JD Vance says “Drill, baby, drill,” but would that lower prices at the pump? JD Vance in the news

Republican vice presidential candidate and Ohio Senator JD Vance used a common headline on Monday to tout that a new Trump administration will lower energy prices.

“We're going to drill, baby, drill,” Vance said at a rally in North Philadelphia. “We're going to stop buying energy from little dictators around the world who hate this country. We're going to start buying it from our own country, from our own people, from our own workers, and that's going to start on day one.”

But Vance's proposal is not quite so simple.

The idea that the United States is dependent on “tin dictators” for its oil supply – and that more oil drilling will make gasoline cheaper at the pump – not only misrepresents the facts, it also simplifies a complex problem.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States has led the world in crude oil production for the past six years, with average U.S. production reaching a record 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023.

Much of this oil is sold abroad – exports exceeded 10 million barrels per day in 2023. At the same time, US oil imports exceeded more than 8.5 million barrels per day, the US Energy Information Administration said. Much of it is refined into gasoline.

So why should we export oil while importing oil at the same time?

The answer depends partly on the type of oil and partly on the infrastructure. Vance's commentary takes neither into account.

The crude oil imported into the U.S. is thick, high in sulfur and considered highly acidic, Marketplace reported in May. The source of this foreign oil – 52% of daily imports – is Canada, according to federal data.

When Vance refers to “little dictators,” one does not necessarily think of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Most of the oil produced in the US is not this heavy variety. It is called “Light Sweet.”

“All these differences in the chemical composition of the oil mean that you can't refine all oils the same way. They have to go through different processes,” Hugh Daigle, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told Marketplace.

U.S. refineries were designed to process the heavier oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Even if U.S. refineries could flip a switch and start refining light, sweet oil, it's coming from the wrong places to get to the refineries easily, GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan told Marketplace.

“We need infrastructure,” he said. “You can produce all the light crude oil in Texas. But if you don't have pipelines to the country's refineries to deliver it, how are you going to use it?”

So the US imports the cheaper heavy crude oil and sells its more expensive light, sweet crude oil abroad. The main export destination is Mexico, with more than 1 million barrels per day in 2023.

According to a Forbes analysis, gasoline prices are influenced by factors beyond a president's control, such as supply and demand and events around the world.

The average price during Trump's first three years in office was higher than during Obama's final two years in office. In 2020, during the pandemic, lockdowns caused oil demand to collapse, pushing prices down to about $2 a gallon, Forbes found.

As demand recovered, gasoline prices rose, rising nearly 25 percent in the final eight months of Trump's presidency, Forbes reported.

According to Yahoo!Finance, gasoline prices averaged $2.42 when Biden took office. Prices skyrocketed with oil prices, reaching a high of $5 per gallon in June 2022. They have been trending downward since then, averaging $3.50 per gallon on August 19.

See all JD Vance in the news stories.

Cleveland.com closely follows JD Vance's every move and the reaction he generates, as he becomes the first Ohioan in 80 years to be on a presidential ticket for either major party. JD Vance coverage aims to provide a daily snapshot of the hype surrounding him, capturing what he says, what he does and what others are saying about him.