State resists Trump oil push
Executive order directs Interior secretary to evaluate Obama coastal conservation measures
In a move cheered by the oil industry and harshly criticized by environmentalists and California’s top elected officials, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order that could expand offshore oil drilling — including off the Pacific Coast — and potentially reduce the size of California’s national marine sanctuaries.
“Today we are unleashing American energy and clearing the way for thousands and thousands of high-paying American energy jobs,” Trump said at a White House ceremony.
Environmentalists had a different view.
“Californians know all too well the high price society pays for the inevitable spills and other disasters that accompany oil and gas development in sensitive coastal waters,” said Julie Packard, executive director of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who called Trump’s order “a
huge step backward.”
The executive order Friday does not immediately allow any new drilling. Rather, it requires U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and other Cabinet officials to review several key decisions made by former President Barack Obama and report back to Trump in six months with recommendations, amid a general goal of relaxing those rules and allowing more drilling.
Any attempt to actually open new areas off California’s coast to new oil and gas drilling would be met with certain lawsuits from environmentalists, state officials, fishing groups and tourism leaders. And on Friday one California legislator wasted no time saying she would sponsor a bill aimed at foiling Trump’s plan.
Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, said she will introduce legislation to ban the State Lands Commission from approving any new pipelines, terminals, piers or other construction along the shoreline or in California waters out to three miles that would help oil companies bring in oil from new platforms. The California Coastal Commission is also expected to take similar steps.
“President Trump and his oil industry cronies may want to drill, but we will prevent that development from being feasible,” Jackson said.
Among the key areas to be reviewed as part of Trump’s order: a decision by Obama shortly before he left office to update the federal government’s fiveyear plan to lease offshore areas for new oil drilling. In that plan for 2017-2022, Obama did not allow any new drilling off California, Oregon or Washington, or along the Atlantic Coast or in the hotly contested Arctic Ocean north of Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
He did allow oil companies to bid for 10 new lease sales, however, in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the Alaska coast at Cook Inlet, southwest of Anchorage.
There are 26 offshore platforms where oil is produced in California, all located off the coasts of Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties. They date back to the 1950s.
No new lease sales have been been sold to oil companies off California since 1984 because of staunch opposition of coastal leaders and environmentalists worried about oil spills. They often cite the Santa Barbara disaster in 1969, when 4 million gallons of heavy crude from a Unocal platform blowout coated beaches, killed sea birds, dolphins and other animals and inspired the state’s modern environmental movement.
Oil industry groups in California, who have not pushed for new offshore drilling in recent years given the political realities and the current low price of oil, largely sidestepped the issue Friday.
“While energy policy is discussed in Washington, D.C., we are focused on the matters affecting our members in the West,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association.
An array of California’s elected officials said Friday that Trump’s proposals make little sense.
“We need to invest in safer, cleaner energy sources,” said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “California will fight this every step of the way. We do not want oil drilling off our coast. Period.”
Trump’s executive order also halts expanding or establishing any new national marine sanctuaries — federally protected areas in the ocean where oil drilling is banned. And it mandates that U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross review any actions since 2007 where new sanctuaries were created or expanded.
That could affect California. In 2015, Obama more than doubled the size of two Northern California marine sanctuaries, extending them by 50 miles up the rugged Sonoma and Mendocino coasts.
In a dramatic move by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the boundaries of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries were expanded from Bodega Bay to Point Arena, banning offshore oil drilling along that stretch of coast.
Obama also quadrupled in size Hawaii’s Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, an area that stretches over vast sections of coral reef and relatively undisturbed ocean northwest of Hawaii that former President George W. Bush first set aside as a monument.
Bush in 2009 also expanded the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary by 14 percent to include Davidson Seamount, an underwater volcano teeming with huge coral reefs and other marine life.
No president has ever reduced or eliminated a national marine sanctuary in the 45 years since President Richard Nixon signed the 1972 law setting up America’s marine sanctuary program, said veteran coastal activist Richard Charter of Bodega Bay, a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation.
“It is so counter-intuitive to target the national marine sanctuaries — the most sensitive and spectacular parts of our natural heritage — for oil drilling,” Charter said. “It’s just nuts. The lawsuits will last longer than the Trump administration.”