There are thing that the President of the United States can do and thing he can't do. He can stop the issuance of new permits to drill on federal lands. But he

There are thing that the President of the United States can do and thing he can't do. He can stop the issuance of new permits to drill on federal lands. But he can't stop companies from drilling on places where they already have a permit, federal or not. Implicitly, a candidate cannot promise more than a President can deliver, and that's why Biden and his team were vague about what "shut down oil drilling" meant. The technical term (on Wall Street) for oil companies is "Oil and Gas Exploration and Production" companies [1]. Note that "exploration" is mentioned ahead of "production". Banks have special departments dedicated to lending to O&G E&P companies, and the lending standards are mostly described in the regulatory handbook [2]. If you take a look there, you'll see that lending in that space is mostly about reserves. E&P companies carefully husband their reserves. They need to have all levels of reserves, from proved and developed to proved and undeveloped to probable and then to possible. As they extract oil and gas, they need to continually upgrade their existing reserves (for example from possible to probable), and to acquire new rights of exploration. All this is very complex because the price of oil is volatile. In Spring 2020 the price of oil reached record lows (including negative futures prices for a few days). In Spring 2022, it reached recent record highs, but oil executives have a longer time horizon in their planning, because prices can plummet in a hurry (as we speak, they've already dropped 25% from their peak). Bottom line, the oil companies have inertia. Just like an 18-wheeler can't turn as quickly as a personal car, they can't change their operations as quickly as people would like them to. But of course, both Biden's administration and the oil executive will try to score points. The administration claims that the oil industry is artificially restricting its own output in order to keep prices high and maximize profits, while the oil executives will try to pressure the administration to allow new permits on federal lands. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_exploration_and_production_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_exploration_and_pr... [2] https://www.occ.gov/publications-and-resources/publications/comptrollers-handbook/files/oil-gas-exploration-prod-lending/pub-ch-oil-and-gas.pdf https://www.occ.gov/publications-and-resources/publications/...