That all sounds lovely on paper, almost noble in its optimism, but the only question that matters is whether any of it survives the 2028 election. And the brutal truth is simple: we don’t know, and we can’t know. You cannot build serious, capital-intensive, long-duration projects on vibes, wishful thinking, and speculative political astrology. Yes, yes, I am aware that countless corporations have gambled their futures on pipe dreams and press-release fantasies that should have made responsible adults physically cringe, but that doesn’t make it sane to repeat the ritual.
The memory of the assault on oil and gas isn’t ancient history. It isn’t some dusty chapter in an economics textbook. It’s fresh, raw, and still slightly bleeding. Offshore projects do not operate on election-cycle timeframes. They don’t pivot neatly every four years like some bright-eyed intern shuffling PowerPoint slides. These things stretch across decades; they require stability, continuity, and the certainty that someone in government won’t wake up one morning and decide to burn it all down to impress a constituency addicted to slogans.
If Trump truly wanted durability, he’d have to attempt something close to political alchemy: codifying regulatory commitments into something constitutionally shielded, something the next administration cannot simply shred for applause. But then you run into an uncomfortable truth—do we even want that kind of permanence? What happens if the predecessor was catastrophic? What if the inherited policy is idiocy carved in stone? Then you’re stuck watching incompetence fossilize into constitutional bedrock.Meanwhile reality, as always, does not wait for political theater to sort itself out. Shale doesn’t operate on romance or grand speeches. It adapts, reacts, adjusts, and fills gaps because its operational tempo actually matches the pace of the world. Offshore projects, for all their grandeur, are slow, ceremonial beasts lumbering through bureaucratic swamps. They look good on glossy pamphlets, they sound impressive at podiums, but right now a lot of this feels far more like propaganda than protein. Nice to talk about, pleasant to imagine — but hardly the dependable backbone of anything resembling strategic certainty.