Drill, baby, drill' Why Trump's Vow May Not Boost Oil Production

At the Republican national convention in July, Donald Trump pledged to cut petrol prices by boosting domestic oil production. "We will drill, baby, drill," he declared.

- Debbie Carlson

Despite the president-elect's promise, the oil and gas companies probably have other ideas. For the past few years, experts say, US energy producers have focused on keeping costs down to stay profitable, balancing between producing enough oil to satisfy global energy needs and paying shareholders big dividends. That is unlikely to change soon.

"We see no change to the intermediate term drilling path for oil set by the fundamentals," Lloyd Byrne, an equity analyst at the investment bank Jefferies, said in a recent research report.

Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil and gas company, is also skeptical of Trump's plan. "I'm not sure how drill, baby, drill translates into policy," he told CNBC after latest results. Separately, at the UN's Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan this week, Woods also urged the incoming administration not to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.