As the Trump administration makes announcement after announcement about its efforts to promote the US fossil fuel industry, the industry isn’t exactly jumping at new opportunities.
Some high-profile oil and gas industry leaders and organizations have objected to changes to long-standing government policy positions that give companies firm ground on which to make their plans.
And the financial picture around oil and gas drilling is moving against the Trump administration’s hopes. Though politicians may tout new opportunities to drill offshore or in Arctic Alaska, the commercial payoff is not clear and even unlikely.
Having worked in and studied the energy industry for decades, I’ve seen a number of discoveries that companies struggled to moved forward with because either the discovery was not large enough to be commercially profitable or the geology was too difficult to make development plausible. Market conditions are the prime drivers of US energy investment—not moves by politicians seeking to seem supportive of the industry.
Market fundamentals trump policy announcements
The general decline in oil prices from 2022 through late 2025 has reduced the attractiveness of many drilling investments.
And opening the East and West coasts to drilling may sound significant, but these regions have unconfirmed reserves. That means a lot of subsurface work, such as seismic surveys, stratigraphic mapping, and reservoir characterization—potentially taking years—would need to be done before any drilling would begin.
Offshore drilling also faces enormous opposition.
On the West Coast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta have made forceful statements against any new California offshore oil drilling. They have said any effort is economically unnecessary, environmentally reckless, and “dead on arrival” politically in the state.
California local governments, environmental groups, business alliances, and coastal communities also oppose drilling and have vowed to use legal and political tools to block them.