Trump Appoints Climate Denier and Fracking Mogul Chris Wright to Energy

Climate skeptic, CEO of a company and backed by American oil companies: Donald Trump has nominated Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, as Secretary of Energy, with a roadmap for deregulation of the sector.

“As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, reducing red tape and ushering in a new 'golden age of American prosperity and world peace',” Donald Trump said in a statement.

Chris Wright will also be a member of the brand new National Energy Council (NEC), whose creation was announced on Friday by the president-elect, and whose mission will be to “oversee the path to US energy dominance”.

His candidacy was supported by companies in the oil sector, underlines the Financial Times.

Chris Wright heads the company Liberty Energy, which he founded in 2011, and which specializes in hydraulic fracturing, a polluting method of extracting hydrocarbons.

This climate skeptic judged, in a post on his LinkedIn account a year ago, that “there is no climate crisis and we are not in the middle of an energy transition either”.

“The term carbon pollution is scandalous” because all life depends on carbon dioxide, he added, also refuting the terms “clean energy or dirty energy, all energy sources have both positive and negative impacts on the world”.

In the press release announcing the nomination, Donald Trump hailed “a leading energy entrepreneur” who “has worked in nuclear, solar, geothermal, and oil and gas.”

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“Most importantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American shale revolution that fueled American energy independence and transformed global energy markets and geopolitics,” the president-elect added.

– Shale gas –

The names of future ministers and officials in the new Trump administration began to be revealed just a week after the election, and have been coming one after the other this week.

And the names are controversial: Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, chosen to head the Department of Defense – and accused of sexual assault in 2017 -, vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health, Democratic Party defector Tulsi Gabbard, accused of being pro-Russian, at Intelligence, or even, at Justice, the ultra-Trumpist Matt Gaetz, with no experience in the field and who was suspected of having a relationship with an underage girl.

As for Elon Musk, he will head a commission for “government efficiency”.

A graduate of the prestigious MIT and UC Berkeley, Chris Wright founded the company Pinnacle Technologies in 1992, “whose innovations are helping to launch commercial shale gas production and creating an industry for mapping hydraulic fractures,” the Liberty Energy website states.

He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, “one of the first producers of shale gas, before selling it to shale pioneer Range Resources in 2006.”

Chris Wright lives in Colorado with his wife.

Hydraulic fracturing had been a major topic of the election campaign, with Donald Trump accusing his Democratic rival Kamala Harris of wanting to ban the process, which she denied.

In 2019, as a candidate in the Democratic primary, she spoke out in favor of a ban, before reversing this position, which was particularly damaging to voters in the key state of Pennsylvania, where the sector is important.

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