Trump can’t ‘drill, baby, drill’ his way out of this Iran oil crisis

President Donald Trump promised to “drill, baby, drill” on the presidential campaign trail.

It’s not going to bail him out of this oil crisis spurred by the war he started in Iran, lawmakers and analysts say.

Trump and Republicans last year aggressively ramped up policies favorable to fossil fuels after romping to an electoral victory in 2024 on a promise to lower the cost of living, including by quelling gas prices.

Their signature domestic policy bill, known as the “one big beautiful” tax and spending measure, opened up swaths of new land to oil and gas leasing. The administration has moved to slash regulations that the fossil fuel industry views as hurdles. And it has pursued an aggressive leasing schedule to get more rigs operating on federal lands and waters.

Now, Trump is confronted with a crisis there’s little chance of drilling his way out of. The war in Iran has whipsawed oil markets as the Strait of Hormuz has remained largely impassible. The strait carries about 20% of the world’s oil supply. And the U.S. is unlikely to rapidly ramp up drilling to fill the void, analysts and lawmakers say.

“No, the quantity is not there,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said. “I don’t care what you do with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or drilling, you can’t make up that kind of quantity.”

“You’re still going to see a big impact on gas prices no matter what. … The tail of how long it’s going to take to get back to normal is going to be many months,” Heinrich said in an interview.

The phrase “drill, baby, drill” was popularized in 2008 by Sarah Palin, the vice presidential candidate on John McCain’s Republican ticket. In the nearly two decades since, it’s been a Republican rallying cry, and Trump used it at his rallies in the 2024 presidential campaign.

Palin, who was the Alaska governor, touted drilling in her state and in 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 to new offshore oil and gas exploration.

The U.S. currently produces about 13.7 million barrels of oil per day, according to December data from the Energy Information Administration. Last week, the U.S. refined about 16 million barrels of oil per day.

Oil is also beholden to global market conditions, which is why the Strait of Hormuz closure has been so disruptive. The strait carries about 20% of the world’s oil, and the world demands more than 100 million barrels per day.

“What matters is the overall supply and demand, and with what’s going on in the Middle East right now, that is going to be out of balance for a very substantial amount of time,” Heinrich said.

Analysts agree. Brian Prest, an economist and fellow at Resources for the Future, a…