The White Houses nascent effort to bail out oil and gas producers struggling with plunging oil prices could become a political boondoggle, legal and industry experts say, given the difficulty of finding congressional support for offering federal dollars to an industry plagued by reckless financing and devastating effects on the climate.

The price war that broke out between Saudi Arabia and Russia on Sunday pushed the price of crude into its steepest single-day nosedive since 1991. Both producers vowed to continue oversupplying the market even as the panic over the coronavirus pandemic grounded planes and shuttered factories, significantly reducing demand. The combined effect sent the price of oil below $33 a barrel Wednesday and threatened what one analyst called a financial bloodbath for the U.S. fracking industry, whose rapid expansion over the past decade was fueled by precarious debt.

In response, the Trump administration , which has aggressively bolstered the oil and gas sector, this week began strongly considering offering low-interest government loans to drillers, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Its unclear what form such an aid package would ultimately take and whether it would require congressional approval if it reached fruition. The American Petroleum Institute, the industrys largest and most powerful lobby, told reporters it was not asking for a bailout and denied having any talks with the administration. At a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill , Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration was considering a loan package to certain industries similar to the federal program to prop up airlines after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks caused an abrupt drop in air travel.

That measure, which provided direct aid worth $7.3 billion in todays dollars and $14.6 billion in loan guarantees for the airline industry, came through Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Sept. 23, 2001.