CNN
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Oil prices are near three-year lows. Gas prices are down below $3 in many parts of America. So why did Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump talk so much about expanding oil production during Tuesday night’s debate?

Harris, who has been criticized for her past stance against fracking, noted that she represented the decisive vote in the Senate to open new fracking leases in 2022. While Harris has also repeatedly touted her support for clean energy solutions, she rightly acknowledged that the United States has produced more oil under the Biden administration than any other country in history.

Meanwhile, Trump, who supports a rapid expansion of oil production, attacked Harris for policy proposals that he said would decimate America’s fossil fuel industry: “If she wins the election, the day after the election they’re going to go back and destroy our country and oil will be dead. Fossil fuel will be dead,” Trump said.

Trump also said, “She has a plan not to allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else,” a charge Harris denied.

Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told CNN in a telephone interview Wednesday that he is “not at all concerned” about the destruction of the fossil fuel industry, because Americans still rely on oil for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

It’s also important to note that ending fracking, let alone the fossil fuel industry as a whole, would be counterproductive for a politician, as it would anger voters by causing gasoline prices to rise.

For all the candidates’ talk of promoting fossil fuel production, it’s not clear that America needs dramatically more oil. (And climate scientists say that’s the exact opposite of what the planet needs.)

U.S. crude oil prices fell below $66 a barrel on Tuesday, the lowest level since December 2021, before recovering somewhat on Wednesday.

Gas prices are at a six-month low, according to AAA. Meanwhile, OPEC+, a group of major oil-producing countries, is so concerned about excess supply and weak demand in China that it has postponed plans to increase production.

U.S. oil production has already risen to a record high of 13.4 million barrels per day, according to weekly federal data.

Lipow said it would be “difficult” to get U.S. production dramatically above 14 million barrels per day because all the most efficient and cheapest spots have already been tapped.

“Yes, production can go up. But are we going to increase oil production by another 50%? That’s probably quite unlikely,” Lipow said.

Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, is also skeptical about the possibility of U.S. production increasing.

“As a rule, the president doesn’t have the power to rapidly increase U.S. oil production. The industry is running at full tilt,” said McNally, who served as an energy adviser to former President George W. Bush. “Presidents can do damage. They can suddenly reduce production. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say Kamala Harris would do that.”

Trump has claimed in recent weeks that gas prices were below $2 a gallon when he was president, and he has promised to bring gas prices back to that level if he is re-elected.

There are a few problems with that: The last time gas was below $2 a gallon, the world was in a recession due to pandemic shutdowns, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Travel ground to a halt, which caused demand for fuel to plummet. It got to the point that oil prices briefly went negative for the first time, as companies scrambled to find places to store all those unwanted barrels.

Before the pandemic, the last time gas was below $2 a gallon was in 2016, when America ramped up fossil fuel production so much that it created a massive glut of oil and gas, which eventually bankrupted a number of companies. And before that, the last time gas was below $2 a gallon was during the global financial crisis.

So it would probably take an extreme — or catastrophic — event to get gas prices back below $2. In other words, the next president can promise whatever he or she wants: They can open up drilling permits and expand areas for fracking. But that doesn’t mean there will be a market for all that oil — and it might not make financial sense for companies to profit from it.