Trump Plans New Oil Drilling Off Florida, California Coasts

The Trump administration announced on Thursday new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems, as President Trump seeks to expand US oil production. The oil industry has been seeking access to new offshore areas, including Southern California and off the coast of Florida, as a way to boost US energy security and jobs, the AP reports.

• The federal government has not allowed drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Florida and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995, because of concerns about oil spills. California has some offshore oil rigs, but there has been no new leasing in federal waters since the mid-1980s.

• Since taking office for a second time in January, Trump has systematically reversed Joe Biden's focus on slowing climate change to pursue what the Republican calls US "energy dominance" in the global market. Trump, who recently called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world," created a National Energy Dominance Council and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-high US energy production, particularly fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.
• Trump's administration has blocked renewable energy sources such as offshore wind and canceled billions of dollars in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects across the country.
• Even before it was released, the offshore drilling plan met with strong opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading Trump critic. The Democrat pronounced the idea "dead on arrival" in a social media post. The proposal also is likely to draw bipartisan opposition in Florida. Tourism and access to clean beaches are key parts of the economy in both states.
• The administration's plan proposes six offshore lease sales off the coast of California. It also calls for new drilling off the coast of Florida in areas at least 100 miles from that state's shore. The area targeted for leasing is adjacent to an area in the central Gulf of Mexico that already contains thousands of wells and hundreds of drilling platforms.
• The five-year plan also would compel more than 20 lease sales off the coast of Alaska, including a newly designated area known as the High Arctic, more than 200 miles offshore in the Arctic Ocean.

• Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican and Trump ally, helped persuade Trump officials to drop a similar offshore plan in 2018 when he was governor. Last week, Scott and fellow Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody co-sponsored a bill to maintain a moratorium on offshore drilling in the state that Trump signed in his first term.
• A Newsom spokesman said Trump officials had not formally shared the plan, but said "expensive and riskier offshore drilling would put our communities at risk and undermine the economic stability of our coastal economies." A Texas-based company, with support from the Trump administration, is seeking to restart production in waters off Santa Barbara damaged by a 2015 oil spill.
• Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental group Oceana, called the Trump administration's latest plan "an oil spill nightmare." Coastal communities "depend on healthy oceans for economic security and their cherished way of life,'' he said. "We need to protect our coasts from more offshore drilling, not put them up for sale to the oil and gas industry. There's too much at stake to risk more horrific oil spills that will haunt our coastlines for generations to come."