President Trump is renewing his push for U.S. control of Syrian oil. But experts say there’s not much oil there, and what there is belongs to the Syrian government.

Still, the idea of controlling the oil fields is one that has long appealed to Trump. And it may provide a rationale for maintaining a U.S. military presence in Syria, reversing the president’s promise of a full withdrawal.

“We are leaving soldiers to secure the oil,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, while announcing the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “And we may have to fight for the oil. It’s OK. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil.”

In fact, in the best of times Syria produced only about 380,000 barrels of low-quality oil per day. And production has fallen more than 90% during the country’s long civil war. Last year, Syria ranked 75th among countries in the world in oil production, with a daily output comparable to that of the state of Illinois.

“Syrian oil was never important to the world market because production was so small,” said energy expert Daniel Yergin of IHS Markit. “But it was very important to the Assad regime before the civil war because it produced 25% of the total government revenues.”

Trump on Sunday floated the idea of modernizing Syria’s productive capacity with help from a major oil company.

“What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an Exxon Mobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly,” he said.

That would be a costly undertaking, according to Joshua Landis, who directs the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“This whole oil region needs to be rebuilt,” Landis said. “So if America is going to get in the business of retaining these oil fields, it will have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, in theory, to make them exploitable.”

Trump has argued for years that the U.S. should seize Middle Eastern oil fields to recoup some of the cost of its military operations in the region — an idea that experts say violates international law and would only fuel criticism of American intentions.

“In the old days, you when you had a war, to the victors belong the spoils,” Trump told ABC news in 2011.

Emory law professor Laurie Blank says that notion is outdated. “International law seeks to protect against exactly this sort of exploitation,” Blank told Reuters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — who bitterly criticized the president’s abrupt decision earlier this month to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria — seized on the oil fields as an argument for a continued American presence in the region.

“By continuing to maintain control of the oil fields in Syria, we will deny Assad and Iran a monetary windfall,” Graham said in a statement last week that echoed Trump’s own language. “We can also use some of the revenues from future oil sales to pay for our military commitment in Syria.”

That position appears to have struck a nerve with Trump.

“I spoke with Lindsey Graham just a little while ago,” Trump said Sunday. “Where Lindsey and I totally agree is the oil.”

For Graham and others, the oil fields may be a way to appeal to the president’s transactional instincts and overcome Trump’s aversion to an open-ended deployment in Syria.

“There are many elements of our foreign policy establishment that want to roll back Iran and want to stay in Syria for the long haul,” Landis said. “Throwing the oil wells in front of President Trump was a way I think they believed that they could reanimate his interest in staying in Syria.”

Already facing dangerous wildfires across California, including a little-contained blaze ravaging tens of thousands of acres in the north, the state’s firefighters are now dealing with a new threat much farther south. The Getty Fire, which ignited before dawn Monday in the hills north of Los Angeles, has ridden high winds to consume some 500 acres of land so far.

“We have over 500 firefighters on the line right now, in some of the most challenging topography of Los Angeles,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference Monday. He said the fire broke out around 1:30 a.m. PT, adjacent to Interstate 405 — the busiest highway in the U.S.

The fire shut down the southbound lanes of a significant chunk of the 405 freeway Monday morning, and local authorities have ordered mandatory evacuations for an area encompassing some 10,000 structures. Social media swarmed with posts from residents telling of being rousted from their homes in the morning’s wee hours — including, it appears, Los Angeles Laker LeBron James and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Getty Center, the museum in the area for which the fire is named, said Monday that it remains safe from the blaze — even if it is cloaked in the fire’s eerie orange hues.

Roughly 450 miles to the northwest, another much more entrenched wildfire is blazing through parts of Sonoma County. The Kincade Fire, which has burned since Wednesday evening, at last check had consumed some 66,000 acres of land and destroyed around 100 structures, with more than 4,000 fire personnel assigned to fight it.

Despite raging for nearly five days, the Kincade Fire remains just 5 percent contained. Cal Fire blames the difficulties on “critical fire weather conditions” in the area: high winds up to 50 mph, low humidity and steep terrain that limits firefighters’ access.

The Kincade Fire has forced the evacuation of approximately 180,000 people in Sonoma County, according to member station KQED in San Francisco.

So far, there have been no reports of casualties in either fire.

Still, even before the ignition of the Getty Fire early Monday, the sheer scale and number of wildfires confronting California — including Santa Clarita’s Tick Fire — prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a statewide emergency Sunday.

Newsom says the state has secured funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help fight the Getty Fire as well.

“California is grateful for the ongoing support as we battle fires up and down the state in extremely severe weather conditions,” Newsom said in a statement on Monday. He added, “I thank our heroic emergency responders and volunteers for their tireless, life-saving work to safeguard communities across the state.”