Harris Took Action Against Big Oil, While Trump Did Big Oil’s Bidding

September 5, 2024

Contrast: Holding Big Oil Accountable

As California Attorney General, Harris Took On Big Oil, Securing Millions In Settlements

As attorney general, Harris secured $50 million in settlements from Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66.
In 2016, as attorney general, Harris sued Southern California Gas Co. over a methane leak from its Aliso Canyon natural gas facility. The leak caused a public health and statewide environmental emergency, sickening residents of Porter Ranch.
As attorney general, Harris helped secure a $44.4 million settlement from those responsible for a 2007 vessel crash and subsequent oil spill in the San Francisco Bay, which released 53,000 gallons of oil into the Bay.
Harris sued Pacific Gas and Electric Company following the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people. In 2016, a federal jury found PG&E guilty of violating the Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Act and obstructing the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.
Harris led an investigation into whether ExxonMobil lied to the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change and signaled support for a fraud investigation into Exxon.
In 2015, Harris directed her office to investigate possible criminal violations in response to an oil spill that released up to 143,000 gallons of crude oil and damaged the California coastline. Harris’ investigation resulted in dozens of indictments.

As U.S. Senator, Harris Championed Measures To Hold Big Oil Accountable

In 2018, Harris cosponsored the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Unlimited Liability Act, which would make Big Oil pay for damages associated with oil discharges from offshore facilities.
In 2018, Harris cosponsored the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Trust Fund Act, which eliminated the cap on expenditures from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for clean up of oil spills.
In 2017, Harris voted against a Congressional Review Act resolution that sought to overturn the SEC rule requiring fossil fuel companies to publicly disclose payments to governments in exchange for oil, gas, and minerals.
- The SEC rule helped bring transparency to the flow of money between fossil fuel companies and U.S. and foreign governments, deterring corruption and mismanagement.

During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris pledged to use her experience as a prosecutor to “hold Big Oil accountable for its role in the climate crisis.”
Harris pledged to make polluters pay for the harm they have caused to public and environmental health.
Harris pledged to guarantee that plaintiffs can bring civil suits against corporate polluters for environmental and climate damages.
During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris also called for closing the “Halliburton Loophole,” which exempts the fossil fuel industry from disclosing the dangerous chemicals used in oil and gas production.

Harris Worked To Prevent Big Oil From Gouging Consumers At The Pump And On Their Energy Bills

As attorney general, Harris secured an agreement with oil company Tesoro to protect consumers from gas price spikes.
In 2016, Harris launched an investigation into oil refiners, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, over high gas prices in California.
In 2020, Harris was an original cosponsor of the Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would prohibit gas price gouging during emergency periods.

In 2014, Harris joined a lawsuit against BP alleging that the company and its traders routinely manipulated prices to overcharge California as much as $300 million when it sold natural gas to the state. BP settled the case in 2018 for $102 million.
In 2013, Harris secured a $750 million settlement from an energy trading firm that forced Californians to pay record-high electricity prices during the 2000-2001 energy crisis. The vast majority of the settlement money was passed on to ratepayers through discounts.

Trump’s Agency Appointees Had Fossil Fuel Industry Ties, And He Let Big Oil Break The Law With Impunity

Nearly half of Trump’s initial political appointees for positions at the EPA had polluting industry ties, including “registered lobbyists or lawyers for chemical manufacturers, fossil fuel producers or other EPA-regulated companies.”
Trump nominated Bernard McNamee, who advocated for the continued use of fossil fuels, to serve as commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Trump appointed a former oil and gas lobbyist to serve as Secretary of the Interior.
Trump appointed former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson to serve as Secretary of State.
In 2020, The Guardian reported that the Trump administration had temporarily waived penalty payments for corporations, including oil and gas companies, that had signed settlements with the federal government for allegedly breaking environmental laws.

Contrast: Tax Breaks For Big Oil

Harris Pledged To End Subsidies For Fossil Fuels

During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris advocated for shifting away from and ending investments in fossil fuels.
- Harris’ campaign said she would end U.S. support for international oil and gas projects, including directing the U.S. Export-Import Bank and OPIC to end their investments in projects that continue to develop, extract, and utilize fossil fuel resources.
Harris also pledged to end subsidies for fossil fuels.
- Harris’ campaign said she would “leverage both executive authority and Congress to end federal support for the fossil fuel industry.”
In 2017, Harris cosponsored the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act, legislation that would repeal tax subsidies for major oil companies.

Trump Gave Big Oil Billions In Tax Breaks

Trump’s tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, kept “virtually all of the oil industry’s substantial existing tax breaks” and provided a “new subsidy for how the companies deduct the costs of capital expenditures such as drilling equipment, lowering their tax burden.”
- A 2018 report found that the oil and gas industry was one of the “greatest financial beneficiaries” of Trump’s 2017 tax law. Oil companies enjoyed $25 billion in immediate tax breaks as a result of the tax law.
- A provision of the tax law allowed corporations to expense the full cost of new investments in plants and equipment, benefiting “many in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry.”
- The law’s repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax was a “positive development for rapidly expanding midstream companies as well as many upstream producers.”
The Trump tax law included a loophole that allowed publicly traded oil and gas partnerships to claim the pass-through deduction, benefiting subsidiaries of companies like Valero and Shell.
- The law included an amendment that benefited publicly traded partnerships, which “are concentrated in the oil and gas industry.”
Trump fulfilled oil and gas industry requests and gave them tax benefits while charging the clean energy industry fees, making it difficult to compete.
The CARES Act, a coronavirus relief package passed and enacted under Trump, included tax law changes that benefited the oil and gas industry.

Contrast: Protecting Our Environment From Big Oil

Harris Opposed Drilling On Public Lands And In Public Waters

In 2017, Harris signed a letter opposing offshore drilling expansions off the California coast.
- Harris called the expansion efforts a “grave threat” and said they only served “to line the pockets of oil companies.”

In 2017, Harris voted against the GOP tax bill that included language to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.
- She also voted against a resolution that paved the way for the tax bill to open ANWR to drilling and voted to strike the ANWR language from the resolution.
Harris opposed drilling on public lands and the Trump administration’s efforts to open millions of acres of federal lands in California to new oil and gas development.
In her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris pledged to “put an end to the fossil fuel exploitation of our public lands.”
Harris opposed the Trump administration’s efforts to open federal waters to new offshore oil drilling.

Harris Supported Measures To Rein In Harmful Pollution From The Oil And Gas Industry

In 2017, Harris voted against a Congressional Review Act resolution that sought to overturn the Bureau of Land Management’s Methane and Waste Prevention Rule. The rule established standards that require oil and gas companies to take action to reduce methane pollution.
- Methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and exacerbates the health impacts of climate change.
As attorney general, Harris joined eight other states and the city of Chicago to intervene in support of EPA standards aimed at limiting methane pollution from oil and gas operations.

Trump Rolled Back More Than 120 Environmental Protections

As President, Trump rolled back more than 120 environmental rules, including nearly 30 air pollution and emission rules, 12 drilling and extraction rules, and eight water pollution rules.
- Trump repealed the Clean Power Plan, rolled back clean car standards after a lobbying campaign by Big Oil, and repealed common-sense rules to protect air and water from dangerous toxic pollution from oil and gas production.

In 2019, the Trump administration announced it would seek to roll back Obama-era rules aimed at curbing methane pollution from oil and gas production.
In 2018, the Trump administration rolled back a regulation aimed at curbing methane leaks from oil and gas operations on tribal and public lands.
In 2017, Trump’s EPA eliminated a requirement that oil and gas companies report information about their methane pollution.
During Trump’s first 100 days in office, he and Congress moved to ease or remove several restrictions on coal, oil, and gas companies, including measures in place to limit pollution.

Trump Weakened Pipeline Safety

In January 2020, Trump proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act that “could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects.”
- In 2019, Trump signed an order granting permission for the Keystone XL pipeline’s construction.
- In March 2017, Trump announced that his administration approved the Keystone XL pipeline.
In January 2017, Trump approved the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.
- Trump instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct an expedited review of the easement on the Dakota Access pipeline.
In July 2020, Trump gutted the National Environmental Policy Act, “limiting public review of federal infrastructure projects to speed up the permitting of freeways, power plants and pipelines.”
In 2019, Trump signed two executive orders making it harder for states to review pipeline projects.
In January 2017, Trump signed a directive ordering an end to protracted environmental reviews of pipelines.

Trump Gave Big Oil Free Rein To Drill Public Lands And Waters

As president, Trump opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production, which he has bragged about during his 2024 campaign.
- The Trump tax law included a provision opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Following Congressional passage of the bill, Trump boasted, “We’re going to start drilling in ANWR, one of the largest oil reserves in the world, that for 40 years this country was unable to touch.”
In 2017, Trump signed an executive order that “directed the Interior Department to reconsider actions by Obama that put large swaths of the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil drilling.”
In 2020, the Trump administration moved forward with the “consideration of a ConocoPhillips oil and gas project in the Alaska wilderness and on a development plan for land surrounding New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a World Heritage site at the center of a long debate over oil and gas development, among other projects.”
In 2020, the Trump administration gave “energy companies temporary breaks on royalties and rent they pay to extract oil and gas from leases on public lands.”
In 2017, Trump reduced the size of two national monuments by about two million acres in a giveaway to fossil fuel companies.
- The New York Times obtained documents from the Department of Interior showing that the potential for oil exploration was central to the Trump administration’s decision to shrink one of the monuments.
- In 2020, the Trump administration finalized plans to expand drilling and other forms of development on the formerly protected land in Utah.
In December 2017, Trump’s Interior Department rescinded President Obama’s limits on drilling on public lands.
The Trump administration weakened offshore drilling safety rules that were created after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, arguing they were a burden to the oil and gas industry.
- Trump’s 2019 rules change included “a significant reduction in the requirement for oil companies to test fail-safe devices called blowout preventers,” the failure of which caused the 2010 disaster.
In 2019, Politico reported that Trump’s Interior Department had given “offshore oil drillers nearly 1,700 exemptions to Obama-era safety rules put in place after BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.”
In 2018, the Trump administration announced it would allow new offshore oil and gas drilling in almost all U.S. coastal waters.
In January 2018, Trump’s Interior Department announced plans to open 90 percent of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas leasing.
In 2017, Trump instructed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the Obama administration’s plan for where offshore drilling could and could not take place between 2017 and 2022. The Obama-era plan had prohibited drilling along the entire southeast Atlantic coast and large portions of the Arctic Ocean.
The Trump Interior Department’s five-year strategic plan covering 2018-2022 prioritized oil and gas development.