Newly elected US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republicans in the House of Representatives at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC on November 13, 2024.
Allison Robbert | AFP | Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump was selected on Saturday Freedom energy CEO Chris Wright will be the next energy secretary of the United States.
Liberty Energy is an oilfield services company headquartered in Denver with a market capitalization of $2.7 billion. The company’s shares rose nearly 9% on November 6 after Trump won the US presidential election, but shares have since retreated.
Wright is a member of the board of directors Okaya nuclear power startup backed by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, developing microreactors.
Wright will also serve on Trump’s Council of National Energy, the president-elect said Saturday. The council will be led by Trump’s choice of Secretary of the Interior, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
Wright has denied that climate change poses a global crisis that must be addressed through a transition away from fossil fuels.
“There is no climate crisis and we are not in the middle of an energy transition,” Wright said in a video on his LinkedIn page last year. “Humans and all complex life on Earth are simply impossible without carbon dioxide. That is why the term carbon pollution is scandalous.”
“There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy,” Wright said. “All energy sources have both positive and negative impacts on the world.”
Trump described Wright as a “leading technologist and entrepreneur in the energy sector.”
“He has worked in nuclear energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and oil and gas,” the president-elect said in a statement on Saturday.
“Most importantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch America’s shale revolution that fueled American energy independence and transformed global energy markets and geopolitics,” Trump said.
Trump has pledged to increase fossil fuel production to lower energy costs, although analysts and some oil executives have said the president has little influence over U.S. oil and natural gas production.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the US has produced more crude oil since 2018 than any other country in history, including Russia and Saudi Arabia.
