“Drill, baby, drill!” This campaign slogan came up minutes into Donald Trump’s inauguration address, as the new US President announced his plans to boost domestic fossil-fuel production and exports and curb climate action. This push for US oil and gas production will probably be endorsed by the Department of Energy, the Department of Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency — now led by vocal supporters of fossil-fuel development.
Some level of oil and gas extraction was always going to continue in the coming years. Some cleaner fuels, such as hydrogen, are derived mostly from natural gas — boosting hydrogen was a hallmark policy of the Biden administration, which saw record levels of US fossil-fuel extraction. Now, Trump has made clear that he aims to expand drilling, declaring an ‘energy emergency’ on day one of his presidency. But this needn’t mean the end of US decarbonization efforts, nor further environmental degradation. What’s important is that it is done right.
What Trump’s flurry of executive orders means for science
The US government has direct control over oil and gas development only on federal lands and waters, which host just 11% of US oil production and 9% of its gas. And opening up more federal lands, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil and gas drilling, as Trump has threatened to do, will be neither quick nor easy. Several laws protect these lands, including the Clean Air (1963), Safe Drinking Water (1974) and Endangered Species (1973) acts. It would take acts of Congress to overturn them — and major rollbacks are unlikely to be widely supported by the mostly moderate legislators across the US House of Representatives and Senate, in line with their constituents’ preferences.
Trump has issued an executive order to encourage energy exploration on federal areas. But any drilling initiative can, and probably will, be immediately challenged by environmental groups. The initiatives would then have to wind their way through the court system to get approved. Drilling on federal territories might not even be economically competitive, because these regions are often more remote and harder to access than other resource deposits.
As an energy geographer, I study state energy policies and their impacts on communities and ecosystems. The public often worries that energy policy is dictated by the oil and gas industry through ‘model bills’ written by pro-business lobbying groups. But my colleagues and I have found that, in fracking regulation for example, states often relied more on each other’s regulations to strike the right balance between permitting fracking to boost employment and lower energy prices and safeguarding the environment (J. Baka et al. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 70, 101734; 2020).
Trump will weaken climate action — the rest of the US must not follow suit
States should retain their own regulatory frameworks to ensure environmental protection. Independent groups such as the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission can help with these efforts. The organization was founded in 1935 to facilitate communication on fossil fuels between oil and gas regulators, providing a space for state officials to promote balanced regulatory approaches.
