The 47th Administration

Oil Prices Are Spiking With Trump’s Iran War. The Way Out of This Cycle Is Clean Energy.

Earthjustice is pushing forward the energy transition this moment demands.

By Earthjustice

Gas price signs at a Chevron station all read between $5.50 and $6.
War with Iran has spiked gas prices across the U.S., including at this Los Angeles Chevron station on March 9. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)
March 16, 2026

Two weeks in, Trump’s war with Iran has already had far-reaching consequences. Thousands dead. $11 billion spent. And family budgets around the U.S. suddenly busted as oil and gas trade route disruptions drive up the price of gasoline.

What Americans pay for oil and gas is determined by a world market that is highly vulnerable to geopolitical conflicts. Even now, with the U.S. producing more oil than ever before in history, prices remain volatile.

We’ve known the answer to this problem for many years: clean energy. Solar and wind prices have steadily fallen for decades and don’t require an ongoing supply of fuels. And they don’t pollute our communities or inflict drilling and catastrophic spills on our lands and waters.

Despite the costs, the Trump administration is charging ahead with fossil fuel development over affordable clean energy. It recently held lease sales in Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Mexico and has one scheduled for March 18 in the Western Arctic. It also just approved BP’s proposal for a risky deepwater drilling project called Kaskida.

Meanwhile, it is actively hindering a clean energy buildout. Since taking office last year, this administration has driven the cancellation of enough wind and solar capacity to power roughly 16.6 million U.S. homes without any need for foreign or domestic oil.

Earthjustice is pushing forward the energy transition this moment demands. In the last few months:

  • We announced our plans to challenge the Cook Inlet lease sale in court – and not a single fossil fuel company put in a bid.
  • More than 48,000 Earthjustice supporters urged the government to reject the Kaskida proposal. We’re committed to fighting the approval of this or any other reckless oil project.
  • We won a legal battle to restore $5 billion in federal funding for a national network of EV charging stations – a key to modernizing transportation in the U.S.

State by state, we’re leading the charge to electrify everything and hook up the grid to clean power. We don’t need to start from scratch with the vision for a clean energy transformation – we just need the Trump administration to stop blocking its progress. In the courts and beyond, Earthjustice is working for just that.