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Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Here's How Much Energy Secretary Chris Wright Is Worth
Chris Wright testifies on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy at a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on January 15, 2025. Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images C hris Wright took to social media in 2019 to market his oil-and-gas company in an unorthodox way: by taking a swig of fracking fluid from a dixie cup. 'We're doing this demonstration to illustrate that the biggest challenge with energy in the world today isn't toxic chemicals in frac fluid,' he said. 'It's the fact that so many people around the world don't have access to energy that makes long, healthy, wonderful lives possible.' Energy—specifically fracking—has certainly led to a wonderful life for Wright, who cashed in with a series of companies, downplaying the threat of climate change along the way. He ran publicly traded Liberty Energy until the moment Donald Trump made him secretary of energy, then entered office with a fortune of roughly $100 million, enough to make him one of the president's wealthier cabinet secretaries, alongside Howard Lutnick (net worth: $3.3 billion), Linda McMahon ($3.3 billion), Scott Bessent ($600 million) and Doug Burgum (over $100 million). Born in New Jersey and raised in Denver, Colorado, Wright studied mechanical and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, when he was just 27 years old, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which developed hydraulic fracture mapping technology that could measure how fractures grow underground. His timing could not have been much better, coming just before America's fracking revolution. In 2000, while still serving as CEO of Pinnacle, Wright also became chairman of Stroud Energy, a shale-gas production company based in Fort Worth, Texas. He cashed in on Pinnacle in 2002 when Carbo Ceramics bought the company, earning Wright an estimated $9 million in cash and stock. Four years later, Range Resources bought Stroud for about $450 million, and Wright's stake in Stroud was enough to make him tens of millions—and earn him a sabbatical. Wright took a break from the oil-and-gas hubbub after tying up the Stroud deal and finishing his time as CEO of Pinnacle in 2006. 'I went from two jobs to zero jobs, and I thought, 'This is great,'' Wright said. 'I coached my kids' soccer, basketball and little league baseball teams. I did some bike racing.' Around the same time, Wright bought property in Big Sky, Montana, where he built a home at the exclusive Yellowstone Club, the private ski resort now frequented by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Brady and reportedly Taylor Swift. After a few years off, Wright was drawn back into the oil and gas industry. He rounded up some of his old colleagues from Pinnacle and founded Liberty Resources in 2010 while moving from San Francisco to Denver, initially focusing on developing land in the Bakken fields of North Dakota. When he wasn't satisfied with the available frackers, he cofounded his own fracking services firm, Liberty Oilfield Services. The industry took a turn for the worse from 2014-2016, and Wright shifted his focus from Liberty Resources to the service business to try to save the jobs threatened by the downturn. 'Ultimately, people and culture, to me, are the most exciting part of any business,' Wright said. 'I'd never laid off anyone in my life, and I wanted to keep that record alive.' Wright's focus shift ended up being a good move. After going public in 2018, Liberty's stock struggled amid industry downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic. Wright doubled-down, buying oil-and-gas giant Schlumberger's OneStim business, which provided pressure pumping services in the U.S. and Canada. In October 2021, Liberty acquired PropX, which expanded Liberty's ability to deliver and handle proppant, a key substance that keeps fractures in rock open after frac fluid is withdrawn. The company now consistently generates more than $4 billion of annual revenue, four times as much as it did in 2020. 'He's not only extremely smart, he's also a very good business leader,' says Waqar Syed, an analyst covering Liberty Energy for ATB Capital Markets. 'He knows how to convert these great ideas into business ideas, and to make money off it for himself and other shareholders.' Wright served as Liberty's CEO and chairman from the company's inception until he left for Washington earlier this year. At the time he entered the Cabinet, Wright held a 1.6% stake in Liberty Energy worth roughly $50 million. Ethics rules required him to sell his shares shortly after taking office, which proved to be a stroke of good luck for Wright. Liberty's share price has fallen by almost 40% since he resigned, a result of what energy analysts say is another industry-wide downturn. Wright also divested shares of other major energy companies, including Chevron and Expand Energy, putting another $6 million or so in his pocket. He still owns a few smaller oil-and-gas investments, worth less than $1 million apiece. Without the big energy investments, Wright's most valuable holding is now his woodland mansion in the Yellowstone Club, which sits on about six acres, measures 9,500 square feet and is worth an estimated $38 million before debt. Wright also has a couple of homes in the Denver area, worth a total of about $4.5 million before debt, as well as investments in real estate portfolios with properties across the U.S. and Mexico. Other holdings include stakes in BioFire, a private gun manufacturing company making 'smart guns,' and Wayfare Tavern, a San Francisco restaurant. Not that he's focusing much on any of holdings these days now that he's busy working for the president. Wright met Trump in April 2024. 'It was a fabulous dinner dialogue with a number of energy leaders at Mar-a-Lago,' Wright told Forbes. 'I've met politicians before, and they want to have a tagline and take a photo with you. But he wanted to go back and forth and dialogue about energy.' The interaction made him enthusiastic about accepting the job when Trump asked him to be energy secretary. In his new role, Wright—who is called a 'climate denier' by critics but sees himself as a 'climate realist'—seems mostly interested in helping the industry that made him rich. As he told Fox News last month, 'More energy is better than less energy. More affordable energy is better than more expensive energy. It's just common sense.' Forbes Fracker Chris Wright, Trump's Energy Pick, Isn't A Climate Denier–He's A Pragmatist By Christopher Helman Forbes 'The Most Hated Guy On Wall Street': The Unspoken Story Around Howard Lutnick, Trump's Pick For Commerce Secretary By Dan Alexander Forbes Here's How Much Pete Hegseth Is Worth—And It's Less Than You Might Think By Kyle Khan-Mullins
E&E News
04-08-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
How Mike Lee ended up alone in megabill land fight
Sen. Mike Lee had ambitious plans to sell huge swaths of public lands, a long-sought goal for the Utah Republican. In the end, he walked away empty handed and alone. The chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee made the public lands sales one of his signature issues in the struggle to pass what became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But multiple snags proved to be insurmountable, either because of backlash from fellow Republicans or roadblocks from the Senate parliamentarian. Advertisement According to interviews with those involved in the fight, Lee badly miscalculated Republican support for the land sale proposal and failed to do the groundwork to get skeptics on board. 'There was virtually nobody else who supported it,' said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who said his office's phone lines were ringing off the hook over the idea, despite North Carolina not being impacted. 'So I think over time it just tried to die an unceremonious death,' Tillis said. '[It was] even some of the most conservative members of our conference who were voicing the loudest opposition. … He's not wrong about the concept, he was just not wise in the approach he used.' The ferocious campaign against the land sales improbably united both conservationists and the MAGA right. They lambasted the plan as a 'land grab.' Key House and Senate Republicans vowed to blow up the entire bill if the sales were included. For his part, Lee said critics mischaracterized the plan, forcing him to pull the plug. In a recent interview, he declined to say whether he would renew his efforts in a future bill. Lee similarly lost big on his regulation-busting effort, known as the 'REINS Act.' The provision would have gutted federal regulations and dramatically expanded congressional veto power over agency rules, but also ran afoul of the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough. In an interview with POLITICO's E&E News, Lee said he was satisfied with the overall product, even minus two top priorities. His fingerprints were still all over the measure. The bill, for instance, includes a sweeping new oil and gas leasing regime for both onshore and offshore and clawed back billions from the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act. 'I had a lot of things in there that I liked, many of which came from me and and many of which also came from others,' he said. 'There's still a lot in there. Even though I wish we'd done more, we got a lot of good stuff in it,' he said. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) at the Capitol on June 27. He was a vocal opponent of public land sales in the Republicans' budget reconciliation package. | Francis Chung/POLITICO On lands, however, Lee was on an island. His last of several proposal would have sold up to 0.5 percent of Bureau of Land Management land across 11 Western states to build affordable housing, with exceptions for protected areas like national parks, monuments and refuges. Land offered would have needed to be within 5 miles of a population center. Yet in short order, four Republican senators — Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana and Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho — publicly opposed the plan, though there were likely more who would have opposed the idea if it came to a vote. Public lands are wildly popular in Montana, Idaho and many other states across the West, and tinkering with them comes with steep political peril. Daines, who had initially tried lobbying Lee privately to scale back or nix his proposal, was organizing an amendment to strip the provision from the bill. 'We had the votes to strike it on the floor with an amendment, and at that point it got removed from the bill,' Daines said. Others, however, attributed the failure of the public lands provision to poor planning or a lack of understanding of the Western constituency. 'We didn't include enough of the right people earlier in the process,' said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a proponent of certain land sales. 'Parade of horribles' from 'haters' Lee blames the failure of his land sale provision on a coordinated campaign that took root on social media. For weeks, hunting groups, outdoor recreation advocates and even prominent Republicans pummeled Lee's proposal online and urged other senators to oppose it. Some alleged the bill would open up a fire sale of public lands to foreign nations and venture capital groups. In Lee's view, this online 'parade of horribles' succeeded by alleging that such lands would be bought up by China or by investment management firms. Those things were 'never going to happen, but took on a life of their own,' Lee said. 'They turned out to be very effective messages.' To assuage those concerns, Lee said, he needed to add safeguards to the public lands provision that would have jeopardized its eligibility for passage by simple majority under the budget reconciliation process. A bull elk in Yellowstone National Park. Hunters were just one of many groups to come out against the public lands bill. | Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images Senate rules dictate that everything within a reconciliation measure must be budgetary in nature. Any added language to bar land purchases by financial firms or foreign governments would have fallen outside that budgetary nexus, Lee said — which is why he ultimately opted to withdraw. 'That was a tough thing, and fairly unique to the combination of it being a reconciliation bill and the timing in which this massive online campaign was launched in order to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt on it,' he said. Cramer agreed that the online campaign helped tank the land sales provision. 'The influencers out there are pretty effective,' he said. Yet he pushed back on the main idea that took root online, that any form of public land sales would destroy the American West and remove outdoor recreation opportunities for Americans. 'There are some haters who just think that the land should be returned to the era of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark — who I have great affection for — and that's that. And you can't satisfy them. But I do think it was such a modest request, that it should not have been impossible to do,' Cramer said. 'Biggest bullshit in the entire world' The online push was broad and included some prominent Republicans. That included the likes of Chris LaCivita, President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign manager, alongside troves of hunting groups, including one that counts Donald Trump Jr. as a board member. And one of the advocates involved in the lobbying push to kill the provision, who was granted anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes developments, disagreed with Cramer and Lee's blaming of social media pushback for the proposal's failure. 'He wasn't giving up because of the pushback, that is the biggest bullshit in the entire world,' the person said. 'He only gave up because he knew he didn't have a chance.' The advocate also said Lee is scapegoating the online resistance for the proposal's failure, when the senator's real problem was his colleagues in the Senate. 'He's just trying to find a scapegoat and blame somebody for the loss … there were a lot of neutrals, but there wasn't a single senator that was like, 'Yeah, I think this was a really good idea,'' the person said. 'It's not about BlackRock or China … he's missing the complete point where people just don't want this to happen.' Though he has previously said he would try again on land sales at some point in the future, Lee seemed to hedge in a recent interview. He said it is 'too soon to speculate' on whether he would try to integrate land sales into another reconciliation bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he's hoping for additional reconciliation bills — one as earlier as this fall. If Lee were to revive his land sales push, he could potentially see new support from other senators. Cramer speculated that a stand-alone measure to sell small portions of public lands in order to build housing could gain traction, and potentially even bipartisan interest. When Reps. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) and Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) pushed a land sales amendment in the House version of the GOP reconciliation bill, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) slammed them for not including bipartisan language to promote conservation. Other land sale plans have also included protections elsewhere. 'I think legislatively we can still do something similar,' Cramer said. 'But include the right people early in the process.'
Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trump's Permitting Chief Wants To Take ‘Yes' For An Answer
FILE - President Donald Trump holds an executive order regarding the reform of the Nuclear ... More Regulatory Commission in the Oval Office of the White House, May 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Efforts to streamline federal permitting processes related to energy projects of all types have been long promised by officials in both the executive and congressional branches of government, but real progress has been hard and slow to come by. The complexities of the issues and the broad array of competing stakeholders, along with lawsuits which often delay progress for years at a time, all combine to create a permitting morass which is extremely hard to untangle. Former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, then the powerful chairman of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, ran into this wall when he tried build a critical mass of support for semi-comprehensive legislation in the wake of the passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Despite having made a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in exchange for his becoming the deciding Senate vote on the IRA, Manchin was unable to put together a majority in either house of congress. WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 29: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) arrives for a Senate Committee on Energy and ... More Natural Resources hearing on Capitol Hill on September 29, 2022 in Washington, DC. Earlier this week, Manchin announced that he would move forward on government funding legislation without his signature energy permitting reforms included. (Photo by) The simple reality is that none of this is simple: If it was, it would have already been done. Emily Domenech Wants to Change the Permitting Culture This is where Emily Domenech comes in. Appointed by President Donald Trump in May to lead the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council), Domenech's mission is to lead the executive branch's search for innovative ways to speed up the process while maintaining environmental protections and respecting stakeholder rights. Emily Domenech, Executive Director of the Permitting Council. As I've written here previously, it is a simple fact that the vast majority of federal permitting mandates and delays emanate from major statutes governing environmental protections. These are longstanding laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which were enacted with bipartisan support and have attained broad public buy-in. 'I think everyone would agree that these laws were well-intended when they were first written,' Domenech told me in a recent interview. 'But,' she continues, 'they're a little out of date, and frankly, have been expanded far beyond what Congress originally intended.' Pointing to NEPA as an example, Domenech notes that it's a 12-page law which has led to thousands of pages of complex regulations as bureaucrats in previous administrations have worked to expand the scope of their authority. 'That doesn't make any sense,' she explains, 'If Congress gives you clear directives, you should be able to follow them without adding on thousands of new requirements that change with every administration. That just doesn't work.' It isn't just about revising processes and regulatory restructuring: A culture shift needs to happen. Mining: A 29-Year Permitting Endurance Test When then-President Joe Biden promised in July, 2021 to mount a 'whole of government approach' to onshoring mining and supply chains for an array of minerals critical to the success of the wind, solar, and electric vehicles industries, many pointed out the reality that none of this can happen unless those new mines, plants, and factories could obtain timely permits to move forward. The Biden White House's lack of focus on speeding the permit process meant his administration ended with precious little to show for the whole-of-government approach that failed to address this key element. Where mining is concerned, Domenech points out that 'no one's financing from the private sector if it takes you 29 years to get a permit, which is the average time it took to get a permit for a mine in America until this administration.' That has all begun to change over the last six months as the Permitting Council has named at least 13 new mines to qualify under the Fast-41 transparency process to speed environmental reviews required under the NEPA law. Included among the new list are mines for lithium, copper, molybdenum and other critical and rare earth minerals. 'We have an incredibly abundant country with incredibly available resources that are just waiting to be tapped into,' Domenech says, 'but unfortunately, particularly in the critical minerals and mining space, the federal government has been the primary impediment to developing those resources. That's backwards. We have to turn that around.' Indeed, the turnaround has already begun, as three of the mines have received their final permits to proceed in recent weeks, including the first new domestic coal mine in years, the Hurricane Creek Mining, LLC to mine coal on Bryson Mountain in Claiborne County, Tennessee. The Department of Interior approved the permit 'through expedited environmental review under newly established procedures designed to speed up reviews of energy projects in response to the national energy emergency declared by President Trump earlier this year.' Nuclear Also Has a Need for Permitting Speed Amid a rising consensus that the U.S. will need a major expansion in its nuclear power fleet to meet rapidly-rising electricity demand driven by AI datacenters, Domenech says big changes must take place in the way nuclear projects are permitted. Fortunately, those efforts have already begun. Pointing to Trump executive actions and provisions in the recently-enacted One Big Beautiful Bill Act, she says, 'Congress has taken some great steps forward when it comes to nuclear. We've prioritized investments in research. We've empowered the Department of Energy to build first of their kind reactors on DOE sites. You saw that reflected in some of President Trump's executive orders on nuclear in the last few months.' There is also a pressing need to modernize the decades-old regulatory structure and administrative processes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to better reflect both the evolution of nuclear technologies and current societal needs. 'We've also directed the NRC to change the way they think,' she says. 'We have the gold standard of nuclear regulation here in the United States, but unfortunately that often leads to a position where the default is to build nothing. The safest option is always to do nothing. And unfortunately, that's not the safest option when it comes to our national security in the long run because we must be able to make these investments.' That default to doing nothing is an approach which evolved out of America's lone significant nuclear power incident, which took place at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island facility 46 years ago. Today's nuclear technology is vastly safer than the technologies that were in place half a century ago. 'The new, innovative technologies coming online today are incredibly safe,' Domenech notes. 'They are built and designed with safety as the top priority. So, we have to change the culture over at the NRC to say, how do we get to 'yes' in the safest way possible?' The Permitting Road Ahead Domenech is quick to point out that these same principles, the same need to find ways to change the default permitting answers from 'no' to 'yes,' apply all forms of energy projects. She is also fast to note that this can and must be done while continuing to ensure proper focus on protecting the environment. 'America has an incredible track record when it comes to environmental responsibility,' she says. 'We are a prosperous nation that has the ability to invest in not only our environmental standards, but also conservation in a way that doesn't exist in the rest of the world.' Domenech's view is that America's track record of leadership on protecting the environment is perhaps the best argument for speeding the permitting of new domestic energy projects. 'Building it here in the United States, changing that default answer to 'yes,' is not only best for our national security, it's also best for the environment. And that's something I think people miss all the time.' The fact that she doesn't miss that key factor helps explain why Domenech was the choice to head up the Permitting Council during such a crucial inflection point in America's energy history.
Wall Street Journal
19-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
America's Big, Beautiful Land Sale
Uncle Sam owns nearly half of the land west of the Rockies, and GOP lawmakers want to give states and businesses a tiny piece of the action. Selling a small amount of federal land would raise revenue and spur development, so why are some Republicans trying to protect the government's hoard? The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee announced a plan last week to sell public land as part of the GOP's reconciliation bill. The proposal designates about 258 million acres of land—40% of federal holdings—as potentially available for sale. It directs the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to sell up to 3.3 million acres from these designated zones. The areas up for sale would exclude land with dedicated uses such as national parks and monuments, and land previously leased for mining, energy production and other activities. The plan directs federal agencies to prioritize selling land that is near existing roads or suitable for home-building. Agencies would consult governors before auctioning land in their states, and state and local governments would have the right to make an offer before private bidders. The selloffs would put unused resources in the hands of owners who commit to invest. The available land includes areas that are sometimes used for cattle grazing, but ranchers and other users would have ample time to comment before these parcels are sold. The sales would also raise money to offset tax cuts in the rest of the bill.
E&E News
12-06-2025
- Business
- E&E News
Committee releases megabill text with land sales
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee released its portion of the Republicans' megabill Wednesday, formally reinserting language on public land sales. The text would require 'the prudent sale' of certain Bureau of Land Management and forest lands, according to a summary. The land would be used for 'housing, increased timber sales, geothermal leasing, and compensation of states and localities for the cost of wind and solar projects on federal land.' Advertisement The House-passed version of the megabill didn't include a Natural Resources Committee amendment on land sales after some Republicans — mainly Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) — balked at the prospect.
