Florida to be spared in offshore drilling expansion, Zinke says

WASHINGTON — A plan to open Florida’s tourism-dependent Atlantic and Gulf coasts to offshore oil and gas drilling was dropped by the Trump administration Tuesday after a bipartisan backlash that also threatened to complicate a must-pass fiscal 2018 spending bill.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose department on Thursday revealed a draft fiveyear plan for expanding the sale of federal offshore drilling leases to the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans, as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico, announced Tuesday night on Twitter that Florida’s two coasts would not be included in the expansion.

“After talking with Gov. Rick Scott, I am removing Florida from the draft offshore plan,” Zinke said in the tweet. Zinke had been in the state to talk with the Republican governor, a likely 2018 Senate hopeful, after Scott expressed strong opposition to the new offshore strategy.

In a subsequent news release, Zinke said the Trump administration’s two purposes in advancing a new offshore strategy were to unleash U.S. energy resources while also listening to local and state voices about the effort. Those words may haunt Zinke; Florida is not the only state or local government opposed to the new plan.

While state government in Alaska has long advocated drilling in the Arctic, where the Obama administration strictly limited the sale of leases because of the sensitive and challenging environment, the Trump administration plan was met with vociferous and bipartisan opposition in Florida and Pacific coastal states, where offshore drilling has been banned for decades. The fatal and catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 stiffened state and local resistance to such drilling.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington issued a joint statement Friday calling the proposal “a political decision” that “flies in the face of decades of strong opposition on the part of Washington, Oregon and California — from Republicans and Democrats alike.”

That statement included a promise to “do whatever it takes to stop this reckless, short-sighted action,” the three governors said.

Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson alleged Tuesday that the administration’s proposal to sell leases off the Florida coast and its subsequent decision to drop the plan was meant to make Scott, considered a likely challenger for Nelson’s Senate seat, achieve political points.

“I have spent my entire life fighting to keep oil rigs away from our coasts,” Nelson wrote on Twitter. “This is a political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott who has wanted to drill off Florida’s coast his entire career. We shouldn’t be playing politics with the future of Florida.”