Why the United States produces more oil than any country in history

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If all goes well, 2023 will be remembered as the year America’s clean energy revolution began. Hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related spending are flowing into the U.S. economy. Nearly 300 clean energy projects were announced across the country, and electric vehicle sales hit new highs. Joe Biden quite rightly wrote in his presidential statement in October that the United States is once again leading the world in the fight against climate change.

The United States leads the world in something else: oil production.This year, U.S. oil production exceeds that of other countries in historyIt produces millions more barrels than Russia or Saudi Arabia and accounts for almost a fifth of the world’s total oil production. The Biden administration plays a role in making this happen.

Increasing fossil fuel production in the Americas was not part of the president’s original plan. Biden vetoed the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in his first week in office and put a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas projects on federal lands (a decision that was later overturned by the courts). But a year after he took office, Russia invaded Ukraine, sending global oil prices soaring. Gasoline prices increased 49% from January to June 2022, with the national average price exceeding $5 per gallon, the highest price in more than a decade. Soaring energy prices have pushed already high inflation even higher, raising fears of a 1970s-style price spiral. Just months before crucial midterm elections, voters’ views on the economy began to plummet.

As a result, the Biden administration began using every tool at its disposal to control prices, most of which involved increasing supply. It released 180 million barrels from the country’s strategic oil reserve, eased sanctions on Venezuela and Iran and pressured domestic companies to boost production. That fall, the government announced measures to encourage immediate investment, promising to buy oil from private producers if prices fell below a certain level. Although the president has limited control over natural gas prices, these ongoing actions appear to be having an impact. An analysis by the U.S. Treasury Department concluded that the release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve alone reduced gas prices by 40 cents per gallon, and some experts believe the impact was even greater. President Biden is committed to doing everything he can to counter Putin’s increase, and reading the 2022 White House statement, he is making good on that promise.

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You could look at this and conclude that the Biden administration abandoned its principles at the first sign of political trouble. After all, the only way to reduce emissions is to burn less fossil fuels. By increasing domestic oil supplies, the Biden administration appears to be contributing to the problem it claims it wants to solve.

The reality is much more complex. Samantha Gross, an energy and climate expert at the Brookings Institution, writes that pushing for cuts in U.S. oil production is like squeezing a balloon; production will explode elsewhere. World energy demand is growing rapidly, which means that no matter what the White House does, oil companies will supply it. If the U.S. cuts production tomorrow, prices will rise. In the short term, this will lead to reduced consumption and lower emissions. But such high prices will only entice producers from other countries to step in, as many did in the months after the Russian invasion.Therefore, a reduction in U.S. oil production may actually lead to higher Overall emissions. The United States has one of the least emissions-intensive oil industries on Earth. Shifting production to countries with looser standards could have worse impacts on the climate.

But the deeper explanation for the Biden administration’s actions has to do with the politics of climate change. In short, pursuing a decarbonization agenda will require Biden to maintain political support, and there is no surer way to lose it than by presiding over high oil prices. Biden’s approval ratings have been tied to gas prices for much of his presidency (though he has yet to benefit from recent improvements), and falling prices in the months leading up to the 2022 midterm elections could lead to Democratic gains in those elections. An unexpectedly strong performance. Additionally, when energy prices rise, the prices of everything else tend to rise as well, triggering further inflation. Polls show voters support increasing domestic fossil fuel production by a nearly two-to-one margin, with majorities in every demographic group except white Democrats. Energy prices could easily affect a second term for Biden and four more years for Donald Trump.

The latter outcome would be truly devastating for the planet. As my colleague Zo Schlanger has documented , conservative groups are developing a battle plan to stop the expansion of solar and wind energy, block states from adopting auto pollution standards, and stymie the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump also plans to do everything he can to derail Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act; a Republican Congress could repeal it entirely, making it nearly impossible for the U.S. to meet its emissions goals. This all makes the cost-benefit calculation of oil production trickier. Emissions during a second Trump term will be worse than any short-term output growth.

The same political logic transcends any single election. High energy prices have sparked a populist backlash against decarbonization across Europe. Republicans have sought to frame Biden’s clean energy agenda as Biden’s war on American energy, fanning the misleading but powerful narrative that the transition to clean energy will be economically devastating for ordinary people. If this concern spreads, many leaders worry it could set back the clean energy revolution by decades.

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A senior Biden administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly told me that we have already seen what happens when the shift to clean energy fails to attract support, pointing to the 2018 yellow vest protests in France against fuel taxes. Drilling for more oil will harm the climate today, but may be necessary to defend policies that save the planet tomorrow.

In fact, the government’s support for U.S. oil production is more of a temporary delaying tactic than a long-term strategic shift. Together, the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act represent the largest piece of climate legislation in world history and are designed to do one thing: destroy future demand for fossil fuels. By pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into technologies like solar, wind and electric vehicles, if all goes as planned, the law will make clean energy so cheap that people will voluntarily switch to it. So far, it seems to be working. Electric vehicles are expected to be cheaper than gasoline-powered vehicles in the United States as early as 2026, and solar energy is already the cheapest energy source in many places. By 2030, electric vehicles are expected to account for two-thirds of global car sales, and wind and solar energy will provide one-third of the world’s electricity. The International Energy Agency predicts that world demand for fossil fuels will peak this year. Ultimately, the thinking is, there’s no reason to pump tens of millions of barrels of oil a day because no one wants them. The Biden administration appears to view its role as keeping energy prices stable until this tipping point is reached.

The logic is clear, but for anyone who cares about solving the climate crisis, the implications can be maddening. A president who has called climate change the greatest existential threat to humanity presides over the world’s largest oil nation. Officials who have spent their entire careers trying to prevent global warming are implementing policies they know will continue to warm an already overheated planet in the short term. For decades, science has been clear: humans must stop burning fossil fuels. Yet U.S. leaders have come to believe that preventing catastrophic global warming will require the production of more fossil fuels than ever before. The most frustrating thing is that they may be right.