The outlook for American energy at the beginning of 2025 is substantially different then it was at the beginning of 2024. The American Petroleum Institute’s (API) 2025 State Of American Energy (SOAE) previewed opportunities for our country generated by U.S. oil and natural gas.
John Hess, CEO of Hess Corporation and API Chairman, joined API President and CEO Mike Sommers at SOAE to discuss the industry outlook as 2025 unfolds (watch here):
On Industry’s Importance to America:
“Oil and natural gas support 11 million jobs, more jobs than the automotive industry, aviation industry … lower electric costs than most parts of the world…and we're totally energy secure. Our national security, we're independent of other countries, we're a net exporter, where China imports 70% of their oil and Europe imports 70% of their oil. It's a real strong point. We're the largest oil and gas producer in the world because of shale. At the end of the day, that energy dominance is a theme we need to build around.”
On Natural Gas Powering Artificial Intelligence (AI):
“There are some suggestions I would make to President Trump. The first is putting a priority on making our country AI dominant in the world. And to do that, you need to focus on natural gas … so we need to streamline permitting whether it's for electric plants, whether it's for transmission, whether it's for pipelines or whether it's for distribution. So, let's be AI dominant and you can do that by being natural gas dominant. That's number one.”
On Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Energy Reality:
“China, in terms of batteries, controls 75% of the critical materials in the world for batteries as well as the processing for those critical materials. So, actually, if we had all EVs in our country, we would be more dependent upon China for the EVs instead using our liquid gold, as President Trump calls oil, to be our energy security.”
On Energy Policy:
At the end of the day, energy policy is about three things: it’s about energy security, energy affordability, and energy transition. And most people don’t realize that …the carbon budget the world needs to reach net zero is going to be used up in 2030. So we need to be clear eyed to understand that we need to balance the three factors. Oil and gas are going to be needed for decades, and we need to keep investing in it. And we need to have sound policies, like API’s Five-Point Policy Roadmap to underpin that.”