“Drill, baby, drill,” exulted the new President of the World (American branch), but he will find that the oil and gas industry isn’t listening. As Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, tactfully put it in November: “I’m not sure how ‘drill, baby, drill’ translates into policy.”

For those who prefer plainer speaking, here’s Peter McNally, analyst at oil industry research firm Third Bridge, on the same topic. “Nobody’s got crazy plans to be drilling at accelerated rates. The futures curve doesn’t actually inspire your typical oil producer in west Texas or Oklahoma to do it.”

It’s been all U.S. President Donald Trump all the time for more than a week already, as the great showman hijacks the world’s media with the shocking news that he’s still going to do exactly what he has been saying he will do as soon as he is inaugurated for months or, in many cases, years.

Much ado about almost nothing new, but the media are lazy, it’s cheap and easy, why not? We could spend the next few hundred words going through how many of the things Trump explicitly or implicitly promises, will not actually come true, because a) the United States is a federal country where the states control many matters,........

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