The Wall Street Journal’s Misleading Subhead About Oil Companies

“Trump’s Oil and Gas Donor Don’t Really Want to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’“. That’s the headline in a Wall Street Journal news story on November 22 about how U.S. oil and natural gas producers think about energy policy.

That headline is not completely misleading because the story goes on to say that oil and gas producers are nervous about too much oil being produced–for the obvious reason that it would bring down prices. Competitors rarely like competition.

But here’s what is misleading: the subhead. It reads, “Fossil-fuel tycoons helped return the president-elect to Washington. Now they are seeking to lock in the use of their products for years to come.”

Wow, I thought. Are they trying to require people to use oil and natural gas? That would suck.

Actually, they aren’t. What they’re actually trying to do, according to Benoit Morenne and Collin Eaton, the story’s authors, is get the U.S. government to quit locking in use of energy not produced directly by oil and natural gas. In their third paragraph, Morenne and Eaton write:

They are pushing for policies that would lock in fossil-fuel use, such as easier permitting for pipelines and terminals to shuttle fossil fuels to new markets. They also favor eliminating Biden administration policies meant to put more electric vehicles on the road.

It is true that making it easier for pipelines and terminals to exist would make it easier to sell more fuel. But notice the second sentence, where they admit my point. They want to eliminate Biden’s policies to “put more electric vehicles on the road.”

And what are those policies? Morenne and Eaton don’t tell you.

I’ll tell you. The policies they want to end are mandates that would require production of electric vehicles and subsidies to people who buy them. In other words, Biden has locked in EVs and they want to end that lock in.

But that doesn’t quite fit the narrative, does it?

I said above that the headline, as distinct from the subhead, is not completely misleading. But it’s somewhat misleading.

Morenne and Eaton write:

Trump has vowed to place tariffs on trade partners, a move that some people in the energy industry fear could affect the price of steel, an essential well-building component.

With more-expensive steel, there would be fewer wells built. That means less oil and natural gas produced than otherwise. Do Morenne and Eaton see how that concern of oil producers is evidence that at least some of them do want to produce more? Apparently not.

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