WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has promised to promote a “drill, baby, drill” agenda, but a recent no-show for bidders in Alaska and political resistance from within his own party show how expanded drilling is easier said than done.

Trump has repeatedly affirmed his plan, even as domestic oil and natural gas production have reached record levels under President Joe Biden. Trump argues that greater production would lower energy prices — saying during an October rally that it would cut them in half within a year of his second inauguration — and give the U.S. energy independence, despite the U.S. already being a net exporter of energy since 2019.

Trump’s plan has been praised by congressional Republicans and his Cabinet picks, Doug Burgum for Interior and Chris Wright for Energy, who would be charged with carrying out portions of it. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to hold confirmation hearings for both nominees this week.

However, recent developments show the difficulty with expanding drilling offshore and in protected areas such as Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Interior Department on Jan. 8 said that an oil-and-gas lease sale for ANWR’s coastal plain received zero bids.

This was the second of two sales mandated by the 2017 Republican-led tax overhaul. The first sale conducted in 2021 during the final days of the first Trump administration also drew little interest, yielding a total of $14.4 million in high bids. That’s a far cry from the nearly $2 billion in revenue Republicans estimated the 2021 and 2025 sales would generate in total.

“The lack of interest from oil companies in development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along — there are some places too special and sacred to put at risk with oil and gas drilling,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement after the recent sale drew no bidders.

Alaska’s three-member Republican congressional delegation and Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an Alaska Native nonprofit representing those in favor of drilling in the region, blamed the lack of interest on inconsistent support from the Biden administration. Haaland did cancel seven of the nine leases sold during the first round in 2021, which went to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state-owned corporation and not a drilling company. The remaining two were canceled at the request of the lessee.

However, even prior to Biden’s election in 2020 many of the largest U.S. banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, had said they would not finance projects in the region. Their decisions came after significant political pressure and campaigning from environmental groups, who argued development in the region was too risky for the Arctic ecosystem.

Environmentalists have also made an appeal against drilling in the region based on economics, arguing remoteness and extreme temperatures make the break-even price higher than much of the country. Likewise, Goldman Sachs commodity expert Michele Della Vigna as far back as 2017 told CNBC that projects such as drilling in ANWR “can move too high on the cost curve to be economically doable.”

Offshore issues

Similar concern about environmental damage has caused coastal communities in a large portion of the U.S. to oppose offshore drilling, where both Democratic and Republican leaders argue they present a significant risk to tourism, fishing and other industries.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., in 2023 touted the passage of her amendment, which would’ve prohibited offshore drilling in South Carolina and Florida, to a bill that aimed to tie non-emergency use of the petroleum reserve to plans for increased fossil fuel development on public lands.

Mace said a drilling ban would be a win for her state’s tourism industry, adding in a statement at the time that “it’s a win for the environment and for future generations who will benefit from the preservation of these priceless resources.”

The vast majority of offshore drilling rigs are located in the western Gulf of Mexico, with smaller clusters in other waters, including off the coast of Southern California and Alaska’s Cook Inlet. But Trump and his allies have indicated they would like to see new areas opened.

Biden last week used authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and in the northern Bering Sea.

Trump has promised to overturn the ban, although legal precedent suggests that doing so would require an act of Congress.

But Trump himself has acknowledged there is political opposition to offshore drilling in many of these areas. In 2020, just ahead of the previous election, he extended moratoriums on drilling from Florida north to Virginia by a decade, a move that was celebrated by Republicans including South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

House Republicans passed an expansive energy bill in 2023, which was ultimately not taken up by the Senate. The bill included a number of Republican priorities, such as prohibiting the president from banning hydraulic fracturing, but still specified that the offshore moratoriums would stay in place.

If Republicans use the Congressional Review Act or a reconciliation bill to reverse Biden’s action it would require a near unanimous GOP vote in closely divided chambers, and any other method would require the support of Democrats who have been far more critical of offshore drilling.

A June 2024 poll from the Pew Research Center found that while there has been some increase in support for fossil fuel production since 2020, a minority (48 percent) of Americans support more offshore oil and gas drilling.

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