The Trump administration is delaying its release of a highly-anticipated plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling due to a recent court ruling that has cast doubt over the legality of opening new areas to drilling.
Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt, in comments reported Thursday, suggested the agency will wait out a potentially lengthy appeals process over a decision last month by a federal judge blocking drilling in the Arctic before deciding which parts of federal waters to allow for fossil fuel energy development.
“By the time the court rules, that may be discombobulating to our plan,” Bernhardt told the Wall Street Journal. “What if you guess wrong?” Bernhardt added, speaking to the uncertainties surrounding the legal appeals process. “I’m not sure that’s a very satisfactory and responsible use of resources.”
Democrats and environmental groups quickly cheered Bernhardt’s comments, and called for the agency to permanently halt plans to allow any oil and gas drilling in federal waters.
“This administration has treated public waters like a bottomless cash cow for Big Oil from day one, and if it takes a court order to get them to see reason, so be it,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources. “The bipartisan opposition that killed this plan now needs to turn into support for permanent protections for the communities that depend on healthy oceans and healthy coasts.”
Molly Block, an Interior Department spokeswoman, acknowledged to the Washington Examiner that the court decision had complicated the agency’s process, but she disputed characterizations of the plan being indefinitely postponed or withdrawn.
“Given the recent court decision, the department is simply evaluating all of its options to determine the best pathway to accomplish the mission entrusted to it by the president,” she said.
The Trump administration, before the court ruling, had prepared to dramatically expand offshore oil and gas drilling, releasing a five-year plan in January 2018 to open nearly all federal waters on every coast.
Interior was expected to release a revised plan in the coming weeks or months, after coastal state governors and lawmakers from both parties pressured Trump to scale back the plan, due to concerns about safety and harm to tourism.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason of Alaska, in a March 29 decision, blocked President Trump’s executive order that had reversed President Barack Obama’s ban on oil and gas drilling in most of the Arctic Ocean and a small portion of the Atlantic Coast.
Gleason, an Obama appointee, ruled that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs the offshore oil and gas leasing process for federal waters, allows presidents to unilaterally withdraw areas from offshore drilling, but does not permit a subsequent president to undo a predecessor’s protections.
The Arctic had been viewed as one of the sure bets for leasing, with local and federal politicians in Alaska supportive of drilling for its economic benefits to Alaskans.
But industry’s main interest is in opening parts of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Congress has a moratorium on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that expires in June 2022.
Oil and gas production in the western and central Gulf of Mexico accounts for almost all U.S. offshore production, but extending drilling further east, just west of Florida, could connect to existing infrastructure, industry groups say.
The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas trade group, urged the Trump administration to act quickly on expanding offshore drilling after the Arctic court case is resolved.
“We are hopeful that an appeal of this case will move quickly and that we can proceed with the important work of exploring for America’s offshore resources without unnecessary delay,” Erik Milito, API’s vice president of Upstream and Industry Operations, told the Washington Examiner.
