Redefine Abundance
America’s prosperity has always been tied to a simple idea: when people are free to build, trade, and compete, living standards rise. Energy is the bloodstream of that system. Affordable, reliable energy lowers the cost of everything—manufacturing, transportation, food, housing, and the digital economy that now touches every job.
The Abundance Institute exists to argue for that basic truth in a world that often forgets it.
My family has been part of the oil industry across generations. I’ve seen up close what energy work really is: not an abstraction or a talking point, but a vast network of skilled people—operators, welders, geologists, engineers, truck drivers, accountants—building the infrastructure that keeps the lights on and the economy moving. That experience leaves you with a bias toward reality: you can’t run a modern society on slogans.
Abundance is not a moral compromise
Public debate about energy often gets trapped in a false choice: either you care about prosperity or you care about the environment; either you support markets or you support “the public.” That framing is backward. Abundance—more output, more competition, more innovation—is the most practical path to cleaner outcomes and human flourishing.
When markets are allowed to function, they do something politics struggles to do: they reward better solutions at scale. Innovation isn’t commanded into existence. It is discovered—through incentives, experimentation, and the feedback loop of profit and loss.
The goal shouldn’t be scarcity with better branding. The goal should be abundant, dependable energy alongside continuous improvement in efficiency and emissions—driven by competition and technology.
The rule of law is energy policy
Energy projects are long-lived and capital-intensive. They depend on predictable rules. When permitting becomes arbitrary, when standards shift midstream, when enforcement is selective, investment flees. Costs rise. Projects die. And the people who pay are rarely the people who wrote the rules.
That’s why the rule of law matters. Clear rules that are applied consistently protect the “little man” more than anyone else:
They protect workers and small contractors who can’t absorb regulatory whiplash.
They protect consumers who get crushed by price spikes.
They protect communities that depend on stable employment and tax base.
They protect entrepreneurs trying to build the next improvement—whether that’s in oil and gas, refining, pipelines, power, or new technologies.
A society that wants investment must offer predictability. A society that wants innovation must allow permissionless iteration. And a society that wants fairness must apply rules equally.
Free markets require free information
Markets aren’t magic. They require truth—honest prices, real costs, transparent tradeoffs, and data that isn’t manipulated for political convenience.
When information is distorted—when energy realities are hidden behind messaging—policy becomes performative. People make decisions on fiction. That’s how you end up with chronic underinvestment, fragile supply chains, and “solutions” that look good on paper and fail in the real world.
Free people need free information. And free markets depend on it.