WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Energy Department’s loan office should fund oil and gas infrastructure, a White House aide said on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump’s administration moves away from supporting projects designed to curb climate change.
“One of the big problems is, in the past the … Loan Program Office has been used for a lot of these renewable projects,” Jarrod Agen, a deputy assistant to the president and executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, said at a Politico conference on energy.
The administration is changing the priority of the LPO, meant to help finance emerging energy projects that show promise but face difficulties getting bank loans. “So, yes, we want to invest more and prioritize projects that are oil and gas-related, nuclear-related,” Agen said.
The Loan Programs Office grew rapidly under former President Joe Biden, thanks to legislation passed during his term. It has hundreds of billions of dollars in loan and loan guarantee capacity.
Trump’s energy dominance council has focused on increasing already record-high oil and gas output and cutting climate and pollution regulations on fossil fuels.
It was not immediately clear what oil and gas projects, which typically have little trouble getting bank financing, Agen was referring to.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said LPO financing is one option on the table to support Alaska LNG, a long-shot, expensive project to ship liquefied natural gas from the north of the state to consumers in Asia.
In his first term, Trump only used the LPO to finance the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.
Wright told a hearing in the House of Representatives he wants to offer LPO financing for nuclear projects, critical minerals and “potentially even geothermal.”
The White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget requests a $750 million credit for the cost of loan guarantees for small modular reactors.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have pushed to slash LPO’s lending.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Andrea Ricci and David Gregorio)
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