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Thursday, January 4, 2018
Thursday, the Trump administration announced plans to open nearly all previously closed offshore waters of the U.S. for gas and oil drilling activities. These waters would include over 90 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, including areas which were protected thus far such as California and Maine, where drilling has already been blocked for decades. As a result of this plan, drilling would become allowed as well in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. On 20 December 2017, the Congress already voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling. The proposal means, among others, the reversal of an indefinite ban which the previous US president Barack Obama had put in December 2016 on drilling in the Arctic and Eastern Seaboard.
It was US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke who announced the plan in a conference call: “This is a clear difference between energy weakness and energy dominance. We are going to become the strongest energy superpower.” The plan itself is called “The Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Programme”, and its realisation is scheduled in the period 2019-2024. It is aimed at boosting the US domestic energy production.
Environmental activists, who for decades have worked hard to protect vulnerable ecosystems in the concerned waters from oil drilling activities, oppose the plan. A coalition of 60 environmental groups has already opposed to the plan, as well as almost a dozen attorneys general and over 100 US lawmakers. A statement that “These ocean waters are not President Trump’s personal playground” has been signed by environmental groups such as Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters.
The plan comes on the heels of last week’s announcement by the Trump administration of a rollback of the safety regulations for offshore drilling. These regulations were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, in which 11 people lost their lives and a huge amount of oil was spilled.