Chevron CEO Mike Wirth made clear on Wednesday that he will not miss the Biden administration, briefly breaking from the diplomatic language major oil executives typically adopt when discussing politics. Wirth slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to ban new oil and gas drilling in 625 million acres of waters along the U.S. coasts, while indicating that he looks forward to working with the incoming Trump administration. “It’s one last gasp of poor politics from an administration that never really understood energy investment in America,” Wirth told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan in a wide-ranging interview. The CEO said it is possible that oil will be discovered in those waters, and they should be free for development if resources are found. President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he will revoke Biden’s ban on his first day in office, though this may require an act of Congress rather than a simple executive order. Wirth said Chevron would “certainly support efforts to reverse the ban that President Biden enacted.” The CEO said he expects Trump will encourage investment in U.S. energy across the board. Also, the administration will likely be stacked with officials friendly to the oil and gas industry. The president-elect, for example, has picked Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy . “We’ve got an incoming administration, particularly in some of the key agencies, that has deep energy experience, deep energy knowledge,” Wirth said. Trump campaigned on a platform to unleash energy production, but Wirth sought to temper expectations on that front. The U.S. is already the largest oil producer in the world, the CEO said, indicating that production growth will likely slow in the coming years. “There’s still some upside, but probably not growth at the rate that we’ve seen over the last number of years as particularly some of these new shale plays begin to mature,” Wirth said. The Biden administration accelerated the expansion of renewable energy in the U.S. through the Inflation Reduction Act, but Wirth said oil, coal and natural gas still represent the backbone of the energy system. The CEO sees a big opportunity for natural gas on the horizon as artificial intelligence data centers consume a growing amount of electricity. Wirth said Chevron will help supply these data centers with gas , hinting at more specific announcements on the horizon. “These data centers need 24/7 power at a high degree of reliability,” Wirth said. “Wind and solar are intermittent. Coal is going out of the system. And so we really do see a big opportunity for natural gas over the next several years.”
