Energy Secretary nominee Chris Wright told key senators that if confirmed, he’d embrace an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy development, sustain funding for research programs, slash permitting timelines, encourage natural gas exports, and accelerate electric grid expansion. During his nearly three-hour Jan. 15 nomination hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to lead the Department of Energy (DOE) said that upon assuming office, he would “immediately” freeze more than $25 billion in loans being processed by the DOE’s Loan Program Office (LPO) in the wake of recent Inspector General (IG) disclosures. Wright, the MIT-educated CEO of Colorado-based Liberty Energy, among the nation’s largest fracking contractors, was less resolute when asked how he’d respond as DOE chief to anticipated efforts by the Trump administration to “claw back” funding in the annual budgets and spending programs authorized over multiple years by Congress….