President Donald Trump promised to “train, baby, train” on his presidential campaign trail.
It won’t save him from this situation. oil crisis Lawmakers and analysts say the war he started in Iran was the catalyst.
After President Trump and the Republican Party set out to win the 2024 election last year by pledging to reduce the cost of living through measures such as curbing gasoline prices, they aggressively strengthened policies favorable to fossil fuels.
Their signature domestic policy bill, known as “One Big Beautiful” tax and spending measure, opened up new acreage for oil and gas leases. The administration has moved to cut regulations that the fossil fuel industry sees as obstacles. And it has pursued an aggressive leasing schedule to operate more rigs on federal lands and waters.
Trump now faces a crisis from which there is little hope of escape. The Iran war has left the Strait of Hormuz nearly impossible to navigate and has devastated oil markets. The strait carries about 20% of the world’s oil supply. And the U.S. is unlikely to rapidly expand drilling to fill that hole, analysts and lawmakers say.
US President Donald Trump speaks at a Women’s History Month event in the East Room of the White House on March 12, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
“No, the quantity is not there,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D.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 make up that kind of volume.”
“No matter what happens, it’s going to have a big impact on gas prices. … How long it will take to get back to normal, it’s going to take months,” Heinrich said in an interview.
The phrase “drill, baby, drill” was popularized in 2008 by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, John McCain’s Republican nominee. For nearly two decades since then, the word has been a Republican rallying cry, and President Trump used it at a rally during his 2024 presidential campaign.
As governor of Alaska, Palin touted drilling in the state and the Gulf of Mexico. The New York Times reported this month that there were no bidders for the Trump administration’s opening of Alaska’s Cook Inlet for new offshore oil and gas exploration.
The United States currently produces about 13.7 million barrels of oil per day, according to December data from the Energy Information Administration. Last week, the United States refined about 16 million barrels of oil per day.
Oil is also dependent on global market conditions, which is why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused so much disruption. Approximately 20% of the world’s oil is transported through the strait, and the world requires more than 100 million barrels per day.
“What’s important is overall supply and demand, and given what’s going on in the Middle East right now, that’s going to be out of balance for quite some time,” Heinrich said.
Analysts agree. Brian Presto, an economist and fellow at Resources for the Future, a bipartisan research group focused on natural resources, said it would likely not be possible to drill domestically for the amount of oil needed to offset the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This is despite the fact that U.S. production has been very high over the past few years.
“For it to really become a meaningful share of the world’s total supply, U.S. production would need to increase significantly,” Presto said. “The U.S. has seen a huge increase in oil production over the past 15 years, and that’s exactly what happened. It took 15 years.”
“I can’t imagine that the U.S. alone would have a large enough rally to keep the market balanced during a war that we hope will last several weeks,” Presto said. The war reaches the two-week mark on Saturday.
On March 12, 2026, a foreign tanker carrying Iraqi heavy oil caught fire and was damaged in Iraqi territorial waters after an unidentified attack targeted two foreign tankers near Basra, Iraq, according to Iraqi port officials.
Mohamed Ati | Reuters
There are also signs that U.S. oil producers have no plans to rapidly expand oil and gas production to take advantage of rising prices. When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, oil prices skyrocketed. And while the number of U.S. rigs increased slightly to reflect higher prices, total U.S. crude oil production has maintained steady growth since 2010.
Much of this increase is due to technological advances in drilling, particularly horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have significantly increased production in places like New Mexico and the Permian Basin in Texas. This is not a fire sale on new drilling plans.
Even Republicans, who have spent much of President Trump’s second term touting “energy dominance” and “energy independence,” acknowledge that more drilling won’t get the U.S. out of the oil crisis in the short term.
Sen. John Hoeven (D) said the expansion of oil and gas drilling that the Trump administration is trying to spread will lower prices in the long run, but opening the Strait of Hormuz is a priority to lower prices now.
“The key thing in the short term is how this dynamic plays out in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said in an interview. “If it’s covered pretty well, even if there’s a perception that this issue is going to last a little longer, that will be mitigated.”
“In the long term, as we continue to grow and the numbers continue to increase over time, the oil market will actually fall, prices will become cheaper, and we will become even less dependent on the Middle East,” Hoeven said. “But it’s more of a long-term story.”
For now, the strait remains effectively closed, even as the Trump administration seeks ways to allow ships to pass through. And oil markets continue to rise, despite a brief dip this week after President Trump suggested the war could soon end.
US crude oil futures Thursday’s closing price was over $95. and brentThe global index rose above $100 as Iran’s new supreme leader said the Strait of Hormuz must remain closed.
