Trump can’t ‘drill, baby, drill’ his way out of this Iran oil crisis
President Donald Trump promised “taste, baby, drill” on the presidential campaign trail.
This won’t get him out of this situation oil crisis Lawmakers and analysts say he encouraged the war he started in Iran.
Trump and Republicans last year aggressively stepped up policies on fossil fuels after storming to election victory in 2024 on promises to lower the cost of living, including lowering gas prices.
The signature domestic policy bill, known as the “big and beautiful” tax and spending measure, opened new avenues for oil and gas leasing. The administration has moved to remove regulations that the fossil fuel industry sees as obstacles. And he pursued an aggressive leasing program to operate more drilling rigs on federal lands and waters.
Now Trump faces a crisis from which he has little chance of emerging. The war in Iran has left oil markets in tatters, with the Strait of Hormuz remaining largely impassable. The Strait carries approximately 20% of the world’s oil supply. Analysts and lawmakers say the United States is unlikely to rapidly increase drilling to fill the gap.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a Women’s History Month event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 12, 2026.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
“No, the amount is not there,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I don’t care what you do with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or drilling, you can’t recoup that kind of amount.”
“No matter what happens, you’re still going to see a big impact on gas prices. … It’s going to take months to see how long it takes to get back to normal,” Heinrich said in an interview.
The phrase “Drill, baby, drill” was popularized in 2008 by John McCain’s vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin. In the nearly two decades since, it has become a Republican rallying cry, and Trump has used it in his rallies in the 2024 presidential campaign.
As governor of Alaska, Palin announced drilling in her state and in the Gulf of Mexico. The New York Times reported This month, no bids were made for the Trump administration to open Alaska’s Cook Inlet to new offshore oil and gas exploration.
According to December data, the United States currently produces approximately 13.7 million barrels of oil per day. Energy Information Management. Last week, the United States refined nearly 16 million barrels of oil per day.
Oil also depends on global market conditions; This is why closing the Strait of Hormuz is so devastating. The Strait carries approximately 20% of the world’s oil, and the world demands more than 100 million barrels of oil per day.
“What matters is overall supply and demand, and given what’s going on in the Middle East right now, that’s going to be unbalanced for a very significant period of time,” Heinrich said.
Analysts agree. Brian Prest, an economist and researcher at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research group focused on natural resources, said it is unlikely the volume of oil needed to offset the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could be extracted domestically. This is despite US production being very high over the last few years.
“You would need to see large increases in U.S. production for them to show up as meaningful percentages of total global supply,” Perst said. “The United States has seen a huge increase in oil production in the last 15 years, but that’s exactly what happened; it took 15 years.”
“I can’t imagine you’re going to see huge swings from the US alone that will stabilize the market during a war that they hope will last a few weeks,” Perst said. The war reached its two-week mark on Saturday.
According to Iraqi port authorities, near Basra, Iraq, on March 12, 2026, a foreign tanker carrying Iraqi fuel was damaged after catching fire in Iraqi territorial waters following unidentified attacks targeting two foreign tankers.
Muhammad Horse | Reuters
There are also signs that U.S. oil producers do not plan to rapidly increase oil and gas production to take advantage of higher prices. Oil prices rose rapidly at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the number of rigs in the US increased modestly, reflecting the price increase, the total US crude oil production It has continued its steady rise since 2010.
Much of this increase has been driven by technological advances in drilling, particularly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have greatly increased production in places like the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas; not a fire sale of potential new drilling.
Even Republicans, who spent much of Trump’s second term touting “energy dominance” and “energy independence,” acknowledge that more drilling will not pull the United States out of the oil crisis in the short term.
Senator John Hoeven from RND said that increased oil and natural gas drilling, which the Trump administration is trying to propagate, will reduce prices in the long run, but right now the priority to reduce prices is to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“The key in the near term will be how this dynamic plays out in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said in an interview. “If this is handled fairly well, even if there is a perception that this is going to take a little longer, that will be mitigated.”
“In the long run, as we continue to grow and continue to increase that number over time, that will actually drive down the oil markets, prices will get cheaper, and make us even less dependent on the Middle East,” Hoeven said. “But this is longer term.”
Although the Trump administration is trying to find a way for ships to pass through, the strait remains effectively closed so far. And oil markets remain bullish, despite falling briefly this week when Trump said the war could soon be over.
US oil futures It closed above $95 on Thursday. And BrentThe global index rose above $100 after Iran’s new religious leader said that the Strait of Hormuz should remain closed.
