By Luciano Codseira, Executive Director and Founder of Gas Transition Consultant and co -director of the Energy Institute of the Universidad Austral. Codeseira is also academic at the Universidad Austral and at the National University of San Martín.
The new Trump administration is writing the energy history of the next decades, as well as a child begins a new world in Minecraft.
The turn in the US energy policy was perhaps the most announced and expected fact of the Trump 2.0 version. This can be synthesized in two specific facts, on the one hand the abandonment of green policies of the Biden administration (for example the inflation reduction act (anger)) and, on the other Restrictions in the production and export of third parties) and (2) Promote cheap energy for the US and thus make a discreet leap in the technological career (promoting artificial intelligence, the accommodation of large datacentes, among other enerintensive businesses).
The first step in this direction Trump gave it by appointing Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy, who before taking office served as CEO of Liberty Energy, second largest US Fracking Company (after having acquired the American business of Schlumberger’s fracking). And that previously CEO and founder of Pinnacle Technologies, a company dedicated to the business of shale gas, who was sold to Halliburton at a time when his previous CEO was vice president of the United States.
The second step was given with the executive order of January 20 by dictating the “National Energy Emergency Declaration” in which it raises the need for a reliable, diversified and affordable energy supply, a slight alteration of the energy trilema (it leaves sustainable and diversified enter), coinciding with a look that is closer to that of the 80s (1) than to the current one (Daniel Yergin (1988)).
To this is added the quasi declaration of principles found in section 8th of the “Energy Emergency Declaration”, where it presents its definition of the term “energy” or “energy resource”: crude oil, natural gas, oil condensate, natural gas liquids, refined oil products, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, kinetic movement of current water and critical minerals. No mention to renewable energy sources. Predictable
That is why it is not surprising that many projects of electric vehicles and batteries have been canceled in the United States, and that in the first quarter of 2025 more projects have been ruled out than in the previous two years together. That is, political uncertainty, tariff escalation and the possibility of repealing tax credits (provided in the inflation reduction Act) are causing companies to delay or cancel important electric vehicle projects. This does not seem like a virtuous process for the technological career against the Asian giant.
Another prominent milestone of the last weeks was a renewed charcoal impulse with the executive order of April 8. As a result of the Shale Gas Boom of the last 15 years and a cleaner orientation of the electricity office, the American generation matrix had suffered a process of replacing coal with natural gas. The abandonment of these principles and export promotion for gas leads to Trump to encourage the construction of new coal power plants, “bringing back an industry that was abandoned”, in his own words, predicting more employment for the miners: “We are going to put the miners again,” he said.
But perhaps the most complex factor to continue around the global supply chains is located in the transit through the Panama Canal. On April 6, the United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, arrived in Panama to announce that Washington “would recover” the Panama Canal of the “influence of China”, and said that the Trump administration would not allow China “to turn the passage into a weapon.” There are two key ports in the channel that are owned by a conglomerate of Hong Kong with bonds with Beijing. Blackrock had led a consortium to buy the two ports from CK Hutchinson, the owner of Hong Kong, for US $ 19BN. However, Chinese regulators left the agreement in suspense. Thus are tensions that alert the shortest route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific and, in particular, the transit that represents between 65% and 80% of the LNG and propane imported by South American countries.
Beyond the different valuations that can be made about the changes we are observing, the truth is that this new context moves the board of opportunities in the sector. We must be attentive and rework new scenarios for the next five years.
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