White House energy adviser says oil companies ‘all on board’ with upping production

HOUSTON — The Trump administration has not received any pushback on its calls to ramp up oil production amid the war in Iran, one of President Donald Trump’s top energy advisers said Monday.

“They’re all on board,” Jarrod Agen, the executive director of the White House National Energy Dominance Council, said at the POLITICO Pub at CERAWeekthe POLITICO Pub at CERAWeek. “They want to increase production.”

The Trump administration has called on oil companies to turn up their production in response to the surge in prices since it launched its war in Iran. But many companies have said privately that they are loath to invest in potentially unprofitable new wells amid the market chaos brought by the war.

Oil prices opened Monday at $98 per barrel before dropping to $88 after President Donald Trump said the United States would pause “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure” for five days as the U.S. and Iran engage in diplomatic negotiations.

Agen said the calls to increase production have come up “in every conversation” at the annual energy confab in Houston, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“The two areas where production can really ramp up is going to be in Alaska and it's going to be in Venezuela,” Agen said. “We have not heard any pushback on wanting to produce more.”

Agen added that he’s getting calls from European and Asian nations, such as Japan, asking whether the U.S. can drill more to make up for the supplies they have lost from the Gulf.

Agen insisted that the White House has been prepared from the first day of the war to address the impacts on oil markets.

“President Trump knows exactly what he's doing,” he said. “He is the master at using energy as a leverage point in foreign policy.”

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