DONALD TRUMP likes oil—and oilmen. He gushes about “liquid gold” with as much ferocity as Spindletop, an oil well that spat out perhaps 1m barrels over nine days in 1901 and turned nearby Houston into a boomtown. In his first administration he named Rex Tillerson, former chief executive of ExxonMobil, America’s mightiest hydrocarbon firm, as secretary of state. On February 3rd the Senate blessed Chris Wright, who founded an oil-services firm called Liberty Energy, as head of the Department of Energy. Mr Trump promises that on his watch big oil can “drill, baby, drill” to its heart’s content.
