Story by Adam Kemp |PBS News| When Rhiannon Kymer opened the doors of her Oklahoma oilfield supply store in January, she was betting on a boom.
Kymer, 44, and her father and business partner, Henry Burdick, closely watched the run-up to the November election as they planned the launch of their store, which is stocked with pipe fittings, valves, regulators, gloves and gaskets and other supplies for outfitting an oilfield truck.
WATCH: Trump pushes for more oil and gas production and a roll-back of climate initiatives
The plan was to open their store in Weatherford, Oklahoma, no matter what. But Kymer was hoping for a victory for Donald Trump, who promised to “unleash” oil and gas production.
“When he said ‘Drill, baby, drill,’ I took that as a sign that better days are ahead,” Kymer said. “Business has been steady so far, but I’m expecting things to really take off in the coming months.”
A boom, she said, is on the horizon.
Rhiannon Kymer and her father Henry Burdick stand outside their new oilfield supply store in Weatherford, Oklahoma, for its grand opening. Photo courtesy of Rhiannon Kymer, edited by PBS News
Kymer isn’t alone in her optimism. Across Oklahoma and other petroleum-producing states, industry workers and business owners say Trump’s policies and promises to slash environmental regulations, boost domestic drilling and fast-track pipeline projects have injected new life into the oil and gas sector. Since taking office, Trump has declared a “national energy emergency” while rolling back Biden-era climate and energy initiatives.
Oil and gas employment has been climbing in Oklahoma since the pandemic-induced collapse in 2020, though it has yet to reach the highs of the early shale boom. About 43 percent of the state’s some 138,000 energy workers are in the fuel sector, with tens of thousands more in related industries, according to a 2023 Energy Department report.
Nationally, the oil and gas industry supported more 2,040,000 jobs in 2023 according to the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association’s (TIPRO) latest state of energy report.
Roy Birdine, 53, said he’s worked jobs in the oil and gas industry for the past three decades. He has seen the ups and downs of the industry and ridden the waves of hiring sprees and layoffs. Right now, Birdine is filling in as a long-haul truck driver, while he keeps an eye out for jobs in the oil and gas sector. Though the industry can be sometimes inconsistent, Birdine said the pay is good and he likes doing the work.
He hopes Trump delivers on those promises of putting oil and gas experts like himself back to work, but he’s skeptical of any boom coming.
“I think he’ll be good for the industry, I just don’t know if that will translate to more jobs,” Birdine said. “The rollback of some of these regulations is great for the company bottom lines, but I’m not so sure it’s going to put people back on rigs.”
The American energy landscape looked dramatically different a decade ago. Between 2010 to 2015, the U.S. saw a surge in domestic production, fueled by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, helped make the United States the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas. But the price crash that followed in 2015 led to mass layoffs and company bankruptcies. The pandemic’s arrival in 2020 led to another collapse, with U.S. crude prices briefly plunging into negative territory. The industry has since rebounded, but it has done so with fewer workers and greater automation.
Tom Kloza, a senior oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service, said forecasts show that the Trump administration is in line to increase oil production in the U.S., but highlighted recent job cuts at Chevron and BP as a sign that jobs in the sector might not be as promising.
“We’re not necessarily looking at any meaningful lift in industry jobs,” Kloza said. “There will be lots of additional jobs in places like Guyana, Namibia and other exotic destinations but Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, North Dakota and some of the big players might at best be flat.”
The U.S. has recently produced more crude oil than at any other time in history, notching an all-time high in 2023. Even so, producers in Oklahoma say they have felt stymied under stricter permitting and environmental restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, which focused on reducing fossil fuels as part of its fight against climate change.
The oil and gas industry has felt “under assault” for the last four years, said Brook Simmons, president of the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma. He believes that new policies will encourage efforts to ease restrictions that were imposed on companies during the last presidential administration.
Trump’s early executive actions on oil and gas took aim at boosting oil and gas production, encouraging drilling, and speeding up pipeline construction. One executive order, dubbed “Unleashing American Energy,” expedites oil and gas production permitting and rescinds some environmental regulations, Another order directed the U.S. to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, an international treaty to reduce global warming.
“This is an incredible resetting of priorities across the board when it comes to energy,” Simmons said of Trump’s orders. “The previous administration’s priorities were almost nonsensical. Now, we have some return to pragmatism.”
READ MORE: Diamondback Buys Double Eagle IV in $4.08 Billion Deal
Oklahoma-based Continental Resources has welcomed the shift from the Trump administration. Harold Hamm, the company’s founder and chair, called Trump’s new policies a “game-changer for America,” bringing renewed confidence to an industry that has felt constrained by regulatory hurdles.
Hamm, who put more than $4.3 million into political action committees that supported Trump, according to The New York Times, said in a statement to The Oklahoman that the Trump administration’s focus on tamping down regulations and expanding resource access will allow energy companies to develop the nation’s vast mineral wealth more effectively while strengthening economic and national security.
“The vision of energy independence is one strongly embraced by Donald Trump,” Hamm said in a statement. “We’re optimistic, as are many Americans, that we have an incoming president who understands the importance of the energy sector.”
Kloza said it’s true that the Biden administration required more permitting and regulations for companies, but added that the real indicators for growth in both production and jobs will be related to the price of crude oil. If the prices stay high, it’ll be, “‘Drill, baby, drill, like the president says.”
Geopolitical influence, such as the war between Russia and Ukraine, is also a huge factor, Kloza said.
Right now, millions of barrels of Russian crude oil are sitting on ships in the water as U.S. sanctions continue to prevent its distribution.
“There’s a circus of uncertainty with Trump,” Kloza said. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
For Kymer, Trump’s promises mean everything.
After her store’s grand opening, she decided to hire some part-time help and was shocked at the flood of applications that hit her inbox.
People seemed so eager to take a job for less than half of what oil-field work could pay. But then she thought maybe they just wanted a job with steady pay and consistent hours — something they can rely on.
