Trump to lift Obama drilling restrictions
President Donald Trump will take a major step Friday to expand oil and gas drilling off U.S. shores, directing the Interior Department to lift restrictions that President Barack Obama imposed in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. But local political considerations and the global energy market are likely to influence exploration far more than an executive order in Washington.
Several industry officials and experts predict that oil and gas firms will bid on areas the administration plans to open to drilling, including those off the East Coast. But the targetedArctic areas are much less attractive to investors right now, and even potential drilling in the Atlantic could be complicated by long-standing resistance fromcoastal communities.
Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former Obama energy and environment adviser, said that while the Trump administration can rescind the former president’s efforts to end exploration in the two regions, that processwould be complex and involve at least two years of revamping the government’s longterm drilling plans.
“The question then is, does anybody showup, and does anybody want these (leases)?” Bordoff said. “It depends quite a bit on what the oil market looks like in two years.”
If it looks anything like it does today, with low oil prices and most industry — Interior chief Ryan Zinke, who suggests drilling royalties should be spent on a maintenance backlog in the national parks system
growth taking place onshore, Trump’s new policy might have little practical effect.
National Ocean Industries Association President Randall Luthi, who headed the Minerals Management Service under President GeorgeW. Bush, said what matters most is that there has been “just a complete change of attitude” toward offshore development since Trump took office.
The hope with the executive order is “that once the economics fall into place, the federal and regulatory regime will be right for increased leasing off the Outer Continental Shelf,” Luthi said.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has made clear he wants to boost drilling in federal waters to generate more royalties. While this money goes directly to the U.S. Treasury, Zinke suggested in a speech this week that the royalties should be spent on a maintenance backlog within the national parks system.
“If you go back to 2008, the department made $15.5 billion more a year, just in offshore, thanwe do today,” Zinke said. “That’s enough to pay for infrastructure.”
But even with the new administration’s support for offshore drilling, opposition remains intense among politicians of both parties in the Southeast.
According to the advocacy group Oceana, 90 percent of coastal municipalities fromCapeMay, N.J., to Cape Canaveral, have formally opposed drilling or seismic testing off their coasts. Prominent South Carolina Republicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Rep. Mark Sanford, have come out against drilling there.
“It’s not the environmentalists and the dolphin huggers,” said Jacqueline Savitz, Oceana’s senior vice president for oceans. “It’s the business community. What you’ve got is a different fight now.”
In Beaufort, S.C., Mayor Billy Keyserling said he is ready to again fight the prospect of offshore drilling — just as he did during theObamaadministration — because of concerns over environmental threats, the potential effect on tourism and concern that more local jobs could be destroyed than created.
Several industry officials said that even with a change in leasing policy, additional regulatory changes would be needed to make drilling in the Arctic more economically viable. Just last July, the Interior Department finalized stricter rules for exploratory drilling there.