While Donald Trump’s ambition to “drill, babe, drill” for more fossil fuels has been ironically hampered by the economic turmoil unleashed by his own tariffs, the US is still in orbit to increase oil and gas extraction, causing a surge in the planet’s heat emissions.
The United States is already one of the world’s leading oil and gas powers, producing more fossil fuels than any other country in history during the Joe Biden administration. But Trump tried to escalate this further, declaring an “energy emergency” to open more land and oceans to dig deeper and fire unprecedented attacks on environmental regulations in the first 100 days at the White House.
This new political landscape means that the expected amount of greenhouse gas emissions from active and planned projects in US oil and gas fields has jumped under Trump after previously falling under Biden.
Despite awarding more drilling leases in his first 100 days than Trump, Biden also pursued policies to combat the climate crisis, where oil and gas companies correct production estimates. That situation is now reversed, threatening the pulsation of new pollution, which increases the heat generation of planets already suffering from heat waves, floods, droughts and other disasters accelerated by global heating.
“The rise in embodied emissions expected to produce US oil and gas is a concern,” said Olivier Boyce von Kursk, policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which tracks project lifetime emissions forecasts based on data from research consultant Tristad Energy. “The world can’t afford any more climate disruption.”
Trump has already taken more than 140 initial measures, reversing environmental regulations, promoting the use of fossil fuels, dismissing established climate science as a “massive hoax” and recommending further drilling.
“We have more liquid gold than any other country on the planet, and now I fully allow the most talented team ever gathered to go and get it,” the president told Congress in March. “It’s called a drill, a baby, a drill.”
This embarrassing support for fossil fuels is warmly welcomed by the fossil fuel industry, which has donated heavily to Trump’s campaign. “Drills, babies, drills” won’t be fully realized unless Trump can push for a major sector deregulation and tax cuts, but the US will move towards about 13.5m barrels per day to a record peak of 15m barrels per day, according to Rystad’s projection.
“In the first 100 days, President Trump kept his promise to “drill, baby, drill,” a White House spokesman said. “We’re just starting out, achieving historical results at record speeds.”
The International Energy Agency, which predicts global oil and gas demand will peak by 2030, says that no new major fossil fuel projects will emerge to prevent catastrophic climate impacts as the world remains within agreed temperature limits. Last year was the hottest and recorded worldwide, with governments compiled to meet targets to avoid a comprehensive disaster.
But his own economic policies have clouded Trump’s ambitions for more drilling in the United States. Oil and gas are exempt from the barrage of tariffs imposed by Trump, but the industry is swayed by the fear of a recession amidst an increasingly unstable trade war from tariffs placed on materials such as steel needed for the pipeline.
The first 100 days of the Trump administration have been the worst start of a stock market presidency since the 1970s, engulfing many fossil fuel companies with stock prices falling.
The price of American crude barrels has briefly fallen below the $60 threshold, a threshold for which businesses cannot make profits, before they have been marginally edged in recent weeks. Oil cartel OPEC recently increased production with Trump’s promotion, putting even more downward pressure on crude oil prices.
This sparked rage within the oil and gas department that otherwise supported Trump. “The administration’s disruption is a disaster for the commodity market. “Drills, babies, drills” are nothing more than a rallying cry of myths and populists,” one executive said in a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Another said: “I have never felt any more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-year career.”
After the newsletter promotion
The full impact of tariffs has yet to be seen, but industry expectations are “completely crushed” by imposing, according to Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at Rystad.
“The investment has been pending and expectations for economic growth have been dramatically reduced,” Garimberti said. “U.S. production will not grow in the next five years, just as it has grown in the last five years. There will be a lot of volatility until the tariffs are actually settled.”
Rystad expects concerns about the recession and oil prices, dating back to around $70 a barrel later this year, but the renewable energy outlook could be even more challenging.
Trump has already stopped approving new solar and wind projects on federal lands and waters, criticizing what he calls a “fraud” grant for clean energy. Solar panel tariffs in Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia reach a maximum of 3,521%. “We don’t want windmills in this country,” the president said shortly after taking office in January. “We don’t want windmills. Do you know that other people don’t like them? Those huge solar fields.”
Although more than 90% of the new electricity added to the US grid this year is expected to come from solar, wind and batteries, the administration’s shift towards renewables has already impacted planned projects that are overwhelmingly located in rural and suburban areas of the Republican Party.
Nearly $8 billion in planned investments and 16 large clean energy projects and 16 large clean energy projects have been closed, cancelled or reduced, according to E2, a nonpartisan business group. “While clean energy companies still want to invest in the US, the uncertainty about the future of the Trump administration’s policies and the key clean energy tax credits is at a clear cost,” said E2 spokesman Michael Timberlake.
The economic disruption from the fluctuating prices of oil and the effects of the climate of burning oil and other fossil fuels could be mitigated if “government and investors make wise choices.” “Clean energy is more competitive than ever and is eroding the demand for fossil fuels.”