Over the last year President Trump has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to making America a dominant player in the world energy markets. This rhetoric has underpinned a set of policies designed to deregulate and encourage oil and gas activity. But a quick look into the nature of those policies and current energy markets reveals a more complex story, one where the 2017 growth in U.S. oil and gas industry is tied to market forces and already existing liberal trade policies that ended the ban on U.S. crude exports and expedited LNG exports. This is consistent with our expectations in early 2016.
