America went to war.
Gas stayed $4.
For seven weeks the United States fought an active Middle East war. The Strait of Hormuz was contested. Oil hit $108. The pump peaked at $4.16. Then Iran agreed to surrender its enriched uranium and oil crashed 12% in a day. Here is how America got a country that could absorb that — and what every president since 2009 actually did to get us here.
Three numbers frame everything that follows. Each is the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline on a specific day. Each comes from the same primary source. Read them in order.
Three prices. Three administrations. One country that chose, one decision at a time, to produce enough of its own energy that the third war in the Persian Gulf in fifty years barely moved the needle at the pump.
Every executive order,
on the record.
Thirty-one dated federal actions across four administrations. Every entry links to the original primary source — Federal Register document, archived White House statement, agency press release, or public law. No paraphrases.
Barack Obama
↓ Negatively impactedUS energy production2009-01-20 → 2017-01-20- 2013-06-25Climate Action Plan announcedDirects EPA to regulate power-plant CO₂ emissionsWhite House archives ↗
- 2015-08-03EPA issues Clean Power Plan final rule80 FR 64662Federal Register ↗
- 2015-11-06State Dept denies Keystone XL permitState Dept archive ↗
- 2016-04-22US signs Paris Agreement at UN HQState Dept archive ↗
- 2016-12-20Presidential memo withdraws Atlantic & Arctic OCS areas from leasingOCSLA §12(a)White House archives ↗
Donald Trump (1st term)
↑ Positively impactedUS energy production2017-01-20 → 2021-01-20- 2017-01-24Memo invites TransCanada to resubmit Keystone XLFederal Register ↗
- 2017-01-24Memo expediting Dakota Access PipelineFederal Register ↗
- 2017-03-24State Dept issues Keystone XL presidential permitState Dept archive ↗
- 2017-03-28EO 13783 — Promoting Energy IndependenceInitiates Clean Power Plan rollbackFederal Register ↗
- 2017-04-28EO 13795 — America-First Offshore Energy StrategyFederal Register ↗
- 2017-06-01Announces US withdrawal from Paris AgreementWhite House archives ↗
- 2017-12-22Tax Cuts & Jobs Act opens ANWR 1002 Area to leasingP.L. 115-97 §20001congress.gov ↗
- 2020-11-04US withdrawal from Paris Agreement takes legal effectState Dept archive ↗
- 2021-01-06BLM holds ANWR Coastal Plain lease saleBLM press release ↗
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
↓ Negatively impactedUS energy production2021-01-20 → 2025-01-20- 2021-01-20EO 13990 — revokes Keystone XL permitDirects review of Trump energy/environment actionsFederal Register ↗
- 2021-01-20US re-accepts Paris AgreementWhiteHouse.gov ↗
- 2021-01-27EO 14008 — pauses new federal oil & gas leasesFederal Register ↗
- 2021-06-01DOI suspends ANWR Coastal Plain leasesdoi.gov ↗
- 2021-11-23DOE announces 50M-barrel SPR releaseenergy.gov ↗
- 2022-03-31Announces 180M-barrel SPR release1M bpd × 6 monthsWhiteHouse.gov ↗
- 2022-08-16Signs Inflation Reduction ActP.L. 117-169congress.gov ↗
- 2023-09-06DOI cancels remaining ANWR Coastal Plain leasesdoi.gov ↗
- 2023-12-15BOEM 2024–2029 OCS Leasing Program — three Gulf-only salesboem.gov ↗
- 2024-01-26DOE pauses pending LNG export authorizationsNon-FTA countriesenergy.gov ↗
Donald Trump (2nd term)
↑ Positively impactedUS energy production2025-01-20 → present- 2025-01-20EO — Unleashing American EnergyRescinds Biden EOs 13990/14008; expands leasing; ends LNG pauseFederal Register ↗
- 2025-01-20EO declaring national energy emergencyFederal Register ↗
- 2025-01-20EO — second US withdrawal from Paris AgreementFederal Register ↗
- 2025-01-20EO — Unleashing Alaska's Extraordinary Resource PotentialReopens ANWR Coastal PlainFederal Register ↗
The price of a barrel,
by administration.
WTI (West Texas Intermediate) is the benchmark price for US crude. It moves with global supply, demand, and geopolitics — but it is also the number every news cycle reaches for when drivers start paying attention at the pump. Here is what each president inherited, what they oversaw, and what they left behind.
WTI is West Texas Intermediate — a grade of US crude oil priced at a pipeline hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. When US news says “oil prices,” this is almost always the number they mean. Brent (the dashed blue line) is the European benchmark, priced from North Sea crude. Brent typically runs a few dollars above WTI. Each barrel is 42 gallons.
The price Americans actually pay.
Retail gasoline is the number the country feels. AAA publishes it daily; the EIA tracks it weekly. On June 14, 2022 it hit $5.02 — the highest it has ever been in a nominal US dollar. On April 9, 2026 it hit $4.16, the highest since. The pump price is where all the other numbers on this page land.
The line below is the US national-average retail gasoline price, all grades, every week since 2009. The federal Energy Information Administration surveys roughly 900 stations every Monday. AAA tracks the same thing daily; the two series move together within a few cents.
Natural gas heats half of American homes.
Its price rarely makes headlines.
Natural gas is the fuel Americans pay for twice — once to heat the house, once inside the electricity bill (it generates ~40% of US power). It moves more quietly than crude, but it moves a bigger share of the household budget.
The line below tracks the price set at Henry Hub — a pipeline junction in Louisiana where most US natural gas trades are referenced. It's to natural gas what WTI Cushing is to oil: the national benchmark.
Every president oversaw
more production than the last.
US crude production rose from 5.2 million barrels per day on Obama's inauguration to roughly 13.6 mb/d today. Four administrations, three parties' rhetoric, one continuous line going up. This is the single most important chart on the page.
Total US oil pumped out of the ground every month, summed across every well in every state. Doubled under Obama, doubled again under Trump I, kept rising under Biden, holds at record levels under Trump II.
Each president largely inherits the production trajectory their predecessor set in motion two to five years earlier.
A federal lease signed today does not produce a barrel of oil for years. Permitting, drilling, completion, and pipeline tie-in run roughly 24–60 months from decision to first production. The reverse is also true: a lease cancelled today shuts off no existing wells. The chart above is a slow ship.
The production rise during the Biden administration came overwhelmingly from leases, permits, and infrastructure approved during Trump's first term — when the Bureau of Land Management auctioned record acreage and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ran an expansive Gulf of Mexico leasing program. The Permian Basin boom of those years was the harvest of decisions made years earlier. Trump II now inherits the same long lead time: today's production levels reflect the lease-and-permit expansion of his own first term, the drilling-services capacity and pipelines built out then, and the fact that much of the Permian sits on Texas state and private land where Biden-era federal restrictions never reached. Policy moves slowly. Output moves slower.
The line below shows how much petroleum the US imported each month, minus how much it exported. Above zero means the US bought more from abroad than it sold. Below zero means the US sold more than it bought — a net exporter. The line crossed zero in September 2019 and has not returned.
For the first time since Harry Truman, the United States exported more petroleum than it imported.
EIA monthly petroleum data shows net imports of crude and petroleum products crossing zero in September 2019. The line has not gone back. This is the structural fact that makes everything else on this page possible — a Middle East war whose shockwaves reach the pump but don't hit "crisis."
The state that decided
to import its energy.
California is the cleanest natural experiment in what aggressive state-level energy policy does to price and supply. The state writes its own fuel specs, hasn't permitted a new refinery in decades, and has closed more than it has built. These are the numbers.
California's policy choices — CARB reformulated-gasoline requirements, pipeline permitting, refinery siting, emissions regulation — are the reason its pump prices run more than a dollar above the national average. Whether the trade is worth it is for each reader to decide. What it costs is not in dispute.
1973 lines at the pump.
2026 $4.08 and falling.
When OPEC cut off exports to the US in 1973, America imported roughly 35% of its petroleum. Gas was rationed. Lines wrapped around the block. In 2026, the US is a net petroleum exporter — and a full-scale war with Iran moved gas less than a dollar before it started coming back down.
- Stage 1Feb 28, 2026The war begins.
US and Israeli strikes open hostilities. Kpler data: tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapses from ~130 ships/day pre-war to ~9/day at the nadir.
USNI News · Apr 14, 2026 ↗ - Stage 2Mar 30, 2026WTI closes above $100 for the first time since July 2022.
$102.88 settle. Peaks at $108 in early April. Retail gas climbs to $4.16 on Apr 9 — the first time above $4 since August 2022.
EIA · PET.RWTC.D ↗ - Stage 3Apr 7–8, 2026US–Iran ceasefire takes hold.
Tanker traffic begins to resume. 22 commercial vessels had been struck since Feb 28.
CNN · Day 48 coverage ↗ - Stage 4Apr 17, 2026Strait declared fully open. Iran agrees to surrender its enriched uranium.
WTI drops ~12% in a single session to ~$83. S&P 500 closes at a record. Dow surges more than 900 points intraday. The US Navy blockade of Iranian ports remains in force.
AP via Anchorage Daily News ↗
Same speakers.
Different pump prices.
Politicians on both sides have spoken, on camera and in the Congressional Record, about gas prices and drilling policy. Their words are public. Here we match them to the price of gas on the day the words were spoken. No paraphrase. Every quote linked to its original transcript.
This section ships empty on purpose. Every quote must be transcribed verbatim from a primary source (C-SPAN Video Library, Congressional Record, archived White House transcripts, or signed op-ed) and linked to that source. Entries are added by an editor after a second editor verifies the URL resolves and the transcription is exact. No LLM-generated quotes will ever appear here.
See docs/specs/energy-independence.md §8 for the editorial workflow.