Trump Moves to Open Nearly All Offshore Waters to Drilling<br />WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Thursday it would allow new offshore oil<br />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.<br />President Trump signed an executive order in April requiring the Interior Department to reconsider Mr. Obama’s five-year offshore drilling plan, which had<br />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.<br />We all saw what happened to the Gulf Coast with Deepwater Horizon.”<br />Of particular interest to oil companies — and concern to many Florida lawmakers — will be the decision to open the<br />eastern Gulf of Mexico, said Kevin Book, an energy consultant and managing director of ClearView Energy Partners.<br />While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of the energy industry<br />and against environmental groups, it also puts the White House at odds with a number of coastal states that oppose offshore drilling.<br />Mr. Zinke said the drilling plan was part of “a new path for energy dominance in America,”<br />but said he planned to speak with Governor Scott and other state leaders before the proposal was finalized.
