Trump likely to make pipeline push next year, aide says

President Trump is likely to make a renewed push to permit and build oil and natural gas pipelines next year, his top economic adviser said Thursday.

Larry Kudlow said a new pipeline push would be both a continuation of Trump’s aggressive energy deregulation streak and his ongoing infrastructure agenda.

“We need infrastructure, including pipelines,” Kudlow said at an Economic Club of Washington event. “We need east to west, we need west to east.”

{mosads}Kudlow said the need for pipeline is especially strong in the natural gas industry, where drillers, thanks to the boom in fracking and horizontal drilling, are producing more gas than there is pipeline capacity to carry.

He said an executive from an unnamed energy company that drills in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico came to the White House Wednesday and spoke with both him and Trump.

“He’s got more than he knows what to do with. They’re burning it off, flaring,” Kudlow said of the unnamed executive.

Kudlow indicated that Trump’s push is likely to include federal actions to override states that have blocked pipelines.

David Rubenstein, president of the Economic Club, asked Kudlow what the hurdles have been to pipeline development.

“The states have some problems. But we also have some leverage at the federal government,” Kudlow replied.

New York and other northeastern states have been some of the most active in working to block pipeline infrastructure, arguing that construction and the lines themselves would be environmentally disastrous.