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liquefied natural gas
Trump's Fossil Fuel Donors Are Getting Their Money's Worth
As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry for its campaign spending by adopting its policy agenda as his own.
Sep 18, 2025
Fossil fuel interests donated heavily to US President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection bid. Months after his victory, oil and gas moguls have continued to pump money into his political coffers. Now, as promised by Trump during the campaign, his administration is embracing their policy agenda and governing in a way that is netting the industry billions.
Trump asked oil and gas executives in 2024 to raise $1 billion for his campaign and told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won. The investment, he said, would be a “deal” given the taxes and regulation they would avoid under his presidency. He also offered to help fast-track fossil fuel industry mergers and acquisitions if he won.
The industry responded by spending lavishly to elect Trump, giving at least $75 million to his campaign and affiliated PACs, thereby making them a top corporate backer of his reelection bid and a crucial source of funding. Several oil tycoons gave millions on their own and hosted fundraisers with Trump and his associates. Some oil and gas executives who hadn’t given Trump money during previous cycles made major donations after attending fundraisers where he pledged to start acting on the industry’s policy priorities as soon as he retook the White House.
That’s just the spending we know about. The 2024 election saw record levels of “dark money” spending, where wealthy interests keep their role secret by funneling money through groups that do not disclose their donors. The fossil fuel industry has a history of deploying dark money tactics, and any such spending in 2024 would inherently be obscured.
The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration. But what about the costs?
Even after Trump’s victory in 2024, oil and gas interests have continued to pour money into his political operation. They gave $11.8 million to his inauguration fund, and even though Trump cannot run for a third term, his main super PAC has raked in millions more from the industry since he took office—including $25 million from oil producer Energy Transfer Partners and its CEO, Kelcy Warren.
As promised, Trump is rewarding the industry by adopting its policy agenda as his own. His signature legislative package—which one executive deemed “positive for us across all of our top priorities”—gives oil and gas firms $18 billion in tax incentives while rolling back incentives for clean energy alternatives. He’s placed fossil fuel allies in charge of the agencies that oversee the industry and fast-tracked drilling projects on public lands. In just his first 100 days back in office, Trump took at least 145 actions to undo environmental rules—more than he reversed during his entire first term as president. Before Trump even reentered the White House, the industry was reportedly pre-drafting executive orders for him to issue.
The profits are already rolling in for the industry. Take Warren and Energy Transfer Partners. Trump ended a Biden-era pause on liquefied natural gas exports and cleared the way for Energy Transfer Partners (which extracts liquefied natural gas) to extend a major project. Warren’s personal wealth grew nearly 10% after the administration green-lit the project as Energy Transfer Partners reported a boost in profits.
There’s also Occidental Petroleum, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, and whose CEO cohosted a major fundraiser for Trump in May 2024. Occidental is especially well positioned to see boosted profits from the sprawling array of favorable subsidies and tax incentives in his signature bill, passed into law this summer.
Now the Trump administration is taking its biggest swing yet for fossil fuel interests: repealing the “endangerment finding,” the federal government’s formal acknowledgement that global warming from greenhouse gases, produced by burning fossil fuels, endangers the public. The finding gives the government legal authority to set clean air rules, and it’s long been the subject of the fossil fuel lobby’s ire, surviving more than 100 challenges in court. Revoking the finding would erase scores of clean air rules that the industry opposes.
The fossil fuel industry is reaping major returns on its investment in the Trump administration. But what about the costs? Extreme weather events such as flooding, wildfires, and severe storms—which overwhelming scientific consensus has concluded are driven by global warming from fossil fuel usage—are becoming increasingly common, inflicting billions of dollars of damage on American communities and costing thousands of people their lives and livelihoods each year. Life-threatening summer heat affected more than 255 million Americans this year alone. It does not appear that these concerns are having any major impact on government policy, and instead, the administration fired hundreds of scientists tasked with tracking these issues.
Trump is far from the first president to use the office in ways that reward wealthy donors. Decades of harmful Supreme Court decisions, decaying anticorruption and campaign finance guardrails, and inadequate enforcement of existing rules around money in politics have enabled an unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power. So while Trump’s embrace of the fossil fuel industry’s agenda isn’t breaking entirely new ground, it offers yet another stark example of how wealthy interests are shaping policies that affect the lives of all Americans.
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TICAD in Yokohama: Reflecting on the Real Meaning of Development in Africa
The record in Mozambique shows that projects backed by public finance can harm communities and the environment unless local voices guide the process.
Aug 21, 2025
The ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, or TICAD, opened August 20 in Yokohama, organized by the Japanese government with the United Nations, UN Development Program, World Bank, and African Union Commission. Japan, as host, aims to promote “high quality” development in Africa by applying lessons from Asia. Three decades since TICAD’s launch in 1993, interest in Africa remains strong—and so does the need to reflect on what “development” truly means.
Japan’s record in Mozambique offers sobering lessons.
Before we can discuss “development” we must recognize that many of Africa’s deep crises today are rooted in the continued exploitation of its people and resources, shaped by inherited colonial structures. Public funding and transnational corporations play a large role in perpetuating these patterns.
The Mozambique liquefied natural gas (LNG) project illustrates the problem. Led by French energy giant TotalEnergies, it is one of Africa’s largest gas extraction projects, with Japan as its top financier. The publicly funded Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has committed up to $3.5 billion in loans, while Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) has agreed to provide $2 billion in insurance.
As leaders gather at TICAD to shape Africa’s future, we urge Japan and all participating governments and businesses to focus on the needs and aspirations of African people themselves.
JBIC justifies this support by citing growing global LNG demand, particularly in developing countries, rising environmental awareness, and Japan’s energy security. Yet revenue flows to a United Arab Emirates-based special purpose entity—enabling gas and mining companies to avoid paying an estimated $717 million to $1.48 billion in taxes to Mozambique. The country is further disadvantaged by the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system, which prioritizes loss compensation for investors.
On the ground, grievances remain unresolved. More than eight communities have been affected, and many families still await promised compensation. Others have lost farmland or access to the sea, undermining agriculture and fisheries livelihoods. Local residents report that consultation meetings often involve military presence, stifling open discussion.
Since 2017, the region has suffered violent insurgency, which halted the project in 2021 and brought heavy militarization focused on protecting gas infrastructure. Insurgent activity has surged again in recent weeks, amid signs of project restart. In March 2025, analysts warned that the sense of disenfranchisement created by the project could fuel insurgent recruitment.
Environmental and climate risks are also high. Independent reviews find that the project’s environmental impact assessment understates potential harm, including lacking a rigorous biodiversity baseline study for the deep-sea environment.
This pattern—external actors driving their own agendas rather than responding to locally defined and articulated priorities—is not unique.
A decade earlier, Japan’s own ProSAVANA project in northern Mozambique followed a similar path. Launched in the early 2010s by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with Mozambican and Brazilian partners, it aimed to convert land to agricultural use, particularly soybean cultivation for export to Japan. Modeled on Brazil’s Cerrado “green revolution” of the 1970s, it was promoted as a way to promote agricultural and economic development in Mozambique.
In reality, the project facilitated land grabs covering 14 million hectares in the Nacala Corridor, displacing small farmers. Civil society groups denounced the opaque consultation process and backed local farmers’ resistance. After years of protest, the Japanese government ended its involvement in July 2020, belatedly acknowledging these concerns.
Both Mozambique LNG and ProSAVANA demonstrate how “development” promoted from the Global North can harm communities and the environment. When public finance is involved, the risks—and the responsibility—are even greater.
Better outcomes require meaningful, transparent consultation with affected communities, robust due diligence, and genuine accountability. Without these, development risks becoming extraction by another name.
As leaders gather at TICAD to shape Africa’s future, we urge Japan and all participating governments and businesses to focus on the needs and aspirations of African people themselves, and to avoid—or even redress—the mistakes of the past.
The question remains as urgent as ever: Who is this development really for?
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'Unacceptable': Trump Admin Approves More Exports From LNG Terminal With History of Violations
"Venture Global already has countless air permit violations at this facility, polluting my community and making people across the region sick," said the founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana.
Aug 05, 2025
Climate advocates slammed U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday after it signed off on allowing additional liquefied natural gas exports from a controversial terminal with a lengthy history of environmental violations.
In a press release, the U.S. Department of Energy said that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has now given final authorization for more gas exports from Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass project in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. In total, the new authorizations could allow the export of an additional 20 billion cubic feet of natural gas from the terminal per year.
In touting the authorization, Wright argued that it was "another reminder that this administration is committed to expanding the supply of abundant, affordable, and secure American energy."
The Calcasieu Pass terminal racked up more than 2,000 deviations from its air permit in its first year of operation back in 2022 and has long been a target for environmental and climate activists.
Mahyar Sorour, director of beyond fossil fuels policy at Sierra Club, hammered the administration for supporting policies that would accelerate the global climate emergency.
"It is unacceptable that on the same day Secretary Wright denies climate science, his agency approves more exports from Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass facility," said Sorour. "LNG exports are driving our climate crisis. While communities are experiencing increasingly more dangerous and deadly extreme weather disasters, this administration is pushing an agenda that benefits polluting corporations at all of our expense."
Roishetta Ozane, founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana, warned that the authorizations of new exports posed a direct health threat to her community.
"Venture Global already has countless air permit violations at this facility, polluting my community and making people across the region sick," she said. "But now they've been given a free pass to keep our families in danger with even more LNG exports. This administration is completely disregarding public health, safety, and climate science to boost the profits of a company that cuts corners at every turn, while we pay the price."
Trump has made doubling down on fossil fuels a centerpiece of his administration's energy strategy even as other nations push for a transition to cleaner and cheaper energy sources such as wind and solar power. The massive budget package recently passed by the Republican Congress and signed into law by Trump contained an additional billions of dollars worth of subsidies for fossil fuel production, even as it gutted the green energy subsidies that were approved in 2022 after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
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