October 7, 2025

OFFICIALS AND EXPERTS TO DISCUSS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY AT 4TH ANNUAL PENNSYLVANIA OIL REGION SUMMIT OCTOBER 13–14, 2025

In the birthplace of the modern oil industry, leaders and experts gather to examine how Pennsylvania’s energy legacy can inform the nation’s future on energy and environmental security.

Oil City, Pennsylvania — Senior officials, policymakers, and global energy and environmental experts will convene in Northwestern Pennsylvania’s Oil Region National Heritage Area on October 13–14, 2025, for the fourth annual Drake Dialogues, a high-level conference addressing the evolving relationship between energy development, national security, and the environment.

Andrew J. Tabler, President and Cofounder of the Drake Energy Security Forum, an Oil City native, author, and former U.S. official, leads this year’s effort alongside local organizations and community partners. The initiative brings together Venango County residents, civic leaders, and national experts to reaffirm the region’s global significance as the birthplace of the modern energy industry. Steven Burns, former White House Director for Energy Security and a Titusville native, joins as this year’s Drake Dialogues Chair.

This year’s event, titled “Where Now for the Energy Transition?”, invites participants to move beyond traditional policy divisions and engage in open, substantive discussion on national and global energy challenges—set against the backdrop of Pennsylvania’s fall foliage. The region’s history—from the first commercial oil well drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859, to its recovery from environmental and economic challenges—positions it as a vital constituency in America’s political and modern energy landscape.

Keynote and Program Overview

The keynote address will be delivered by Mike Sommers, President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API)—an organization that, in 1934, helped establish what is now the Drake Well Museum & Park.

The 2025 Drake Dialogues are organized by the non-profit Drake Energy Security Forum, in collaboration with the Oil Region Alliance (ORA) and the Venango Area Chamber of Commerce. (Guest registration is closed due to capacity limits.)

On October 13, the “Community Transition Seminar and Tours” will take place at Oil City’s Oil Region Venango Campus and Standard Oil’s National Transit Building. Discussions will include:

• “The Hunt for Orphaned Oil Wells”
  
  

• “Fueling the Future: Leveraging Local Energy to Power the Data Economy”
  
  

• “Energy at a Crossroads: Rural America’s Future Under the Administration-Led Energy Transition” — a fireside chat with U.S. Representatives Mike Kelly and G.T. Thompson moderated by the Commonwealth Foundation
  
  

• “Preserving Historic Buildings for Modern Use”
  
  

The session concludes with a tour of the Venango Museum of Art, Science and Industry. This community-focused program aims to foster dialogue between local leaders and national stakeholders about future opportunities and lessons learned from the region’s 166-year relationship with the oil industry.

On October 14, the invite-only “Drake Dialogues” will take place at the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Drake Well Museum & Park, featuring interactive panels on topics such as:

• Evolving Energy Sector Trends and Emerging Technologies
  
  

• Can the U.S. Have It All? Energy Dominance in a Transitioning World
  
  

• U.S. Natural Gas and the Global Market
  
  

• Energy Infrastructure and Market Access
  
  

• Energy and National Security
  
  

The event will also feature a special address from Mark Pearson, President & CEO of Liberty Resources, LLC. 

Distinguished Participants

The Dialogues will feature distinguished participants representing government, academia, and industry, including:

• Representative Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District
  
  

• Representative G.T. Thompson, Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District
  
  

• Senator Scott Hutchinson, Pennsylvania State Senate (21st District)
  
  

• Senator Camera Bartolotta, Pennsylvania State Senate (46th District)
  
  

• Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, former National Security Advisor, Washington Institute
  
  

• Fahad Alajlan, President, KAPSARC
  
  

• Adam Sieminski, Senior Advisor, KAPSARC
  
  

• Ben Cahill, University of Texas at Austin
  
  

• Landon Derentz, Atlantic Council
  
  

• Michael Ratner, Congressional Research Service
  
  

• Francesco Maria Graziani, EU Commission in Washington DC
  
  

• Fred Hutchison, LNG Allies – The U.S. LNG Association
  
  

• Elizabeth Lieberknecht, Environmental Defense Fund
  
  

• Kevin Book, ClearView Energy Partners
  
  

• Brenda Shaffer, Naval Postgraduate School
  
  

• Representative R. Lee James, Pennsylvania State House, 64th District
  
  

• Representative Jim Struzzi, Pennsylvania State House, 62nd District

And other leaders from U.S. agencies, academia, and the private sector

Local and Heritage Perspectives

“The birth of the petroleum industry put the Oil Region on the map and gave us our National Heritage Area designation,” said John R. Phillips, II, ORA President and CEO. “We continue to interpret and preserve this history, but also deal with the environmental and economic aftermath first-hand through our brownfield reclamation work and building acquisitions and redevelopment, all of which we are excited to share with attendees of this year’s summit.”

“The last three years’ deliberations between rural leaders and energy experts showed the real value of stepping away from the bustle of the city and our offices in order to think strategically,” said the Venango Chamber’s Susan Williams. “The Oil Region in October is a beautiful setting for thought leaders to meet and contemplate the nexus of energy and climate before us all.”

Cultural and Historical Programs

Confirmed attendees will also participate in:

• A welcome dinner at Oil City’s “The Exchange” (the recently restored site of the world’s first dedicated oil exchange where the global price was set for decades)
  
  

• A community lunch at Oil City’s Belles Lettres Fine Arts Club
  
  

• A visit to Standard Oil’s National Transit Building, now the Oil City Civic Center
  
  

• Tours of the Venango Museum of Art, Science and Industry
  
  

• A heritage reception and rail excursion aboard the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad
  
  

• A heritage dinner at the Titusville Iron Works (a converted 19th-century factory and oil memorabilia event center)
  
  

The conference celebrates shared heritage between Pennsylvania’s Oil Region and Baku, Azerbaijan, both of which claim early modern oil wells. Andrew Tabler helped reestablish connections between the two heritage sites in 2022, linking their historic roles in the origins of global petroleum. Oil City and Baku signed a sister city agreement in 2023.

Media Access

Members of the media are encouraged to cover the event and may request interviews on site. Please contact info@drakeenergysecurity.org with valid press credentials to pre-register.

Contact

Drake Energy Security Forum
📧 info@drakeenergysecurity.org
🌐 DrakeForum.org

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/U.S.-elections-2024/Trump-and-Harris-camps-clash-over-energy-transition-with-eye-on-Asia

U.S. elections 2024

Trump and Harris camps clash over energy transition, with eye on Asia

Republicans say Democratic green energy policies 'handcuff' economy to China

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and former U.S. President Donald Trump have decidedly different takes on energy transition.  © Reuters

KEN MORIYASU, Nikkei Asia diplomatic correspondent

October 22, 2024 18:00 JST

TITUSVILLE, Pennsylvania -- With two weeks to go before the U.S. presidential election, the campaign of former President Donald Trump is highlighting its differences with Vice President Kamala Harris on energy, especially in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, a leading natural gas producer.

Trump maintains that Harris wants to ban hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which involves the use of highly pressurized blasts of water and chemicals to extract natural gas and oil from subterranean rocks. The vice president, who backed a ban during her unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, now says she would allow the practice.

Pennsylvania sits atop a rock formation called the Marcellus Shale, estimated to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. Trump, a Republican, has vowed to accelerate the drilling of oil and gas and use the revenue to pay down the U.S. debt and cut taxes. Critics say fracking contributes to climate change and releases chemical compounds that are harmful to the human body.

Since the beginning of October, Trump's campaign has run a TV ad titled "Give a frack" in Pennsylvania and Michigan, slamming Harris' previous support for a ban on fracking. Her policies will lead to new taxes, higher gas prices and job losses, the ad says.

During a rally in the Pennsylvania city of Latrobe on Saturday, Trump returned to the theme, saying: "Starting on Day 1 of my new administration, I will end Kamala Harris' war on Pennsylvania energy."

The Harris presidential campaign released a statement on Oct. 1 saying Trump's energy policies would let polluters "write their own rules," benefiting Big Oil at the expense of the American people and allowing other countries to charge ahead with "clean energy innovation."

A Harris administration "would create good-paying clean-energy jobs and secure America's energy independence," it said.

Energy was not among the leading topics of either campaign's ads until recently. Republicans had focused on inflation, the economy, housing, immigration and crime, according to AdImpact, an analytics firm that tracks political advertising.

The Republican stance on energy also mixes in geopolitics.

At the Drake Energy Security Forum held last week in Titusville, the birthplace of the U.S. oil industry, conservative panelists took particular aim at President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes electric vehicles and the use of renewables.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the IRA would instead increase inflation through higher energy prices and "handcuff" the U.S. to China because that country is home to the top makers of solar power plants and wind turbines, as well as EV battery producers.

Brenda Shaffer, a faculty member of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and a political independent, said that if the U.S. abandons fossil fuel too quickly, "we're voluntarily making our own electricity more expensive, less reliable [and] more dependent on our enemies for the inputs to this new energy system."

American energy policy needs to consider the recent alignment of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, she said. This alignment addresses key strategic weaknesses of the U.S. rivals, such as China's dependence on imported energy and the susceptibility of Russia and Iran to sanctions.

"This alliance between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea solves all the problems," Shaffer said. "China not only gets uninhibited access to Russian and Iranian oil, but thanks to our sanctions on Russia and Iran, it gets it at a discount."

Similarly, sanctions have little effect on Russia and Iran because they have access to the huge Chinese market, she said.

Harris, who cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate in 2022 to pass the IRA, has called the legislation "the single largest climate investment in American history."

Sarah Bianchi, a former deputy U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, said in a recent visit to South Korea that the IRA will end up being one of the most important laws in U.S. economic history, "but that doesn't mean that every day it feels like a clear win for everyone."

Bianchi, now a chief strategist for international political affairs and public policy at investment banking advisory firm Evercore, said though Democrats could point to "new investments, new factories, new jobs," they also need to respond to Trump's attempts to fuel anxiety, particularly in battleground states like Pennsylvania.

"There ... needs to be a sensitivity because transitions are bumpy for certain segments, and this one will be, too," she said.

During a seminar at American University in Washington on Thursday, Daniel Fiorino, the university's director of the Center for Environmental Policy, said the Harris campaign is "being cautious about climate and energy" as it seeks to win Pennsylvania.

"There is this perception that dealing with climate mitigation means higher energy prices," he said. "A lot of climate advocates are giving her room, because they realize the alternative is catastrophic for climate change."

Trump has vowed to impose a moratorium on new spending under Biden-led bills such as the Inflation Reduction Act. But whether Trump would seek a repeal of the IRA is debatable.

At the Drake forum, Robert Johnston, senior director of research at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said a "reform" of the law would be more likely, because many of the battery investments spurred by the IRA are clustered in Republican states of the Rust Belt and the Southeast.

"If you look at some of the states that are going to be 'red' states and have strong Republican support, they are benefiting from some of these projects, which will certainly add complexity to any potential repeal," he said.

Additional reporting by Steven Borowiec in Seoul