provided if Trump returns to the White House. When he was the last president, Trump opened new drilling areas and intervened to strike a deal with other countries to cut production to support crude oil values after prices collapsed during the 2020 Covid pandemic .
In the past two weeks, the former president and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have attended four fundraisers organized by oil executives in Texas, even as they both had to cancel other events due to the impact of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which scientists both have reportedly been exacerbated by global warming from the burning of fossil fuels.
At recent rallies, Trump has pledged to unleash a wave of new oil and gas activity and dismissed the climate crisis as “one of the biggest scams of all time.” The former president has also falsely said the planet is cooling and has repeatedly attacked wind energy, calling it “nonsense” and “terrible.”
Trump has called oil and gas “liquid gold under our feet” and accused Biden and Harris of a “war on American energy,” even as oil and gas production has reached record highs.
Related: Where do Harris and Trump stand on the key election issues?
Harris, meanwhile, has largely ignored climate in her campaign appearances, even as she recognizes the dangers posed by global warming. The latest donation data shows that the Democratic presidential campaign, initially led by Biden, has raised $1.3 million from the oil and gas industry, according to OpenSecrets.
Industry donations to the vice president have accounted for more than $500,000 of this total since she took over the Democratic nomination from Biden, even though Harris pledged in 2019 not to accept more than $200 from fossil fuel entities to take.
The biggest contributions from oil executives to Harris come from Richard Slifka of Global Petroleum and Lee Fikes of Bonanza Oil. Harris’ campaign, which has raised a total of more than $1 billion in donations from all sources to date, did not answer whether taking this money had broken her previous pledge, or whether it still applies was at this election.
A Trump campaign spokesman said Harris was “controlled by environmental extremists,” while Trump was “supported by people who share his vision for American energy dominance to protect our national security and lower the cost of living for all Americans.”
