US energy loan office should fund oil, gas, White House aide says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Energy Department's loan office should fund oil and gas infrastructure, a White House aide said on Tuesday.

"One of the big problems is, in the past the ... loan program office has been used for a lot of these renewable projects," Jarrod Agen, a deputy assistant to the president and executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, said at a Politico conference on energy.

The Loan Programs Office grew rapidly under former President Joe Biden, thanks to legislation passed during his term, and has hundreds of billions of dollars in loan and loan guarantee capacity.

Agen said the administration is changing the priority of the LPO, which is meant to help finance emerging energy projects that show promise but face difficulties getting bank loans. "So, yes, we want to invest more and prioritize projects that are oil and gas-related, nuclear-related," Agen said.

President Donald Trump's new energy dominance council has focused on increasing already record-high oil and gas output and cutting climate and pollution regulations on fossil fuels.

In his first term, Trump only used the LPO to finance the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia.

The Trump administration wants to offer tens of billions of dollars in LPO financing over the next two years to projects developing nuclear and geothermal power and minerals used in everything from wind and solar power to weapons systems, according to the White House budget for fiscal 2026. Republicans in the House have pushed to slash LPO's lending.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Andrea Ricci)