As someone who has worked in policy and government relations in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, I have always paid close attention to what presidential candidates of both parties say, or don't say, about energy in their acceptance speeches.

Most of the time, it was what they didn't say that was more important. (Related article: Luke: Republican National Convention speech reveals something about Trump that few Americans realize)

There have been many speeches like this since I first started paying attention to them in 1980.Reagan versus Carter) said literally nothing on the subject, and most of the other candidates only spoke a sentence or two about energy.

Energy and its costs aren't top of mind for most Americans in an election year, but that's changed with the Biden administration's focus on inflationary green subsidies and growing public awareness of the central role that skyrocketing energy costs play in the price of food and every other aspect of life.

After being astonished at how much time former President Donald Trump spent on energy issues during his time in office, Acceptance speech On Thursday night in Milwaukee, I decided to look through the transcript of the 90-minute speech to see just how many words the president said on the subject. To my surprise, it was 1,000 words. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this is the most any candidate has said about energy in such a speech in American history. (Related article: “Something's happening”: Ex-President Obama adviser compares Trump's support at the Republican National Convention to the 2008 landslide victory)

The former president promised a return to the “drill, drill, drill” oil and gas policy that characterized his first term and spoke at length about other plans for his second term.

• He openly mocked parts of Biden's Green New Deal — at one point saying “they spent $9 billion on eight chargers, and three of them didn't work” — and called Biden's obsession with pushing electric cars on a reluctant public a “ridiculous Band-Aid on electric cars.”
• President Trump has promised to end Biden's “EV mandate” the day he is sworn in. A complete repeal will likely take a bit longer than that to achieve, as some of the pro-EV policies implemented by the Biden Administration will be through regulatory action.
• He spoke at length about Chinese companies' plans to flood the U.S. EV market with cars made in Mexico or imported to the U.S. from China via Mexico, and said it was “shameful” that the United Auto Workers union continues to support Biden and other Democrats while this is happening.
• He accused the Biden administration of spending “trillions of dollars” on a “new green scam.” “It's a scam. And it's creating enormous inflationary pressures on top of our energy costs.”
• “Only three and a half years ago, under Trump's presidency, we were energy self-sufficient,” Trump noted, which is true: During Trump's presidency, the United States produced far more energy than it consumed, and for many months during that time it was a net exporter of oil, natural gas and coal.
• Trump continued, “But pretty soon we'll be better than that. We'll be the masters of energy, not just for ourselves, but for the rest of the world.” Well, maybe not the rest of the world, but most of the world for sure. This is a political speech, after all, so a little hyperbole is in order.
• Trump also criticized the Biden administration for reversing the tough stance he took on Iran during his presidency, saying, “I said to China and other countries, 'If you buy from Iran, you won't be able to do any business in this country. I'll put a tariff of over 100% on everything you import from Iran.' And they said, 'Well, I guess that's it.' They weren't going to buy any oil. And… Iran was going to make a deal with us.”

His speech contained much more about energy, but the gist was this: Trump's second term in office will likely begin by reversing as many of the previous policies as possible. Biden's Green New Deal Start there if at all possible. (Related article: David Blackmon: Putting Trump back in the White House would upend Biden's 'energy ideocracy')

It's fair to say that no presidential candidate has ever been as committed to energy as Donald Trump is today, and we'll see if it pays off in November.

David Blackmon is a Texas-based energy writer and consultant who worked in the oil and gas industry for 40 years and specializes in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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