Why no president has slowed the U.S. oil boom

As he campaigned for president in 2020, Joe Biden made a bold promise at a New Hampshire town hall, adding repetition for emphasis: “No more drilling on federal lands. Period. Period. Period. Period.”

Four years later, it appears that Biden may have overpromised.

The Biden administration has now outpaced the Trump administration in approving permits for drilling on public lands, and the United States is producing more oil than any country ever has. The unplanned fossil fuel boom reflects an uncomfortable truth for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris: It is difficult for any president to stop the spigot of U.S. oil production, a leading driver of both the economy and climate change.

“If you were to show someone who came from Mars the line of U.S. oil and gas production over the last 15 years, they probably would not be able to tell whether a Republican or Democrat was in the White House,” said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.

Oil drilling continues to be a core issue in Donald Trump’s quest to retake the White House. Trump and his supporters argue that Biden and Harris have waged “a war on energy.” The former president has pledged to “drill, baby, drill” and to restore America’s “energy dominance.”

The reality is the United States is already dominant. The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year - millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.

Biden’s signature 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, has also helped boost production of solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy. On Friday - the two-year anniversary of the law - the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has awarded $27 billion worth of grants for clean-energy projects nationwide.

Yet Biden has struggled to significantly wean the U.S. economy from fossil fuels because of legal obligations, political challenges and market demand, according to interviews with a dozen current and former administration officials, energy analysts, climate activists and others who have worked closely with the White House.

In June 2021, a federal judge struck down Biden’s pause on oil and gas leasing on federal lands, delivering a win to Republican-led states that had challenged the policy. Then in February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled global energy markets, fueling high prices at the pump and record profits for big oil companies.

Harris could face similar obstacles if she beats Trump in November. But some former administration officials say Harris could avoid what they see as Biden’s missteps on fossil fuels.

Biden’s pledge of no more drilling “was an early strategic mistake because it set expectations in a way that was not going to be achievable legally and politically,” said one former administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “I think there are some encouraging signs that maybe the Harris campaign has learned lessons from that experience.”

John D. Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, defended Biden’s record on fossil fuels during an event on Tuesday hosted by Third Way, a center-left think tank. He said that record U.S. oil production is a “market-driven phenomenon” that has economic benefits in the short term, even as the country transitions away from fossil fuels in the long term.

“On the gas side, I think it was important that we could supply our friends and allies in Europe after the illegal invasion of Ukraine and cutoff of Russian sources of supply,” Podesta said. “On the oil side, we continue to benefit from production and the effect that it has on stabilizing prices around the world. We’re seeing gas prices that are about 40 cents lower this summer than they were a year ago. But we also have to transition.”

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Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, a trade group representing independent oil and gas companies, declined to give Biden credit for the current drilling bonanza.

“A lot of the record production we’re seeing today is because of policies of past administrations, both Republican and Democrat,” Bradbury said.

Yet on the campaign trail, Trump has depicted the boost in U.S. oil production as a Democratic Party ploy meant to lower gasoline prices before the November election.

“Now [Biden’s] drilling like crazy,” Trump said at a March rally in Dayton, Ohio. “He went back to my policy. You know why? Because it was up to $6, $7, $8 a gallon. … They allowed them to continue drilling, but the day after the election, it’s over.”

Court challenges

Any administration can only control drilling on federal lands and waters. It cannot control drilling on private or state lands, which are home to some of the nation’s largest shale deposits, such as vast swaths of the Permian Basin in west Texas.

On federal lands, there is a two-step process for oil and gas production. First, an administration must decide whether to auction off new lands for leases. Then it must issue permits for the actual drilling to begin.

The administration has wanted to stem such new leases on public lands, but courts have sharply limited its ability to do so. Biden’s plan to pause leasing is a prime example.

Early discussions over the pause exposed divisions within the administration, according to three former administration officials with direct knowledge of the matter, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff, felt strongly that Biden should follow through on his campaign pledge of no new leasing, the three former officials said.

“It had been a hard-fought issue in the campaign,” Klain said in an interview. “The president had articulated that as a position, and I always believe we should follow through on our campaign promises.”

Gina McCarthy, the former White House national climate adviser, and Ali Zaidi, her former deputy, agreed with Klain’s position, the former officials said. But some Interior Department lawyers warned that the leasing pause might not survive legal challenges, since the Mineral Leasing Act states that the agency “shall” hold lease sales on public lands quarterly, or every three months.

Biden forged ahead anyway. A week after taking office, he signed an executive order directing agencies across the federal government to prioritize climate action at home and abroad. The order instructed Interior to suspend its leasing program pending a “comprehensive review” of its climate impacts.

Five months later, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee, issued a preliminary injunction to block the policy. Doughty found that the administration could not stop leasing without congressional approval and that the Republican-led states that sued to challenge the pause had “demonstrated a substantial threat of irreparable injury.”

McCarthy declined an interview request through a spokeswoman. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Since the court ruling, Interior has resumed quarterly lease sales, holding 15 in the past year and planning four others over the next two months. “We continue to responsibly implement the federal oil and gas program,” Interior spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said in an email.

Still, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has used its discretion under the law to auction off fewer acres overall. During Biden’s first three years in office, BLM leased 232,630 acres, compared with more than 5 million acres during Trump’s first three years in office.

Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the advocacy group Center for Western Priorities, credited the steep decline to a provision in Biden’s signature climate law. For the first time, the law instituted a $5-per-acre fee for oil companies to nominate tracts for leasing, among other changes.

However, Interior cannot legally reject an oil company’s application for a permit to drill on public lands after it has already won those acres in an auction. As a result, permitting statistics are less flattering to the president’s climate goals than leasing figures: During his first three years in office, Biden oversaw the approval of 178 more drilling permits than Trump did.

“The fact is that President Biden has followed the rule of law in this country, and the rule of law says that if you have already given a lease to a fossil fuel company, you have to give a permit,” said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

A political tightrope

The prospect of high gas prices is a political nightmare that haunts all presidents, and Biden is no exception. Each time gas prices have shot upward, Biden has taken steps to relieve the pain at the pump - even if those steps were seemingly in conflict with his climate goals.

Gas prices were a personal obsession for Klain, the former White House chief of staff. Each morning at 3:30 a.m., Klain checked the average national gas price on AAA.com, The Washington Post previously reported. A few hours later, he checked the listed prices at each of the nine gas stations he passed on his morning commute.

In late 2021, Klain and other officials saw a troubling trend: Gas prices had risen above $3.30 a gallon nationwide as oil demand recovered from a pandemic-related downturn. In response, Biden did something once unthinkable: He urged major oil-producing countries to ramp up production.

Biden and his aides stressed that the push to curb gas prices in the near term would not undermine his lofty climate targets. But some energy analysts argued that the messaging was inconsistent.

“If you think about Biden’s 2020 campaign and fossil fuels, it was really about ‘keep it in the ground,’” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and an energy adviser in the George W. Bush administration. “In 2021, all of a sudden oil prices started to go up, and the administration was calling around asking if oil production could increase.”

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The White House was walking a political tightrope that would only get narrower. A week after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Biden announced that he was releasing 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The president also vowed to supply the European Union with at least 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2022 - equivalent to roughly half the natural gas burned by Spain annually - as the bloc curbed its dependence on Russian supplies.

“Biden campaigned on the greenest presidential platform in U.S. history, but campaigning is one thing and governing is another - and low energy prices are necessary to maintain public support for greening,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm.

Harris’ mandate

If she wins in November, Harris would have a daunting climate mandate: weaning the nation off fossil fuels in a way that Biden could not.

One former administration official said the Harris campaign appears to have learned not to make climate promises that aren’t politically palatable or legally possible. The official noted that after Trump and other Republicans attacked Harris for supporting a ban on fracking in 2019, her campaign clarified that she would not seek to ban fracking if elected president.

Spokespeople for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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Experts said the impact of Biden’s climate policies may become clearer in the coming years if Harris succeeds Biden and continues on a similar path. For instance, prolonging the Biden administration’s strict limits on emissions from cars and trucks would encourage more sales of electric vehicles that don’t run on gasoline or diesel.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), whose ambitious climate proposals during his 2020 presidential campaign influenced Biden’s climate policies, said a Harris administration could also focus on ramping up renewable energy, which would gradually curb the country’s thirst for fossil fuels.

“This is not an instant transition,” Inslee said. “We don’t flip a switch and totally eliminate fossil fuels. It’s a thermostat. And to turn down that thermostat, you need to have as aggressive a development of non-fossil-based sources as possible.”