WASHINGTON — It is one of former President Donald Trump’s rallying cries as he runs for president again — “drill, baby, drill.”
It is a pledge to increase oil and gas production in the U.S.
What he does not say is that the U.S. already is producing a record amount of oil — more than any other country in the world — and Texas plays an outsized rule in that energy production.
The way former Trump talks on the campaign trail, you might think the U.S. is not energy dominant.
“On day one, I will tell the frackers and energy workers of Pennsylvania to drill, baby, drill,” Trump said earlier this month in York, Pennsylvania.
“We have a very bad energy policy,” he said in an interview with Spectrum News.
But U.S. domestic oil production hit a record level last year under the Biden administration.
“Both in Texas and on the national level, there has been a general increase in oil and gas production over the past decade,” Jeremy Mazur, senior policy adviser for Texas 2036, told Spectrum News.
Mazur went on to say the growth contributes to both Texas and the United States’ “relevance in the international energy market.”
He said the busiest energy port in the Americas is in Corpus Christi.
Crude oil production in the U.S. averaged 12.9 million barrels per day last year, which is millions of barrels more than Saudi Arabia or Russia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Last year’s crude oil production in the U.S. broke the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million that was set in 2019, which was the third year of Trump’s presidency.
Data from EIA also showed that Texas accounts for 42% of U.S. oil production and 27% of natural gas production. Separately, the Lone Star State accounted for 22% of wind energy generation and 17% of solar energy production in the U.S.
The country is expected to produce 13.2 million barrels of oil per day on average this year.
“Even though more people are using electric vehicles, that doesn’t mean we need less oil and gas. We need more electricity generation and oil and gas are used across the economy supply chain, so that’s one reason that we’re seeing this increased production of oil and gas with the United States,” Mazur said.
“The second is that we’re seeing rapid demands increasing for oil and gas in the international market, and U.S. exports have increased substantially,” he continued.
Trump says producing more oil would lower energy prices and bring down inflation. But David Spence, who researches energy regulation, says crude oil prices are set on the world stage and contrary to what politicians say, it is difficult to influence those prices.
“The real drivers of production are economic,” said Spence, a professor of energy law at the University of Texas at Austin. “When states or federal government agencies make it easier, what they’re really doing is regulating less, being a little bit less strict about environmental controls or safety controls and those sorts of things, but the ‘drill, baby, drill’ and the sort of counter slogans from the other side are really more just general expressions of how the parties feel about that balance.”
Trump’s rival for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, is not stressing drilling like Trump.
“In those few places that are up for grabs in a presidential election or in a congressional election, the way those messages play in those contestable areas, matters more and more,” Spence said.
In her convention speech Harris said what was at stake is, “The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.”