It’s not big; it’s HUGE. And “Beautiful.”
If that isn’t enough to raise a Big Oil executive’s eyebrows, the latest reserve revision for the US portion of the Gulf of Mexico will.
Because what’s more Trumpian than rebranding an international water body and stuffing it full of fossil fuels?
Now a newly updated estimate from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released on Friday reveals an additional 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) lurking beneath the newly christened ‘Gulf of America’.
That’s a 22.6% spike in recoverable reserves since 2021, bringing the total to a truly presidential 7.04 billion BOE in place.
“This new data confirms what we’ve known all along — America is sitting on a treasure trove of energy, and under President Trump’s leadership, we’re unlocking it,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.
“The Gulf of America is a powerhouse, and by streamlining permitting and expanding access, we’re not just powering our economy — we’re strengthening our national security and putting thousands of Americans back to work.”
Indeed, US energy dominance is back on the menu, even as Trump doles out tariffs like party favours to some of his biggest oil customers, like China, which imported just under 1 million bpd of Texas Tea in January — although reports say that has trickled to nearly zero in the wake of Trump’s trade war.
By comparison, Alberta’s own reserve report released at the CERAWeek conference in Houston last month pegged recoverable bitumen at 167 billion barrels, up a more modest 5% from 159 billion barrels previously — but still so big as to defy comprehension.
And those are numbers investors and financial analysts can take to the bank — unlike the US figures where 2,600 department of energy employees reportedly took voluntary retirement rather than get fired.
Despite the headlines, the BOEM’s reserve accounting is serious business. The increase is due in large part to more advanced drilling and extraction technology, which makes more oil technically and economically recoverable.
That equation continues to evolve — not just in the Gulf, but globally, including in Alberta, where enhanced recovery methods and price dynamics have steadily nudged the world’s proven reserves higher.
In that sense, it’s a good news story regardless of what side of the border you’re on.
Meanwhile, Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell joined the fun this week by touting the start of production at its Dover field, a new subsea tieback to its existing Appomattox hub in the deep water Gulf south of New Orleans .
The project is expected to pump out 20,000 barrels a day at peak, and adds a further 44.5 million barrels to Shell’s reserves tally. All this, while Shell describes Dover as a “low-carbon discovery”— as per its news release — a turn of phrase that’s sure to raise eyebrows among both climate-conscious activists and petroleum engineers alike.
Shell’s carbon accounting gymnastics come as the company pivots, not-so-subtly, back toward fossil fuel development after a brief flirtation with greenhouse gas reduction strategies that now feel like a corporate midlife crisis.
Still, Shell insists its ‘Gulf of America’ barrels are “high-margin” and “lower-carbon” compared to global peers.
The Trump administration, for its part, is barrelling ahead — pun intended — with plans to expand offshore drilling after former president Joe Biden tried to block it on all three coasts, including Alaska.
On April 4 Burgum announced a fresh round of lease sales, unlocking access to more of the 3.2 billion acres (1.3 billion hectares) of the US Outer Continental Shelf, including 160 million acres (65 million hectares) in the Gulf.
The goal? Drill baby, drill — of course.
If the oil is “big,” “beautiful,” and “low-carbon” all the better. In Trump’s America, even the oil comes with a superlative. And Canada’s with a 10% tariff.