Chris Wright, the chief executive officer of Liberty Energy, has been selected by President-elect Donald Trump to be his Secretary of Energy in the new administration. That Wright was picked undeniably points to his leading position within the energy sector and belief in Trump’s vision when it comes to American energy policy.
Background and education
Growing up in Colorado, Chris Wright developed an interest in engineering and technology. He went on to higher education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, where he earned a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and furthered his studies through graduate work in Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley and MIT. This strong educational platform was to form the base for his future work in the energy sector.
It wasn’t until 1992, when he founded Pinnacle Technologies, that his career really started to take off. That became very instrumental in developing hydraulic fracture mapping technologies, one of the key things to really increase commercial shale gas production. His leadership at Pinnacle set him up as a key player within the developing industry of shale gas.
Liberty Energy and industry impact
In 2010, Wright was a co-founder of Liberty Resources, which is today the publicly traded oilfield services company known as Liberty Energy. Based in Denver, Colorado, under his guidance, Liberty Energy has become one of the biggest players in the North American energy market that provides completion services and technologies to onshore oil and natural gas exploration. Today, the company capitalizes at about $3.33 billion, with about 5,500 employees.
Liberty Energy has also been at the forefront of innovative energy production and has played a key role in about 10 percent of all U.S. energy production-most notably, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a method in which Wright has been very vocal. His pledge to increase fossil fuel production fits neatly within the goals of Trump’s agenda seeking “energy dominance” for the United States on the world stage.
Political involvement and advocacy
Political involvement for Wright has been marked by deep involvement with donating to Republican candidates and causes, including major contributory deals to Trump’s campaign. His ties to the Republican Party have fostered his position as a leading figure in conservative energy circles.
An outspoken critic of climate change initiatives, Wright has been vocal against the government’s policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has fought against the use of renewable energy sources, stating that such efforts are misleading and hurt economic growth. His views only echo many in the fossil fuel industry who believe that further investment in traditional sources of energy is necessary.
In addition to Liberty Energy, he has served on the boards of Oklo Inc., a small modular nuclear reactor company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a company with interests in mining royalties all over the world. The choice of Wright puts him in a singular position to have such varied experiences in all diverse aspects of energy-from oil and gas to nuclear, solar, and geothermal.
Vision as Secretary of Energy
If the Senate confirms him, Wright will likely steer the Department of Energy away from clean energy initiatives developed under the Biden administration toward policies centered on extracting and producing more fossil fuels. The President is convinced that Wright will fuel innovation within the department while cutting burdensome government bureaucracy to unleash more energy development.
Wright will likely focus on the quick hits, lifting restrictions on permits to export natural gas imposed by the prior administration, for instance, and pushing policies that raise drilling on federal lands. His confirmation probably will provide a jolt to efforts to ramp up the U.S. fuel supply and shore up energy security.
In a statement following his nomination, Trump praised Wright as a “leading technologist and entrepreneur in energy,” underlining that he was one of the founders of the American shale revolution that flipped the world’s energy markets.
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