Trump Moves to Open Nearly All Offshore Waters to Drilling
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil
and gas drilling in nearly all United States coastal waters, giving energy companies access to leases off California for the first time in decades and opening more than a billion acres in the Arctic and along the Eastern Seaboard.
President Trump signed an executive order in April requiring the Interior Department to reconsider Mr. Obama’s five-year offshore drilling plan, which had
invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to block new lease sales in large areas of the Arctic and Atlantic.
We all saw what happened to the Gulf Coast with Deepwater Horizon.”
Of particular interest to oil companies — and concern to many Florida lawmakers — will be the decision to open the
eastern Gulf of Mexico, said Kevin Book, an energy consultant and managing director of ClearView Energy Partners.
While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of the energy industry
and against environmental groups, it also puts the White House at odds with a number of coastal states that oppose offshore drilling.
Mr. Zinke said the drilling plan was part of “a new path for energy dominance in America,”
but said he planned to speak with Governor Scott and other state leaders before the proposal was finalized.