President Trump has declared an energy emergency, which his team has said would unlock additional powers to jumpstart production.
The declaration unlocks additional authorities to allow the U.S. to bolster energy production, an official told reporters on Monday morning.
However, it was not immediately clear what powers are unlocked by the order.
If Trump invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, he could halt the trade of outside energy sources to the U.S., Mark Nevitt, a professor at Emory University’s law school, told The Hill.
Using other laws would invoke additional authorities. Amy Stein, a professor at the University of Florida, has written that depending on the law a president uses to invoke the emergency, their broad range of new powers could include things like emergency measures to protect grid reliability and authorizing the purchase of emergency gas supplies.
Nevitt said that the invocation of the Defense Production Act, which can be used to accelerate manufacturing, is also possible.
“The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said during his inaugural speech.
“America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it,” he said.
The Trump official said that the emergency declaration was coming in response to high fuel prices.
The average U.S. gasoline price is currently $3.13 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.
That’s currently much lower than a 2022 peak that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but is still higher than the average price during the Trump administration. In 2019, prices averaged $2.60 per gallon. Experts attributed the rise in gas prices under former President Biden to the Russia-Ukraine conflict as well as post-pandemic recovery. Oil production under the Biden administration reached record highs, surpassing an average of 13 million barrels per day for the first time.
