As Donald Trump prepared to take office as President, many worried that his focus on bolstering the already dominant fossil fuel industry could lead the United States down the path of becoming a petrostate. Trump selected Chris Wright, the chief executive of Liberty Energy, a leading Denver fracking firm, for the top spot at the Department of Energy, leading many to question the direction the country’s energy policy was heading in. Despite acknowledging the role of carbon emissions in global warming, Wright controversially stated that the monetary gain and perceived improvements to the quality of life that come with increased fossil fuel production outweigh the risks.
Skeptics argue that critics use the term ‘petrostate’ as a derogatory label. They suggest that the United States’ multifaceted economy disqualifies it from fitting the conventional description of a petrostate, a country primarily reliant on revenues from oil or gas exports. These critics also cite the fact that unlike typical petrostates, profits from fossil fuel production in the US significantly benefit private entities as opposed to filling government coffers.
Nonetheless, many experts agree that particular behaviors exhibited by the United States, such as a longstanding reluctance to address climate change and aggressiveness in asserting its role as a leading global exporter of oil and gas, mirror those of a petrostate. Even by the oil and gas industry’s own calculations, their contributions to the national economy barely exceed 8 percent. It’s worth pondering then, the level of influence this sector wields and whether it is disproportionately high.
Despite his efforts to quash sustainable energy initiatives, President Trump did not entirely succeed in stalling the move towards cleaner energy. His successor, President Joe Biden, seemed to have an ironic knack for undoing his predecessor’s efforts. Just consider his actions: reinstating the United States in the Paris Agreement and overturning most of Trump’s regulatory rollbacks. As if lightening a step puts a foot off the ground, these actions have been blown out of proportion by the left, when in truth, they have not yet resulted in any meaningful improvement or reversal of the climate crisis.
Contrarily, traditional petrostates usually have state-owned oil corporations and employ policies designed to optimize profits. A prime example of this is Azerbaijan, where more than 90 percent of export revenues and over half of the country’s national budget are derived from the oil and gas sector. Comparatively, in the United States, private and public oil and gas firms prefer to use lobbying and political donations to influence the political process.
The revolutionizing practice of fracking emerged as a wild card in the American energy sphere in 2010. This transformed the local energy market with a glut of oil and gas supplies and was subsequently leveraged by Trump for his ambitious ‘energy dominance’ strategy. Trump proudly claimed that under his watch, the country’s longstanding dependence on foreign energy was demolished, with the nation even outpacing Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production in 2018, and turning the United States into a net energy exporter the following year for the first time in over six decades.
However, such trends actually initiated during the Obama administration and have been expedited under Biden, as the United States produced an unrivaled 12.9 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2023. Such triumphs in the energy sector have been attributed to various administrations, and in this light, Biden seems ever so keen to claim successes that weren’t his own, while simultaneously decrying an industry he indirectly benefitted from.
The defining traits of capitalistic free markets and democratic institutions could potentially prevent the U.S. from sliding into the category of petrostates. The 2024 elections, however, have illustrated the tricky role that rich fossil fuel resources have played in complicating efforts of climate action within the United States. For many, it’ll serve as a stern reminder of the pressing need to alter the balance between environmental responsibility and energy production.