Data Dump: One year into the "energy emergency"

Trump has helped oil and gas companies, but "drill, baby, drill" remains elusive

🛢️ Hydrocarbon Hoedown 📈 Data Dump

While Donald Trump seems to think he coined terms like “Drill, Baby, Drill,” the fact is, they’ve been around for a long, long time. This sign appeared at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. While Republican candidate John McCain and his VP candidate Sarah Palin were most vocally calling for increased drilling, the Democrats were also getting behind the nascent “fracking” revolution and touting natural gas as a cleaner bridge fuel from coal to solar and wind. And the so-called shale oil and gas drilling boom took off during the Obama administration. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail: If elected, he would bring down the cost of groceries (a word that seemed new to him), he would secure the borders, he would end all of the wars on day one, and he would unleash the oil companies so they could “drill, baby, drill” and secure “energy dominance.”

Groceries are still expensive, “border security” is now MAGA-speak for federal agents gunning down innocent bystanders, and not only are the wars still raging, but the administration’s newly named “Department of War” has bombed Iran, Nigeria, and Venezuela, and is now threatening to invade Greenland and even Mexico.

In fact, the only war that Trump can take credit for ending was Biden’s “war” on energy. And that’s only because the “war” didn’t exist in the first place! It was and remains a figment of the GOP’s imagination.

On Biden's Energy Dominance

Still, the administration did live up to at least one promise: It used a fabricated “energy emergency” to help increase extractive corporations’ profit margins by rolling back environmental protections, handing out drilling permits like candy at a parade, fast-tracking various mine and oil and gas infrastructure permits, and offering oodles of public land to energy companies.

But has it really achieve the stated goal, to establish “energy dominance” — i.e. boost production, bring down prices, and end oil imports?

Maybe the data will help us figure that one out …

Leasing

As I think we’ve established, the Biden administration did not wage a war on energy or even oil and gas. In fact, under Biden, the nation became the world’s largest oil producer, the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and so on, while also fast-tracking solar, wind, and transmission projects on federal lands.

Biden’s Interior Department did, however, put up some guardrails aimed at protecting some public lands. While it leased out parcels in the Permian Basin without restraint, it also refrained from putting some more sensitive parcels up for auction in more sensitive areas with limited oil and gas production.

The Trump administration has been far more friendly to oil and gas companies looking to bolster their land-holding portfolios, not only offering up hundreds of thousands of acres, but then putting them up for auction a second time if the first round didn’t attract enough bids.

• 328,000 acres: Amount of public land and minerals the BLM leased to oil and gas companies between Jan. 20 and Dec. 31, 2025. This brought in about $356 million in revenue.

• $327 million: Amount a single oil and gas lease sale for 31 parcels, mostly in New Mexico’s Permian Basin, brought in this January, a record per-acre high average bid amount.

• 0: Number of bids received for 23 offered oil and gas lease parcels in Colorado in January. The sale was a “replacement” sale held after the initial auction failed to attract enough bids.

Drilling Permits

Trump’s BLM issued an average of 909 permits to drill per month during the first year of his second term. This is almost triple the monthly average for Biden’s administration.

Environmentalists often attacked Biden for issuing more drilling permits for public lands than Trump did during his first administration. The comparison was dumb, but whatever. Trump apparently didn’t like Biden’s apparent energy dominance, so he struck back by issuing more than 5,000 drilling permits last year, far exceeding the Biden administration’s monthly and yearly averages.

• 1,124: Number of drilling permits the BLM issued to EOG Resources in 2025, mostly in the Permian Basin. That compares to 755 for XTO Permian and XTO Energy; 293 for Anschutz Exploration; 503 to Devon Energy; 338 to OXY USA; 241 to Matador Production; 119 to Chevron; 106 to Middle Fork Energy Uinta; and 80 to ConocoPhillips.

• 95: Number of drilling permits the BLM’s Farmington Field Office issued in 2025, to Hilcorp, Logos, SIMCOE, DJR Operating, and other companies. While this pales in comparison to the Permian Basin, it is a marked increase from recent years.

• 8: Number of drilling permits the BLM’s Moab Field Office issued in 2025.

• 100: Approximate number of drill rigs operating in all of New Mexico during any given week of 2025.

• 8,949: Number of approved federal drilling permits held by oil and gas companies that were available to drill as of Jan. 2, 2026. That is to say, they have the permits, but haven’t yet used them.

Production

During the past year, domestic crude oil production continued to increase month-to-month, but at a slower rate than it had previously. Oil production on federal lands was down about 2% from fiscal year 2024. This is mostly due to industry’s lack of enthusiasm for more drilling, thanks to a combination of low oil prices and higher expenses due to inflation and tariffs on steel and other equipment. So much for drill, baby, drill.

Oil production from federal and tribal nation lands was down for fiscal year 2025 as of August. Source: U.S. Department of the Interior.

7.9 million: Barrels of crude oil per day the U.S. was importing from other countries in December 2025. That’s marginally less than a year earlier.

2.1 million barrels/day: Net crude oil imports (imports minus exports) to the U.S. in December 2025.

Idle Wells

*GSI/OSI: Gas or oil wells oil well that are capable of producing but have not produced during the production month.

I find this to be, perhaps, the most telling chart of all. It shows the number of idle wells on federal mineral leases (which includes public lands and split-estate private lands) by Western state. A lot of the wells have just been wrung dry and have been abandoned and need to be plugged and reclaimed, probably at the taxpayer’s expense.

Still others, the ones in the GSI (non-producing gas completion) and OSI (non-producing oil completion) columns, are officially capable of producing oil and gas, it’s just that for one reason or another they aren’t producing currently. Dozens of the GSI/OSI wells in Wyoming, for example, are owned by bankrupt companies that were unable to offload them to someone else.

This brings up a question: If we are indeed in an “energy emergency,” as the Trump administration has declared, shouldn’t we be pumping all of the oil and gas from existing wells that we possibly can before issuing thousands of new drilling permits, most of which aren’t even being used?

Let me answer that one: We’re not in an energy emergency.

🗺️ Messing with Maps 🧭

I came across this cool old map of the Sangre de Cristo land grant while perusing the Green Fire Times’ tribute to Malcolm Ebright, who was a land grant community advocate and historian. In order to get a high-res version I had to, um, copy this from an online auction site (thus the watermarks). I don’t have much to say about it, except it’s a pretty cool map of a very cool area.