Across every industry, country and company, there is one common experience every marketer can attest to: the sudden need to pivot. Despite perfectly laid plans and ample annual planning, no marketing department is immune to changes in the world around them. In our view, it is the marketer’s job to know when to pivot and in what direction.
The cyclical oil and gas business is especially vulnerable to changing market conditions resulting from a variety of uncontrollable factors, including commodity prices, regulatory policy, geopolitics and the health of the overall economy.
Over the past decade, oil and gas operators have centered on sustainability—highlighting emissions reductions and environmental performance to address public concerns and meet regulatory requirements.
In 2025, sweeping new U.S. directives have upended the oil and gas landscape—resetting operator priorities and forcing marketers to rapidly rethink and retool their positioning to stay in the game.
Before the Pivot: How We Got Here
Oil and gas marketing has long been shaped by a mix of regulation, public perception, and evolving industry priorities. In its early days, marketers of solutions targeting oil and gas operators focused largely on price, quality, and reliability.
As environmental awareness grew in the 1970s and beyond, the oil and gas industry faced increasing scrutiny and a rising regulatory compliance burden. Unsurprisingly, marketing shifted toward reputation management, emphasizing safety, compliance, and later, sustainability efforts. The rise of climate change discourse in the 2000s brought even more pressure, with oil and gas brands walking a fine line: defending their value while acknowledging the need for change.
Moving into the 2010s and early 2020s, terms like “ESG,” “net zero,” and “carbon neutrality” became mainstream messaging for large operators and oilfield service companies alike. Driving the ESG trend was BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, when it changed its investment policy to include “climate risk” as a screening criterion for all its portfolios. BlackRock’s Chairman, in a Letter to CEOs in 2020 proved a pivotal moment when he announced the investment company was placing climate risk at the center of its capital allocation strategy and announced among other initiatives that it was “…launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels.” This move made ESG and environmental performance a top concern, and pain point, for oil and gas operators and the companies marketing solutions to them.
On the regulatory front, sharply contrasting government policy stances towards the oil and gas industry between 2017 – 2021 and 2021 – 2025 complicated things further, with service company marketers having to address both sustainability and profitability messages.
Unfortunately, because the oil and gas sector is heavily governed by administrative law, which can shift dramatically with each new administration, operator pain points often fluctuate accordingly, creating a cycle of uncertainty and reactive adjustments.
For Energy Tech and Hard Tech companies marketing solutions to upstream and midstream oil and gas operators, their primary value propositions have had to ebb and flow between “compliance” and “profitability” as policy changed from one administration to another.
New Administration, New Marketing Priorities
If you’ve been in oil and gas marketing for a while, you’d be excused for any fatigue you’re likely feeling. Signals from government and regulatory bodies have been nothing short of a rollercoaster, with each new administration drastically changing the government’s policy stance towards the oil and gas sector. The phrase attributed to legendary baseball player and coach Yogi Berra, It’s déjà vu all over again, certainly applies.
During the Biden administration, we saw immense pressure applied to the oil and gas industry, which put a chill on profitability through stricter emissions rules (e.g., NSPS 60 OOOOb and the Waste Emissions Charge), subsidies for wind and solar energy, pauses in new oil and gas leases on federal lands, and aggressive national emissions goals, just to name a few.
Beginning in January 2025, the U.S. government’s stance on the oil and gas sector underwent a significant shift. The new Trump administration, backed by a GOP-controlled Congress, swiftly rolled back stringent regulations and tax subsidies for renewable energy projects—many of which have struggled to remain financially viable without government support. Simultaneously, policymakers now actively encourage domestic producers to “drill, baby, drill,” with the goal of reinforcing American energy leadership. Over the past six months, we’ve already seen several notable developments:
- January 20th, 2025
- A “national energy emergency” to expedite domestic oil and gas production and export infrastructure projects was declared via executive order.This executive order lifted the pause for new Department of Energy permits for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export facilities.In addition, the order charged agencies with removing regulatory barriers hindering the development and use of domestic energy resources.The US announced they would exit the Paris Climate Agreement for a second time (America left and rejoined previously).
- Plans to open vast areas of previously protected public land and federal waters, including in Alaska, for oil drilling and mining were initiated.
- May 12th, 2025
- The controversial Waste Emissions Charge (WEC), which was approved in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, was disapproved and no longer has force of law.
- June 23rd, 2025
- The Trump administration announces they are restarting efforts to expand oil and gas drilling in California. Over 600,000 acres of federal lands across multiple counties in Central and Central Coastal California are being considered.
- July 3rd, 2025
- The massive OBBBA (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) passed and signed into law – while this bill covers a wide range of topics, it includes provisions that further subsidize the oil and gas industry and cut clean energy initiatives.
- July 28th, 2025
- The EPA announced it had delayed the compliance deadline for the Super Emitter Response Program (SERP) by 18 months, effectively until 2017, saying it uncovered “fundamental flaws” in the 2024 affecting the program’s implementation.
What’s Old is New – Pivoting to the Profitability Pain Point in 2025
While some of these policy shifts may be fresh (and potentially subject to legal challenges), the fact remains that marketers need to ask themselves what pain points are driving operator decisions in 2025, given policy and geopolitical variables.
The prevailing consensus is that U.S. energy policy will continue to favor pro-industry and pro-American energy positions, supported by a more industry-friendly EPA—which arguably has the greatest impact on the sector aside from commodity prices—though certain states, such as New Mexico and Colorado, may pursue more aggressive environmental enforcement.
Today, the generic value proposition for Energy Tech, Hard Tech, and Oilfield Services companies is “maximizing profitability” – these policy changes (while widely welcomed by the domestic energy sector) have reduced the importance of compliance with new regulations and, ironically, softened commodity prices, ultimately putting more stress on overall cash flow and profitability.
Summary
As a cyclical business, the oil and gas industry is subject not just to the ups and downs of commodity prices, but also to public policy driven by social and political macro trends. During the previous administration, sustainability-focused messaging linked to ESG initiatives took on a prominent role in marketing communications. In 2025, oil and gas marketers are pivoting back to profitability as the primary value proposition in response to the pro-development U.S. policy shift.
Although regulatory compliance continues to be an important operational priority, softened commodity prices and cash flow challenges have increased the pressure on operators to prioritize efficiency and profitability.
Energy Tech, Hard Tech, and Oilfield Services companies must adapt their messaging to highlight operational and financial performance benefits, staying agile amid ongoing geopolitical and policy fluctuations.
If you’re looking to sharpen your marketing strategy and drive real impact in 2025, Prism Group is here to help. Reach out to our team to explore how we can partner to help pivot your marketing to profitability – from strategy, message development, content creation, to lead generation – and turn today’s volatility into tomorrow’s value.
About Prism Group
Prism Group is a B2B digital marketing agency focused primarily on Energy, including the Oil & Gas and Biogas sectors. We enhance companies’ reputations with high-quality content consistently published through multiple channels, strengthening thought leadership, building awareness, and converting interest into leads.
