Hope may have been Barack Obama’s campaign tagline.
But for at least one US-based conventional oil and gas player it has more resonance as President Donald Trump’s message to the energy industry.
Robert “Rusty” Hutson Jr, chief executive officer of Diversified Gas and Oil (DGO), describes Obama’s two terms as commander-in-chief as “interesting, for sure”.
But he is quick to point out that, in his opinion, the former president did little to help the oil and gas industry during the downturn.
Hutson Jnr said: “I think he [Obama] really did a disservice to the country in terms of developing energy. I think all energy sources need to be explored.
“He had the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cracking down heavily on oil and gas and coal.
“That almost resulted in the direct killing of coal.
“That was a very tough eight years in a lot of different ways.”
Hutson is in charge of 7,500 gas and oil producing wells in the Appalachian Basin, one of the largest oil and gas fields in the US.
DGO produces around 5,000 boepd, and has a strategy of picking up other firm’s non-core assets at a good price.
So when Trump finally committed to the presidential campaign with promises of a renewed outlook on American energy policy, it was music to his ears.
Hutson said: “When you hear someone say that they are going to be pro-energy – pro-oil and gas, pro-coal, it obviously gives us some comfort that if he was elected then it would be someone we could rely on.
“Someone that would cut back regulation and give us the ability to produce and develop our asset base in a way that – not against environmental policies – but to develop them without being caught up in tape.”
And the campaign trail policies have not all been hot air now that Trump is in the Oval Office, according to Hutson.
He said: “We’ve seen immediate results.
“One of the first thing he was able to do in office was immediately approve applications for pipelines that had been out there for several years.
“Those had been held up by the previous administration.”
Set up in 2001, DGO was listed on the AIM wing of the London Stock Exchange at the start of the year to help raise around $50million of capital to fund further acquisitions.
That combined with Trump’s vows to make life easier for oil producers, is where the hope for the future comes from for Hutson.
He added: “The beauty of it is that now we are seeing the ability to be a net exporter of energy for the first time in our country’s history.
“That’s exciting for us. Every market that we can get to with our production is a win.
“It’s all about supply and demand at the end of the day, and if we can move gas to other countries like the UK or Europe, where the reliance is on Russian gas, then that’s a big win.”
Lower tax rates are another big win, Hutson said.
The only thing that could threaten these changes, Trump also seems keen to deal with.
Huston said: “The wildcard in all of this is foreign policy.
“That’s the one thing that you cannot predict.”
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