President Trump on Monday invoked wartime authority under the Defense Production Act to ramp up domestic oil, gas, and coal production, a sweeping move that touches everything from petroleum refining and pipelines to electric grid equipment and liquefied natural gas exports. The action, carried out through five presidential memos issued under Section 303 of the DPA, marks the most aggressive use of the Cold War-era statute for fossil fuel development in modern history.
The push comes as the war in Iran has choked a critical artery of global oil supply. About a fifth of the world's oil typically flows through the Strait of Hormuz, off Iran's coast, and Tehran has effectively halted that flow. Prices have been skyrocketing around the world, as The Hill reported, and the White House framed the memos as a direct national-security response.
The Defense Production Act gives the president authority to increase production of certain items deemed essential to national security. Trump's five memos apply that authority to domestic petroleum production, refining and logistics capacity; coal supply chains and baseload power generation; natural gas transmission, processing, storage and LNG capacity; electric grid infrastructure equipment; and the development, manufacturing and deployment of large-scale energy infrastructure.
In the petroleum memo, Trump warned that "without immediate Federal action, United States defense capabilities will remain vulnerable to disruption." The language tied energy supply directly to the readiness of the armed forces, the industrial base, and what the memo called "crucial infrastructure."
The coal determination went further. It argued that "without sufficient coal-fired baseload power, the United States will lack the stable electricity required to support defense installations, industrial expansion, and the high-energy demands of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence." That explicit mention of AI signals the administration's view that grid reliability is not merely an energy question but a technology and defense question.
A separate memo on large-scale energy infrastructure cited "financing risks, regulatory delays, and market barriers" as obstacles the DPA authority is meant to overcome. Taken together, the five documents lay the groundwork for federal intervention across the full fossil-fuel supply chain, from the wellhead to the power plant to the export terminal.
The administration has not been shy about overruling its own advisors on energy timelines, and these memos suggest it intends to move fast.
The DPA memos do not stand alone. Fox News reported that Trump also signed a separate executive order directing the Department of War, in coordination with the Department of Energy, to pursue long-term power purchase agreements with coal-fired power plants for military and other mission-critical facilities. The order declares it "the policy of the United States that coal is essential to our national and economic security."
Trump said the policy would help keep coal plants online, including Tennessee Valley Authority facilities in Tennessee, and that DOE funds would be directed to coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Kentucky. "Coal is also critical to our national security," Trump said.
The executive order argues the electric grid must remain resilient and cannot depend on intermittent energy sources, a clear reference to wind and solar generation, which require backup capacity when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
For coal communities that have watched plant after plant close over the past decade, the combination of DPA authority and guaranteed military purchasing agreements represents a concrete federal commitment, not just rhetoric. Whether it arrives in time to save plants already on the edge of closure remains an open question.
Using the Defense Production Act for fossil fuels is not without controversy, and it is not entirely without precedent in concept. National Review noted that back in June 2018, Trump directed the DOE to find a way to keep struggling coal and nuclear plants in operation. A leaked draft plan at the time proposed requiring grid operators to purchase electricity from those plants for two years. That draft cited Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act and the Defense Production Act as possible legal authority, though both are typically reserved for emergencies or national-security situations.
Oren Cass of the Manhattan Institute warned at the time:
"These statutes are in place to protect the electric grid from serious stability and national-security concerns. Using them to score political points... is not different in kind from using various Clean Air Act provisions to shut down coal plants."
That earlier effort stalled. This time, the administration has the tailwind of an actual shooting war disrupting global oil markets. The Strait of Hormuz closure gives the White House a far stronger factual predicate for invoking emergency production authority than it had in 2018.
Meanwhile, the president has been barnstorming western swing states with an economic message that ties energy costs directly to kitchen-table affordability, a political backdrop that makes the DPA action both a policy move and a midterm signal.
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, blasted the action in a written statement:
"President Trump is abusing emergency authorities and wasting taxpayer resources through unprecedented abuse of the Defense Production Act to promote his politically-favored fossil fuel projects at the expense of energy affordability and common sense."
The "energy affordability" framing is worth pausing on. Oil prices are surging because a hostile regime has shut down one of the world's most important shipping lanes. American consumers are paying more at the pump and more to heat their homes. The administration's response is to use existing law to boost domestic supply, the textbook market answer to a supply crunch.
Public Citizen's complaint amounts to arguing that the president should not use national-security tools during a national-security crisis because the tools benefit an industry progressives dislike. That is not a legal argument. It is a policy preference dressed up as outrage.
The broader institutional fight around Trump's use of executive authority continues on multiple fronts, including congressional efforts to revisit past impeachment proceedings and clashes with Democratic-run jurisdictions over federal infrastructure funding.
The five memos lay the legal foundation. What matters now is implementation. The DPA gives the executive branch tools including loans, loan guarantees, purchase commitments, and the ability to prioritize contracts for national-defense purposes. None of the memos published so far specify dollar amounts, production targets, or implementation deadlines.
The oil memo applies not only to production but also to refining and pipelines, a recognition that bottlenecks in the supply chain matter as much as barrels coming out of the ground. The natural gas memo covers transmission, processing, storage, and LNG export capacity. The grid infrastructure memo addresses the equipment supply chain that keeps the lights on. Each of these categories has been plagued by permitting delays and regulatory uncertainty for years.
Whether the DPA authority actually accelerates projects or merely signals intent will depend on how aggressively federal agencies act on the memos. Regulatory delays and court challenges are near certainties. Environmental groups and progressive state attorneys general have shown no reluctance to litigate Trump-era energy actions.
But the underlying reality is hard to argue with. A war has disrupted global energy supply. Prices are rising. The grid faces growing demand from data centers and AI. And the United States sits on enormous reserves of oil, gas, and coal that could ease all three pressures, if Washington gets out of the way.
For years, the political class treated American fossil fuels as a problem to be managed into extinction. Now a real crisis has arrived, and the same resources look a lot more like the answer.
