Today’s Key Takeaways: High costs, regulatory instability and environmental lawsuits vs. Trump. Increasing production at $50/barrel. LNG America’s most important export. Antimony at Livengood.
NEWS OF THE DAY:
Will Trump Develop Alaskan Oil and Gas?
Felicity Bradstock, March 8, 2025
- Trump signed an executive order to ease regulations on oil and gas projects in Alaska, reversing Biden-era restrictions.
- Despite the policy shift, high costs, regulatory instability, and environmental lawsuits make investment uncertain.
- Japan, Taiwan, and EU nations are showing interest in U.S. energy, partly to avoid potential trade tariffs.
United States President Donald Trump has vowed to make it easier to develop oil and gas projects in Alaska, despite concerns about environmental degradation. Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential,” effectively undoing former President Biden’s climate protections for the state. However, it is uncertain whether oil and gas companies will invest in a region with such strict regulations and high project development costs. In addition, many fear potential lawsuits from environmental and indigenous organizations against new developments, as well as what a change in U.S. administration could mean for projects in the future.
President Trump’s order aims to expedite the permitting and leasing of energy projects in Alaska, undo resource development restrictions on state and federal lands including crucial areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A), overturn the cancellation of leases within the ANWR, and prioritize the development of LNG.
OIL:
U.S. Energy Secretary: Shale Could Boost Production Even at $50 Oil
Tsvetana Paraskova, OilPrice.com, March 10, 2025
U.S. shale producers could increase production even if oil prices fell to $50 per barrel as the sector continues to innovate and boost efficiency gains, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told the Financial Times.
The shale industry can sustain a lower price of oil, according to Wright, a former boss at fracking firm Liberty Energy.
“New supply is going to drive prices down. Companies are going to innovate, drive their prices down and consumers and suppliers will bounce back and forth,” Wright told FT.
The energy secretary appears much more optimistic about the U.S. shale sector’s resilience than many analysts and even the U.S. oil producers themselves.
U.S. firms, especially the large public listed companies, signaled as early as President Donald Trump was elected in November that there wouldn’t be a “drill, baby, drill” boom in the shale patch despite the eased regulations under the new administration.
President Trump has promised to slash energy costs for Americans and has repeatedly called on OPEC+ and Saudi Arabia to “reduce the price of oil.” But he has also vowed a new wave of “drill, baby, drill” in the U.S. energy industry.
President Trump signed on his first day in office an executive order to unleash America’s energy by easing the barriers to oil and gas extraction and production and revoking a series of climate orders by President Biden.
While the industry applauded the pivot to helping America make greater use of its oil and gas resources, companies are not rushing to dig themselves into another production boost.
The key reason for this is that the nature of the shale business has changed as producers look to return more money to shareholders while the wave of mergers and acquisitions has led to bigger producers becoming even bigger by absorbing smaller ones. Large public companies are not inclined to sink capital in relentless drilling—they prioritize returns to investors.
“We’re not going to see anybody in ‘drill, baby, drill’ mode,” ExxonMobil Upstream President Liam Mallon said in November.
GAS:
How Natural Gas Became America’s Most Important Export
Kevin Crowley, Ruth Liao, Bloomberg, March 9, 2025
The White House’s LNG-powered diplomacy will only expand in Trump’s second term.
Ripping up old alliances and turning the post-World War II axis on its head would have been impossible for any previous American president because of the insatiable US thirst for imported energy. But the Trump White House is able to lean on an increasingly critical made-in-America commodity to exert new levels of geopolitical leverage: liquefied natural gas.
The US, which in the span of about seven years transformed itself from an irrelevant supplier of LNG into the world’s largest, is set to expand its production capacity by 60% in the first half of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to an estimate from BloombergNEF. By the end of the decade, almost 1 in every 3 tankers carrying the super chilled fuel will originate in the US, giving Trump his best chance to attain the energy dominance his campaign promised.
MINING:
Tower Hill investigates Livengood antimony
Shane Lasley, North of 60 Mining News, March 5, 2025
Raises $3.9 million to study the potential to recover critical mineral at multi-million-ounce gold project in Alaska.
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. March 4 announced that it had raised $3.9 million to investigate the potential of recovering antimony found within the world-class Money Knob deposit at its Livengood gold project in Alaska.
Lying along a paved highway about 70 miles north of Fairbanks, Money Knob hosts 704.5 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 0.6 grams per metric ton (13.62 million oz) gold.
A prefeasibility study (PFS) completed in 2021 detailed plans for a 65,000-metric-ton-per-day mining operation at the Livengood mine project in Alaska would produce 6.4 million oz of gold over 21 years, or an average of around 304,750 oz per year.
The PFS elevated 430.1 million metric tons of the Livengood resources averaging 0.65 g/t (9 million oz) gold to proven and probable reserves.
“Record gold prices combined with our large gold reserve are presenting an improving value proposition for our Livengood Gold Project,” said International Tower Hill Mines CEO Karl Hanneman. “In addition, changing world geopolitics have resulted in increased awareness in the United States of the importance of critical and strategic minerals, including antimony, for our national defense and economy.”
