“Drill baby drill”

by Aaron Gustafson

To all the “drill baby drill” folks: do you know who the largest oil producer is in the world? It’s not Saudi Arabia. It’s the US. By a lot.

The US is also a major oil exporter. Do you know why? Because the oil companies have not invested in the facilities necessary to refine US oil in the US, so they export US oil to other countries where they can refine it and import oil from elsewhere to refine it here.

Also: U.S. taxpayers heavily subsidize the oil industry ($649 billion in 2017). That could cover the cost of the Child Tax Credit (~$12–100 billion a year, depending on who you ask) and still have a ton of money left over to help increase the amount of affordable housing in the US.

Oh and, collectively, the oil companies made a ridiculous amount of profit last year. The top three alone made a record $85.6 billion in profit in 2023.

“Drill baby drill” has not worked, nor will it.

The shift to renewable energy sources is slow, but growing. In 2023, clean energy jobs in the US grew by 4.9% (about 2.5x the rest of the economy). Renewables are gaining ground and they’re the future. In fact, as of 2021 there were more jobs globally in the renewable energy than in fossil fuels (35 million and growing vs. 32 million and shrinking).

Instead of investing in a dying industry — there’s only so much oil in the ground — we should be retraining folks from the fossil fuel industry to work in a rapidly expanding sector than needs their labor!