The American energy picture, until very recently — Tuesday, in fact — was very promising. "Drill, Baby, Drill" and "Mine, Baby, Mine" were the order of the day. Yes, fuel prices took a spike due to the market uncertainties around the Iran war, but now, with an incoming Democrat majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, we're looking at making those higher prices permanent. The Green New Deal will be back on the table, and every "green energy" boondoggle will be dragged back into the light of day.
That will be a problem. Energy costs are at the heart of everything in every economy, anywhere, ever. The cost of energy is factored into every other cost for every other item, produce, supply, commodity or service. And this new Democrat majority has no idea how any of that works. But that won't stop them from meddling. And let's make no mistake: If they can stop any ongoing energy or mining project, they will.
Alaska, of course, is the epicenter of a lot of this new development. We have the Alaska liquified natural gas (LNG) project, which would build the LNG pipeline, an 810-mile project from the North Slope to the Kenai Peninsula; this would produce not only LNG for Alaskan use as well as for export. There is also increased development at the various North Slope oil fields, including Prudhoe Bay and the Kuparuk oil fields. And the Trump administration has been steadily opening up new areas, to the tune of 13 million acres, in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve.
The Trump Administration is rapidly taking action to roll back a 2024 Biden-era rule that restricted oil and gas development in approximately 13 million acres of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. The 2024 rule established by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prioritized environmental protection in areas of the Alaskan wilderness, effectively restricting drilling unless developers could prove minimal environmental impact.
Critics, including Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, viewed the 2024 mandate as an overly restrictive measure, prioritizing environmental obstruction over national energy production. Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior now assert that the 2024 rule exceeded BLM’s statutory authority under the 1976 Naval Petroleum Reserve Production Act, which mandates an “expeditious program of competitive leasing” without neglecting surface resource protections.
Mind you the Trump administration controls much of this, but an adverse Congress could still cause a lot of trouble — and there's no guarantee that we won't see, for example, a President Newsom in 2027, since there will now be not even so much as a wink and a grin at the notion of election security. No, they will do everything they can to scotch Alaskan oil development and extraction, just as they will seek to shut down Wyoming coal fields, oil and gas extractions in the Permian Basin, and even the importation of petroleum from the chastised Venezuela.
Mining is due for a hit, too. One recent example: Last month, The Trump administration issued a deep-sea leasing notice for 31 million acres of seabed off American Samoa.
President Donald Trump’s administration has scheduled the first US deep-sea mining lease auction for Nov. 19, offering 31 million acres of seabed off American Samoa despite opposition from environmental groups and local communities
The auction will cover two areas of about 16 million and 15 million acres, the Marine Minerals Administration (MMA) said. Although deep-sea mining was banned in parts of the region in 2024, the auction area lies beyond those boundaries in waters under US federal jurisdiction.
“MMA recognizes the ocean floor surrounding American Samoa carries cultural, economic, and environmental significance, requiring that the pursuit of National Security and energy readiness is balanced with rigorous environmental stewardship,” acting MMA Director Mike Olsen said in a statement.
We've seen a fair amount of mining here in Alaska, too, along with our oil and gas developments. Alaska has a wealth of such resources, including the rare earth minerals that we are primarily obtaining now from China. Democrats will bend every effort to keep that status quo. We have tin, lead, silver and gold, and much, much more, which is why I call Alaska America's Treasure Chest — and if Democrats get their way, the lid on that chest will slam closed again, and Alaska will revert to being treated as the world's largest national park.
The new Democrat Congress will almost certainly include funding for all manner of "green" codswallop. Endless fields of eagle-killing windmills, hundreds of square miles of solar panels, all bad for habitat, all producing only intermittent, low-density energy. President Trump has his veto pen, of course, but it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to have Democrat Congress take every must-have bill and load it down with green horse squeeze.
Of course, there's a possible silver lining; this is almost certainly another place where Democrats will overstep. They point to gas prices right now as a reason for their midterm victory, and blame the Iran war, but they neglect to point out that the four-year average gas price was the same during the Biden administration as in Trump's second term — and with a higher peak price, all while there was no war with Iran.
For the time being, though, we had better get used to expensive gasoline, diesel, heating oil, natural gas — and everything else.
