Trump really wants to drill, baby, drill in the Gulf of Mexico

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced last week that the Trump administration will be moving forward with a new 2025 lease sale of oil in the Gulf of Mexico—or, as they like to call it, the Gulf of America. In other words, they’ll be auctioning off drilling rights in the Gulf to Big Oil over the next few years. “Unlike under President Biden, we will not leave our critical energy resources locked up when so many Americans are suffering through the unnecessarily high cost of living imposed by the previous administration,” Burgum said in a press release. While former President Joe Biden sought to ban offshore drilling during his final days in office, he had actually signed off on the auctioning of drilling rights as part of a five-year leasing plan in 2023. Part of Burgum’s efforts is the motivation to generate “billions of dollars,” but as the impacts of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” have sent oil prices plummeting, it’s unclear if oil companies will want to invest with such low profitability. And while Burgum claims that “unleashing America’s energy resources will lower prices at the pump” and “across all aspects of American life,” the fact is that auctioning off drilling rights doesn’t always translate to profits. Even the Department of the Interior has admitted that selling off leases has resulted in “shortchanging” taxpayers. Workers clean up an oil spill.In a 2021 report, the department wrote that selling off leases can encourage “speculators to purchase leases with the intent of waiting for increases in resource prices, adding assets to their balance sheets, or even reselling leases at profit rather than attempting to produce oil or gas.”The Trump administration can brag about selling off leases, but it doesn’t mean that any drilling will actually happen. In fact, of the 2,206 active leases in the Gulf of Mexico, only one-fifth are currently producing oil. “More leases may make the companies look good, on paper, to investors. But they won’t necessarily even produce more oil and gas. And they certainly will not be good for the climate or clean water,” Tom Pelton, communications director for the Environmental Integrity Project, told Verite News.Of course, environmental and safety concerns abound when it comes to oil drilling.Rice’s whales—also known as Gulf of Mexico whales—live exclusively in the Gulf and are already extremely threatened, with only an estimated 100 left. And the Gulf isn’t without its own history of tragedies. In 2010, the historic BP oil spill killed 11 workers and leaked more than 4 million barrels of oil into the open water for 87 days. For experts watching both the Biden and Trump administrations continue to dig into the Gulf’s oil resources, they say that another disaster is inevitable. “The only result we’ll have is more risky drilling,” another expert told Verite News. “And then the question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ we’ll have the next catastrophic spill in the Gulf.”Campaign Action

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced last week that the Trump administration will be moving forward with a new 2025 lease sale of oil in the Gulf of Mexico—or, as they like to call it, the Gulf of America . In other words, they’ll be auctioning off drilling rights in the Gulf to Big Oil over the next few years. “Unlike under President Biden, we will not leave our critical energy resources locked up when so many Americans are suffering through the unnecessarily high cost of living imposed by the previous administration,” Burgum said in a press release.

While former President Joe Biden sought to ban offshore drilling during his final days in office, he had actually signed off on the auctioning of drilling rights as part of a five-year leasing plan in 2023. Part of Burgum’s efforts is the motivation to generate “billions of dollars,” but as the impacts of President Donald Trump’s “ Liberation Day ” have sent oil prices plummeting, it’s unclear if oil companies will want to invest with such low profitability. And while Burgum claims that “unleashing America’s energy resources will lower prices at the pump” and “across all aspects of American life,” the fact is that auctioning off drilling rights doesn’t always translate to profits.

Even the Department of the Interior has admitted that selling off leases has resulted in “shortchanging” taxpayers. In a 2021 report , the department wrote that selling off leases can encourage “speculators to purchase leases with the intent of waiting for increases in resource prices, adding assets to their balance sheets, or even reselling leases at profit rather than attempting to produce oil or gas.” The Trump administration can brag about selling off leases, but it doesn’t mean that any drilling will actually happen.

In fact, of the 2,206 active leases in the Gulf of Mexico, only one-fifth are currently producing oil. “More leases may make the companies look good, on paper, to investors. But they won’t necessarily even produce more oil and gas.

And they certainly will not be good for the climate or clean water,” Tom Pelton, communications director for the Environmental Integrity Project, told Verite News . Of course, environmental and safety concerns abound when it comes to oil drilling. Rice’s whales —also known as Gulf of Mexico whales—live exclusively in the Gulf and are already extremely threatened, with only an estimated 100 left.

And the Gulf isn’t without its own history of tragedies. In 2010, the historic BP oil spill killed 11 workers and leaked more than 4 million barrels of oil into the open water for 87 days. For experts watching both the Biden and Trump administrations continue to dig into the Gulf’s oil resources, they say that another disaster is inevitable.

“The only result we’ll have is more risky drilling,” another expert told Verite News. “And then the question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ we’ll have the next catastrophic spill in the Gulf.”.