President elect Donald Trump wants to ‘drill, baby, drill’ for oil – but is it possible for America to continue relying on planet-polluting fuels?
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‘We will drill, baby, drill,’ said US president elect Donald Trump in a speech earlier this year, making it undoubtedly clear what the Republican party’s stance is for the future of the oil industry: one of continued growth and scaled-up plans to grow the country’s output of what Trump coins ‘liquid gold’.
The oil sector, once a powerhouse of economic power in previous decades, has dwindled in popularity in recent years around the world. Increasingly, big companies are pulling out of oil basins such as the North Sea in favour of cleaner energy sources.
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But despite such consequences, the US has produced a record-high amount of oil and gas under the Biden presidency, surpassing previous records set in 2019.
With Trump pledging to double down on using fossil fuels, and promising to halt wind turbines in the country on ‘day one’ of his presidency, there seems little sign of America’s use of fossil fuels slowing.
So what exactly is behind the ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra? And is this future something that is logistically possible?
Expansion to the Arctic
Currently, crude oil is produced in 32 US states as well as in US coastal waters, and it is the biggest producer of oil in the world, ahead of the next largest, Russia, by 40 per cent. There are clear top-producing oil states within the US which make up 72 per cent of the country’s total production: Texas (42.5 per cent), New Mexico (13.3 per cent), North Dakota (8.9 per cent), Colorado (3.7 per cent) and Alaska (3.7 per cent).
While Trump has expressed a desire to increase oil drilling on public lands, offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers as well as expedite the approval of natural gas pipelines, there are also more far-reaching areas that the current president has sought to utilise.
Previously, the Trump administration has attempted to push forward plans to drill in the Arctic national wildlife refuge – considered some of the last pristine wilderness with vital migratory bird habitats – justified by the Republican Party under the suggestion it would lower energy costs. The Arctic coastal plain planned to be drilled – representing 8 per cent of the Arctic refuge – is believed to hold billions of barrels of oil, and remained protected until 2017, when a Republican-controlled Congress added a provision to a tax bill to let the area be opened for oil development.
Under Trump’s last presidency, environmental, conservation and Indigenous groups filed lawsuits, arguing that such drilling would lead to irreversible damage to Arctic biodiversity, Alaska Native tribes such as the Gwich’in people, and the wider global climate if such a plan were to go ahead.
‘The Gwich’in people’s identity is connected to the land and animals,’ said Quannah ChasingHorse Potts, a member of the Gwich’in Youth Council. ‘We have lost so much [that] we can’t afford to lose more.’
Drilling in the Arctic also poses severe risks in the event of oil spills. Due to its remote location – with the nearest Coast Guard base more than 1,000 miles away – and extreme weather conditions, an adequate response in the event of such a disaster would be limited.
Lingering toxic substances in waters could also affect polar bears and walruses, while noise pollution from such a move would severely hamper vital echolocation communication between beluga whales and other species in Arctic waters.
Back in 2020, many corporations also opposed providing funding to any fossil fuel operations in the Arctic refuge, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Goldman Sachs.
So it’s clear that entering Arctic territory is a divisive move – but could the Republicans also find an answer to scaling up America’s oil production that lies closer to home?
Not as slick as it looks
On public lands alone, the US currently uses more than 12 million acres to produce fossil fuels, equivalent to six Yellowstone National Parks. These lands, degraded from their former state, are devoid of the vegetation and habitats once used by wildlife, taking centuries to fully revitalise even after oil wells are abandoned.
The environmental cost of continuing to use fossil fuels cannot be understated: they contribute more than 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions.
Despite these effects – and vocal about his support for oil and gas – the current president’s policy plan on his website pledges to restore the US to the world’s biggest oil and gas producer in the world, in order to provide ‘reliable’ and ‘affordable’ energy for Americans in every state.
And in theory, it is possible that the US could lean more into its own oil supply, a decision that would however butt heads against the reams of scientific evidence that points towards the relationship between increased fossil fuel usage and planetary ill-effects.
At the cost of all these environmental impacts, the US produced 18.4 million barrels of oil per day and consumed 18.12 million barrels per day back in 2020. Yet, in 2022, the country still imported 7.86 million barrels each day. The Republican party lean into the supposed financial benefits that could be reaped if America shifted to this dynamic – and more permits were issued to drill for ‘cleaner’ US oil – according to the former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
But, while it might seem plausible that producing oil domestically is cheaper than shipping barrels half-way across the world, that isn’t necessarily the case. In reality, it is unlikely the US would rely solely on its own oil production, precisely because of cost. It is in fact often cheaper to buy overseas oil, and ship it to the US, than for America to make its own – the top suppliers for the country being Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Brazil.
In analysis conducted back in 2020, onshore Middle Eastern oil fields have the cheapest cost in the world per barrel, sitting at $31, significantly cheaper than those deepwater US wells at $43 a barrel. That is also a modest estimate – some US barrels, particularly those obtained using fracking, cost more.
Besides price, there is also one more problem, and quite a significant one. The oil that the US produces is the wrong type of crude oil.
Traditionally, the US has imported heavy and less sweet oil (ones that have less sulphur, and are easier to break down into gasoline, jet fuel and other components), found in Russia and the Middle East. This is oil often referred to as ‘heavy sour’.
Reliant on imported oil for so long – which has a different composition to the US’s oil itself, known as ‘light sweet’ – means that the infrastructure within the country to process oil is geared toward the imported type.
The variation between these two types of oil – heavy sour and light sweet – is distinct enough to require different processes in refinery. So when it comes to producing oil in Texas, for example, there are not an adequate number of oil refineries around the US designed to process it.
Even if the US did suddenly gain enough refineries to process their light sweet oil, there would still be another issue. The position of where oil is coming out of the ground is not ideal. Without enough pipelines across the country to transport oil to where it is needed, it is quickly difficult to actually utilise US oil, according to GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan.
All in all, this combines to make the US more reliant on imported heavy sour oil than it potentially could be, and could potentially thwart Republican plans to produce more and more oil in the country without careful consideration to these factors.
While a future slicked with ‘liquid gold’ may be a vision set firmly in the Republican party’s mind, the road to obtaining that reality has layers of complexity which need to be untangled before the US’s oil industry can be given the green light to go full speed ahead.
Whether the Republicans increase the proportion of America’s landscapes given to the oil industry – or decide to enter Arctic territory – is a future that none of us can predict. But with Trump’s declarations to drill, baby, drill and ‘unleash’ the US oil sector during his presidency, there are undeniable limiting factors at play – namely financial and logistical – that will make oil expansion a more carefully-considered decision than at first glance.
There is, of course, another factor: the undeniable environmental toll of expanding the use of fossil fuels too. More emissions, accelerated global warming and a continuation – and worsening – of all the ill-effects of a broken climate we are familiar with. With COP29 around the corner, the true extent of our damaged planet will be revealed in more pain-staking light, as other countries continue to shift away from non-renewable energy.
There are glimmers of hope to be had at the efforts of other countries. Just because the US may be flexing its fossil fuel muscles, the overall sentiment across the world is one that points toward a cleaner and more renewable outlook on energy.
‘In summary, Trump may slow down the transition away from fossil fuels and allow other countries to delay action – but the writing is on the wall both politically and economically for fossil fuels,’ says Professor of Climatology at UCL Mark Maslin. ‘It is when – not if – fossil fuels cease to be used as an energy source.’
