President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to vastly expand oil production in the United States upon taking office next year, despite the fact that domestic oil production already hit a record high under President Joe Biden.
In fact, Semafor reports that the current high rate of oil production is a "fundamental obstacle" to Trump meeting his promise.
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods tells Semafor that he doesn't see how Trump can push American oil production higher in the near term given what they have already accomplished over the past several years.
“I don’t think today that production in the US is constrained,” he said. “So I don’t know that there’s an opportunity to unleash a lot of production in the near term, because most operators in the US are [already] optimizing their production today.”
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Woods also cautioned Trump against scrapping regulations on methane emissions put in place by the Biden administration, as he believes that fossil fuel companies can successfully develop technology capable of burning fossil fuels while emitting less pollution than traditional methods.
Additionally, he thinks that a constant back-and-forth in environmental regulations that swings wildly from one administration to another creates regulatory uncertainty.
"The polarization and political back-and-forth that we see in [the US] is not good for the country, not good for society," he explained to the publication. "It’s frankly not good for business. What we need is more thoughtful, consistent regulation.”