Trump’s drilling order facing legal challenges
President calls for opening protected Arctic, Atlantic sites.
President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to find new ocean expanses in the Atlantic and the Arctic for offshore drilling is unlikely to reach its goals anytime soon, but instead will kick off a yearslong review and a legal battle.
Trump took the step toward dismantling a key part of Barack Obama’s environmental legacy Friday, the day before his 100th in office.
“This executive order starts the process of opening offshore areas to job-creating energy exploration,” Trump said at a White House ceremony. “It reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban and directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to allow responsible development of offshore areas that will bring revenue to our treasury and jobs to our workers.”
Despite Trump’s assertion that the nation needs to wean itself of foreign oil, U.S. oil imports have declined in recent years as domestic production boomed, mainly through drilling techniques that opened up production in areas once out of reach.
And environmental law and policy experts questioned Trump’s authority to reverse Obama’s withdrawal of certain areas in the Arctic or Atlantic to drilling, a question that will likely be decided in the courts.
“It’s not quite as simple as the president signs something and it undoes the past,” said Sean Hecht, a University of California, Los Angeles environmental law professor.
Trump’s order also directed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to conduct a review of marine monuments and sanctuaries designated over the past 10 years. Obama issued monument proclamations under the Antiquities Act, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in the Atlantic, which protected that swath of sea from drilling.
Legal scholars said Trump would enter uncharted territory if he seeks to undo a national monument proclamation in an effort to remove environmental protections.
Still, Pam Giblin, an Austin-based environmental attorney who represents energy companies, said Trump’s order is welcome news to her clients.
“Every one of these orders is primarily aspirational. But it is starting to change the lens through which government is talking about fossil fuels,” Giblin said. “Instead of demonizing fossil fuels, it’s a viable alternative that’s not going away.”