Donald Trump’s call for a new oil boom will be thwarted by Wall Street’s reluctance to approve another drilling binge, shale bosses have warned.

Total US oil output in Trump’s second term will rise by less than 1.3mn barrels a day, said Rystad Energy and Wood Mackenzie, well below the 1.9mn b/d rise achieved under Joe Biden and much less than in the shale bonanza years in the previous decade.

Executives said investor pressure on companies and the economic realities of a sector always beholden to oil prices would be obstacles to Trump’s quest to launch an era of “American energy dominance”.

“The incentive, if you will, to just drill, baby, drill . . . I just don’t believe that companies are going to do that,” said Wil VanLoh, chief executive of private equity group Quantum Energy Partners, one of the shale sector’s biggest investors.

“Wall Street will dictate here — and you know what? They don’t have a political agenda. They have a financial agenda . . . They have zero incentive to basically tell the management teams running these businesses to go and drill more wells,” VanLoh said.

The reality on the ground could be a disappointment for Trump, who is betting that a big jump in oil supply can beat back US inflation by making goods and fuel cheaper.

“We will bring prices down . . . We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” the president said in his inauguration speech on Monday.

In Davos on Thursday he also called on the Opec cartel to slash oil prices, suggesting this would allow central banks to cut interest rates around the world “immediately”.

But lower oil and gas prices would make shale companies less profitable — and less likely to follow Trump’s command to “drill, baby, drill”, executives warned.

“Prices will be a bigger signal than politics,” said Ben Dell, managing partner at Kimmeridge, an energy investment firm that owns shale assets including in Texas’s Permian Basin, the world’s most prolific oilfield.

After US oil production hit a record high last year, the Energy Information Administration expects output will grow just 2.6 per cent to 13.6mn b/d in 2025 before rising by less than 1 per cent in 2026 due to price pressures.

Some shale producers are also concerned that the best locations have been tapped after more than a decade of breakneck exploration across states such as Texas and North Dakota.

After his swearing-in ceremony this week, Trump signed executive orders to “unleash” new oil and gas supplies and declare a “national energy emergency”. He has also moved to eliminate Biden-era regulations that drillers say increased their costs and restricted activity.

But executives warned that even Trump’s full-throated support for fossil fuels and deregulation could have limited impact.

“As much as the incoming administration is very favourable around energy and power . . . we don’t see a significant change in activity levels going forward,” said David Schorlemer, chief financial officer of ProPetro, an oilfield services company in the Permian.

Producers’ reluctance comes after two decades of soaring growth — and sometimes punishing oil price volatility.

US oil and gas production exploded in the past 15 years as drillers found ways to unlock vast deposits locked in shale rocks. Wall Street funded a headlong drilling race that made the US the world’s biggest oil and gas producer.

But brutal price crashes in 2014 and 2020 triggered widespread bankruptcies, a more cautious approach from investors and a change in producers’ behaviour — especially in the face of softer crude prices.

A recent Kansas City Federal Reserve survey found the average US oil price needed for a substantial increase in drilling was $84 a barrel, versus about $74 a barrel today. 

JPMorgan predicts that US oil prices will drift down to $64 per barrel by the end of this year and shale activity will “slow to a crawl” in 2026.

“If prices are anaemic, you can remove all the red tape you want. It’s not going to move the needle on production,” said Hassan Eltorie, director of companies and transaction research at S&P Global Commodity Insights.

America’s second-biggest oil producer Chevron — a huge shale investor — plans to cut spending this year for the first time since the pandemic oil crash, budgeting $14.5bn-$15.5bn for 2025, down from $15.5bn-$16.5bn last year. Exxon, by comparison, will raise its capex in the coming years.

ConocoPhillips expects to lower spending by $500mn from last year, and Occidental Petroleum and EOG Resources are to hold activity levels roughly flat — decisions designed to please Wall Street.

“The shareholders of these energy stocks . . . if you do more [capital spending] than they would allow, they will scream bloody murder and sell your stock,” said Cole Smead, chief executive of Smead Capital Management, which invests in a handful of oil companies, including Chevron and Occidental Petroleum. 

A security researcher found a hidden unreleased feature in the Waymo app that allowed her to display whatever characters she wanted on the robotaxi’s top display. 

Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known security researcher, posted an image on X on Saturday showing the top display of a Waymo car — officially called “dome” — that included her X handle and other strings of characters. 

“I hacked my Waymo into showing weird texts like empty string, ‘wongmjane,’ and emojis as the Car ID, pls don’t ban me or patch it @waymo lol,” she wrote.

After being pardoned by President Trump, Ross Ulbricht tweeted for the first time in over 11 years, expressing gratitude for second chances and support, while his associated cryptocurrency token experienced a price drop following a three-month surge.

On Jan. 24, Ross Ulbricht made his appearance on X for the first time after 11 years in prison. Ross Ulbricht took to X to thank President Donald Trump, who fully pardoned his sentencing of life without parole and called the sentencing ‘Ridiculous.’

In the X post, Ulbricht emphasized the importance of ‘second chances’ and thanked all his supporters, saying “it is a victory, and it is your victory too.”

Ulbricht was the founder of the Silk Road darknet marketplace. Silk Road operated as a secret service on the Tor network and facilitated the anonymous buying and selling of illegal drugs as well as other goods using Bitcoin (BTC). 

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He was sentenced to life in 2015 after being convicted in a federal trial on multiple counts, including conspiracy to engage in a racketeering enterprise, money laundering, and hacking of computers.

Ulbricht, whose X account was run by his wife until now, previously tweeted that he was not associated with any meme coin bearing his name. However, a cryptocurrency of a similar name was launched in Jun. 2024, which soared as high as $0.04243 on Jan. 22, 2025, the day Ulbricht was fully pardoned by the President.

The ROSS token has now seen a dip in its price after almost three months of being bullish, as per CoinMarketCap.

Does Ross Ulbricht have any crypto holdings to his name?

As reported by Fortune Crypto, Ross Ulbricht had over 144,000 BTCs when he got arrested. After his arrest, nearly $184 million was forfeited by the court, resulting in government auctions of the BTCs. The U.S. Marshals Service disposed of its BTCs in 2014 when the asset’s price crashed to $300. The auctions raised $48 million, a small percentage of the $14 billion they would be worth today. The FBI wallet that sold Ulbricht’s crypto now has a balance of nearly $129,000. 

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As of now, it looks like even as he is pardoned, Ulbricht is unlikely to recover his forfeited assets, as the law does not retroactively return property once the proceeds have been spent. 

Dear Ross,

All of us at Kraken want to make sure that after what you’ve been through, you’re able to land on your feet with the support of the community that loves you most, the ₿itcoin community.

That’s why we’ve donated $111,111 in $BTC to YOU

-Kraken pic.twitter.com/SCnZety71W

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— Kraken Exchange (@krakenfx) January 22, 2025

However, on Jan. 23, Kraken donated about $111,111 in BTC to Ulbricht to help him get off his feet now that he is a free man. 

Better Markets, a non-profit advocating for financial reform, has filed an Amicus brief supporting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its ongoing legal battle with Ripple Labs.

The organization argues that a prior decision by the District Court for the Southern District of New York undermines investor protections.

Ripple’s Victory Under Scrutiny

In its brief, Better Markets claims that XRP qualifies as a security. The non-profit also asserted that the district court’s ruling weakened the Howey test, a cornerstone of U.S. securities laws, by narrowing the definition of “investment contracts.”

According to the organization, the court excluded many crypto transactions from regulations, potentially exposing investors to fraud. It claims that retail traders are at risk since the SEC now has a diminished capacity to protect less sophisticated investors from fraudulent schemes because of the court’s interpretation of the law.

Ripple won a partial victory against the SEC in a case the regulator brought against it, alleging the payments platform conducted an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP.

In that ruling, District Judge Analisa Torres declared the token was not a security when sold to retail investors on crypto exchanges. However, she found it violated securities laws when offered to institutional investors.

Legal Expert Dismisses Better Markets’ Action

Better Markets’ move comes just a week after the SEC formally appealed against Judge Torres’ ruling, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overturn it. While the agency called the judge’s decision “factually and legally” wrong, Ripple’s top attorney, Stuart Alderoty, described the appeal as “a rehash of already failed arguments.”

The brief has sparked reactions from legal experts and the crypto community at large. Some have pointed out ties between the Better Markets CEO Denis Kelleher and the Biden administration, where he was part of the transition team, alleging bias.

Lawyer Jeremy Hogan has criticized the organization’s argument as lacking substance and failing to engage with the court’s finding.

“Better Market’s Amicus Brief was hard to read. Not because I don’t think this case will ever be ruled on by the appellate court, but because it COMPLETELY misses (or misconstrues?) what the Trial Judge ruled,” he said.

• Asus mentioned an AMD microcode flaw in recent patch notes
• The flaw was not yet publicized by the processor manufacturer
• AMD has since confirmed the news

AMD has seemingly confirmed the existence of a microcode vulnerability which apparently spilled, unintentionally, from PC maker Asus.

Security researcher Tavis Ormandy recently spotted a BETA bios fix for a “microcode signature verification vulnerability” apparently plaguing Asus’ gaming motherboards, being mentioned in the company’s release notes.