Net Zero

1. Oil’s uncertain outlook
2. FERC’s freedom
3. Kyiv’s LNG headaches
4. EPA’s new mission
5. Renewables surge

The ‘madness’ of reopening Nord Stream.

Exxon isn’t scared of low oil prices

ExxonMobil plans to forge ahead on increasing oil output over the next five years despite signals that the global market is already oversupplied, the company’s head of shale production told Semafor.

The price of oil on the US benchmark fell below $70 per barrel over the last two weeks, as US President Donald Trump’s rapidly-shifting tariff threats have sparked fears of a recession. There may be more downside ahead: The International Energy Agency warned on Thursday that “deteriorating” macroeconomic conditions and OPEC’s decision to raise its production quotas mean the market will be oversupplied throughout this year, and Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro said the administration would be glad to see prices as low as $50.

Exxon has been preparing for a moment like this, said Bart Cahir, the company’s senior vice president for upstream unconventional. Drilling technology innovations and the company’s $60 billion acquisition last year of rival driller Pioneer Natural Resources have helped drive down Exxon’s production costs, giving it a kind of insurance during one of the most uncertain periods in the industry’s history. Exxon can still turn a profit with prices as low as $35, Cahir said, a price that, apart from the pandemic, was last seen in 2003.

“We believe our operating costs are the lowest in the industry, which means we get more out of each barrel we produce,” he said. “That gives us tremendous resilience when you get into softer parts of the commodity cycle.”

For as long as there’s been an oil industry, people have poured enormous effort — often without much success — into trying to predict future demand. Today, the question is more urgent, and more uncertain, than ever, as the imperative of decarbonization in the face of the climate crisis collides with surging demand in emerging economies. At the CERAWeek conference in Houston this week, there’s been a “reset on the recognition of the pace of the energy transition,” as Cahir put it — a growing sense that the climate ambitions of former US President Joe Biden and other world leaders are losing political momentum and also running into the hard realities of cost and logistics.

If that’s true, it’s bullish for oil. And if it’s not — in other words, if EVs and renewables gain momentum — companies like Exxon have little choice but to drill anyway, cutting costs as much as they can and hoping to be the last one standing.

Energy regulator sees ‘180-degree turn’ under Trump

The Trump administration is giving more freedom to energy infrastructure regulators to approve new electricity projects and gas pipelines, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told Semafor.

Mark Christie, a Trump appointee, said that when he served in a lower role on FERC under Biden he felt pressured by administration officials to veto all fossil fuel projects, even though FERC is meant to be independent and the country is facing what he calls a “reliability crisis” as demand grows and many coal-fired power plants are shut down. FERC will no longer consider the carbon footprint of gas infrastructure other than leaks from the pipelines themselves, Christie said, which will make it easier to greenlight power systems to run the AI boom. “This administration wants us to build stuff,” he said. “It has been a complete 180-degree turn.”

Kyiv’s LNG headaches

Ukraine’s efforts to buy US natural gas are being complicated by the cost and bureaucracy of importing it, the top trader at the country’s biggest private energy company told Semafor. Ukraine’s own gas wells have increasingly become a target for Russian air strikes, most recently during a major attack on Friday; overall gas production has been cut by about 40%, according to Reuters. But Europe has very little gas to spare. So the lack of available gas has become one of the biggest threats to power and heating in Ukraine in the year ahead, said Dmitriy Sakharuk, CEO of D.Trading, a division of DTEK.

DTEK imported its first shipment of US LNG in January, and Sakharuk was in Houston this week shopping for more as the country aims to import 5 billion cubic meters this year. But good deals are hard to find, he said. Existing LNG terminals have most of their capacity already locked into long-term contracts. Even if LNG shipments can be found on the spot market, Ukraine doesn’t have its own regasification terminal, meaning it needs to bring the LNG to Greece and then receive it via pipeline, with steep taxes and mountains of paperwork every time it crosses a border, Sakharuk said. It will take more negotiation between Kyiv and its allies to lower those barriers for the benefit of US exporters and Ukrainian consumers, he said.

In a polarized world, where do people find their happiness? Semafor, in partnership with Gallup and in coordination with the World Happiness Report editorial team, will present the latest data and insights at The State of Happiness in 2025: A World Happiness Report Launch Event, exploring key themes around kindness, generosity, and policies that enhance well-being.

Join Costa Rican Ambassador to the US Dr. Catalina Crespo-Sancho, Finnish Ambassador to the US Leena-Kaisa Mikkola, Icelandic Ambassador to the US Svanhildur Hólm Valsdóttir, special guest Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and more to explore the report’s key themes around kindness, generosity, and happiness and policies that enhance well-being.

March 20, 2025 | Washington, DC | RSVP

EPA’s new mission

Regulations targeted for rollbacks by the Environmental Protection Agency in a sweeping deregulatory push announced by Administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday. In a video posted on social media, Zeldin reframed his agency’s core mission — which, since its inception in 1970, has been the protection of the environment and public health — as being to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.” To that end, Zeldin said, the agency will scrap most of the country’s key environmental regulations, covering everything from car and power plant pollution, to wetland conservation. The result, said Amanda Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, will be the “greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos.”

Renewables surge

Wind and solar energy together produced a record 17% of US electricity last year, overtaking coal for the first time, an Ember review found.

Solar consolidated its status as the country’s fastest-growing energy source, accounting for 81% of all new annual capacity additions. But with wind lagging behind — only 5.1 gigawatts were installed in 2024, the lowest in a decade — it’s a two-horse race between solar and gas to meet electricity demand, now firmly rising after nearly 14 years of stagnation. Solar appears to be winning, though the map is uneven: Major battery scaleups saw California and Nevada surpass 30% annual solar share, significantly higher than the nationwide average — North Dakota, for example, generated just 0.01% of its electricity from solar. Still, “California [and] Nevada are showing how quickly that could increase, if other states were really keen to step up,” said Ember’s Dave Jones, a co-author of the report.

The intrigue? Virginia, home to more than 500 data centers, witnessed the biggest year-on-year increase in gas generation out of any US state. “There’s a definite positive vibe that [fueling data centers] could and should be done with clean electricity, but that’s not necessarily how this is going to pan out,” Jones told Semafor.

Fossil Fuels

• The director of the International Energy Agency said investment was needed in oil and gas fields to support global energy security.
• BP will ramp up US natural gas production in response to domestic prices more than doubling over the past year, having abandoned its goal to cut oil and gas output by 2030.

Finance

• Members of the Net Zero Banking Alliance will vote on ditching a pledge to align their $54 trillion in assets with the Paris Agreement, following the exodus of many leading US banks in recent months.

Tech

• Boston Metal completed its first run of an industrial reactor that uses electricity to make steel, making the startup one step closer to commercializing its greener technology.
• Google, Amazon, and Meta joined energy-intensive companies in signing a pledge to support the goal of at least tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050.

Politics & Policy

• The US Environmental Protection Agency said it was terminating $20 billion in Biden-era grants, citing “substantial concerns” about fraud, waste, and abuse by recipients, as well as “misalignment” with the agency’s priorities.
• The European Commission unveiled new state aid rules that would open up more support for industries investing in renewables.

EVs

• Toyota appears to have plans to develop an electric pickup truck as one of three EVs due out by 2026, though its spokespeople declined to give much away.

Personnel

• US President Donald Trump tapped conservative heavyweight and former Justice Department lawyer Jonathan Brightbill as nominee for general counsel at the Department of Energy.
• Bill Gates-funded umbrella group Breakthrough Energy cut dozens of staff members in Europe and the US.

Geoff Pyatt, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources and ambassador to Greece and Ukraine.

The CEOs of two of the world’s largest energy companies — Amin Nasser of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco and Sultan Al Jaber of the UAE’s ADNOC — both touched on a similar theme at the oil and gas industry’s annual CERAWeek conference: Humanity must not choose between renewables and fossil fuels, Semafor’s Mohammed Sergie reported.

“We can all feel the winds of history in our industry’s sails again,” Nasser said. The overall message wasn’t exactly “drill, baby, drill,” but Al Jaber concluded with: “Let’s make energy great again.”