WASHINGTON — American energy production hit all-time maximums under just-departed President Joe Biden, but that is not stopping his successor from declaring an “energy emergency” to increase oil drilling.
“We will drill, baby, drill,” President Donald Trump said in his inaugural speech in the U.S. Capitol. “We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth, and we are going to use it ― we’ll use it. We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top and export American energy all over the world.”
Trump, who promised during his campaign to cut gasoline and electricity costs by at least half in his first year in office, Monday night signed an order that directs federal agencies to “identify and exercise any lawful emergency authorities available to them” to hasten energy development and transportation, including by weakening processes put in place to protect the environment and endangered species. A separate order makes available vast areas of Alaska for oil and gas drilling.
How much Trump’s new actions will increase domestic oil production is unclear.
Because oil is traded on a global market, Trump will need the world’s largest producers in the OPEC cartel to go along with his plan and not undermine it by cutting production as the U.S. increases production, as they have done in the past.
“He will have to seek foreign influence from OPEC to bring down prices, and I think that is a situation that will escalate because they will resist and he will threaten them,” said Matt Randolph, an oil industry executive with more than three decades of experience in the business.
“I can’t imagine anything in an ‘energy emergency’ executive order that would actually increase energy production,” he added. “Opening land that was closed that nobody ever drilled on, speeding up permits that aren’t going to be used for years anyway, none of it adds up to oil and gas being pulled out of the ground. It’s most likely all performative.”
U.S. production of oil entered a steady decline from November 1970 until the dawn of Barack Obama’s presidency in November 2008. Thanks to the advent of a new drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the U.S. petroleum output roughly doubled from 5 million barrels per day to just under 10 million barrels by Obama’s last year in office.
Following a brief dip at the start of Trump’s first term, production once again soared to about 13 million barrels per day before the COVID-19 pandemic ground the economy to a halt. With cars and factories idled, demand for oil plummeted and prices briefly fell into negative territory, forcing the booming oil fields in Texas and North Dakota to cut production.
Under former President Joe Biden, oil boomed once again. Last summer, U.S. production soared past Trump’s record level and continued climbing through the November election.
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Production of natural gas, which every U.S. administration this century has promoted as a cleaner alternative to coal, rose steadily since former President George W. Bush’s second term.
“Instead of addressing the real emergency of the climate crisis, like the ongoing fires in California, Trump’s plan to declare an energy emergency is another attempt to boost the profits of his fossil fuel donors rather than help the American people,” Elizabeth Bast, the executive director of the anti-fossil fuel climate group Oil Change International, said in a statement Monday. “United States production of oil and gas is already at a record high, while American jobs in oil and gas have declined and global demand for fossil fuels is expected to peak in the next five years.”