A heads up. Several shale CEOs are passing along the reality of what are called tier 1 and tier 2 properties going empty.
The United States oil production was in relentless decline until about 2009 when interest rates collapsed to zero and therefore the cost of drilling shale oil wells that only produce 1,000 barrels per day on day one and are down about 40% by day 365 . . . Well that became a conceivable investment to make, and so it was made thousands of times and oil production headed up to its current level at about 13 million barrels per day.
The point being, and the words coming out of Trump’s mouth suggest that he was told, you can open up all the lands that you want to open up and you can install all the pipelines you want to install and you may not get continued increases in oil production. Geology does not care about politics.
And another matter, LNG. You cannot make LNG if you do not have natural gas, and if you have natural gas you’re probably going to have to burn it to make electricity for those AI data centers. The only reason to freeze that gas down to LNG levels is to export it, and the data centers may not allow exporting. Their consumption of electricity, created by natural gas, May prevent exporting.
And you go back to coal? Yes you can but the transition from coal to natural gas was never really about climate change. It was about lungs. India and China is still making a lot of electricity with coal, because coal is what they have. Both are transitioning to natural gas for the same reason.
It’s all not infinite.
So can you supply the data centers with electricity from square miles of solar backed by batteries in deserts with brackish water aquifers... on federal lands?