Trump Orders Review of Obama Offshore Drilling Plan

President Trump on Friday called for the review of a five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing that the Obama administration put in place to keep large swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic off-limits to fossil fuel development.

Trump signed an executive order calling for the review during a ceremony at the White House.  It comes just before the symbolic 100-day mark of his administration and instructs the Commerce Department to also review all marine sanctuaries created or expanded in the past 10 years. The order echoes another signed earlier this week for a review of all large national monuments established since 1996 and recommending ways for Congress to shrink or abolish them.

The latest order is part of a concerted effort to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations — such as the Clean Power Plan and a moratorium on federal coal leasing — put in place in part to curb the greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.  Those emissions are raising global temperatures and sea levels, as well as impacting weather patterns and the health of ecosystems.

Trump and officials in his administration, many of whom have connections to the oil and gas industry, have decried those regulations as “job killing” and preventing economic growth.  They have also cited them as a threat to national security.  Trump promised during his campaign to roll them back and bolster America’s declining coal industry as well as fully exploit the country’s fossil fuel reserves.

“This executive order starts the process of opening offshore areas to job-creating, energy exploration,” Trump said in remarks before the signing.  “It reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban and directs Secretary Zinke to allow responsible development of offshore areas that will bring revenue to our treasury and jobs to our workers.”

The new order “puts us on track for American energy independence,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters Thursday evening.

Zinke is charged with carrying out the review of the current five-year offshore leasing plan over the next couple of years.  In the meantime, that plan “remains in existence; there is no immediate change,” Zinke said.

Under the current leasing plan, 3.8 million acres of the Atlantic and 115 million acres of the Arctic under U.S. jurisdiction are placed off-limits for leasing.  Offshore leasing accounts for about 16 percent of U.S. oil production and 5 percent of natural gas production, with about 97 percent of that activity occurring in the western Gulf of Mexico.  The plan did allow for leasing in 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea off of Alaska.

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