WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump offered assurances of better times and coronavirus tests to oil CEOs at a White House summit Friday, but no firm proposals for easing the industry's way as the coronavirus pandemic and plunging petroleum prices threaten America's yearslong fracking boom.
Executives of Chevron, Exxon and other large and medium-size petroleum companies and industry trade groups, as well as Republican lawmakers, met with Trump in hopes of hammering out a U.S.
response. Ramped-up oil and gas production from Saudi Arabia and Russia and the economic slump from the coronavirus outbreak have created a global oil glut, dropping oil prices well below $30 a barrel. “We'll work this out,” Trump promised the oil executives.