He drew a little too early. On January 3, Donald Trump urged the United Kingdom to restart oil exploration along its coasts. “Open the North Sea,” he wrote on his Truth Social network, also asking the authorities to “get rid of” the wind turbines that he loathes. The President-elect of the United States, soon to be inaugurated, would have done better to delay his advice for a few days… Because on January 6, Joe Biden initialed the ban on all new offshore hydrocarbon drilling on more than 2.5 million square kilometers, covering areas of the Atlantic coast, Pacific coast, Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska. The Republican immediately contested this decision, which he wishes to reverse as soon as he returns to the White House. But getting back to it might not be so easy. Like keeping all the promises of his campaign mantra: “drill, baby, drill”.
With these last-minute bans, Joe Biden intends to both cement his climate legacy and complicate the task of his successor, whose objective is to boost the production of oil and gas, highly carbon-intensive energies. According to the American press, the Democrat is relying on a 1953 law, the “Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act”, which gives the federal government authority over the exploitation of marine subsoil resources off the coast. And it does not grant subsequent presidents the legal authority to revoke those decisions. Donald Trump knows this better than anyone: he has already broken his teeth on this jurisdiction. During his first term, the billionaire wanted to reverse offshore drilling bans enacted by Barack Obama in certain parts of the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic. A court decision dating from 2019 ruled otherwise: the president must go through Congress to achieve his ends.
Certainly, the Republicans hold the majority there. “But it remains quite fine. Elected officials from his camp could oppose certain measures affecting their coastal areas to distance themselves from him, analyzes Alix Frangeul-Alves, coordinator of the Geopolitical Risks and Strategy program for the think tank The German Mashall Fund of the United States. “We must not believe that the Republicans want to pollute absolutely everything. In the end, many look at what the economic interest is,” confirms Anne-Sophie Corbeau. The researcher at the Center on Global Energy Policy also recalls the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico, and the environmental disaster that followed “I don’t think either party wants that to happen again.”
“The markets will decide”
Beyond the obstacles left by Joe Biden before leaving the Oval Office, Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” could above all come up against… the very will of businesses. He felt the effects this Wednesday, January 8: for the second time in four years, the auction of oil and gas concessions in a protected area in northeast Alaska ended in failure. No offers have been submitted. “During the shale gas revolution, the companies said: ‘we drill, we drill, we drill’. But they no longer just want to drill, but to make money, points out Anne-Sophie Corbeau. They will be particularly attentive to prices. Ultimatelythe markets will decide.” And not the president-elect, who promised during his campaign to halve prices in the first eighteen months of his mandate. “These announcements are not at all in line with reality economic”, sweeps the researcher.
Unlike Europe, the US oil and gas sector is made up of a myriad of players of all sizes. Each, of course, with its own strategy. “Companies will be completely in line with Trump, and others, with a more international vision, more concerned about their image, will say: ‘Be careful, this must not become the Wild West again’,” continues Anne- Sophie Corbeau. This was the meaning of the message sent by Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, to Donald Trump during the last COP29 in Baku. He asked him to “not withdraw the United States from international agreements” on the climate, as during his first term, in order to avoid a new period of uncertainty bad for business.
Moratorium on LNG
These are not doing so bad… Even under Joe Biden. According to an analysis by the US Energy Agency published in March 2024, “the United States has produced more crude oil than any other country over the past six years.” It is also the world’s leading gas producer. If the Democratic president has protected numerous territories and increased proactive commitments to fight climate change, he has at the same time approved the “Willow” project of the oil and gas company ConocoPhillips in Alaska. One of the most important hydrocarbon operations in the country.
Thus, in the eyes of Alix Frangeul-Alves, Joe Biden’s recent ban on offshore drilling is more “a symbolic and political action. The impacts will be quite limited for industrialists, since these spaces are very little exploited while the Most U.S. production occurs in the Permian Basin [NDLR : dans les Etats du Texas, du Nouveau-Mexique et dans les Appalaches]”As was the moratorium decreed last year on the construction of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals – which his successor should also quickly reverse.
“Donald Trump wants to honor his slogan, Make America Great Againand bring prosperity back to her country, except that many of her outputs are contradictory, concludes the expert from the German Mashall Fund of the United States. He will say whatever he wants to the Americans to prove that he is capable of bringing them economic and energy security, which are at the center of the concept of national security… Even if it doesn’t actually happen.”
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