Sources: U.S. delays offshore oil push
President Donald Trump’s administration is delaying its bid to expand oil drilling to new U.S. waters until after the 2020 election in response to opposition from coastal Republicans and a legal defeat, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Administration officials are worried that the president and Republican leaders in the Southeast would lose votes if they pushed forward with the plan to sell new drilling rights in the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans, said the people, who asked not to be identified revealing confidential discussions. Procedural missteps and a court ruling jeopardizing new oil drilling opportunities in Arctic waters also complicated the effort.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt last month told senators that the administration was back “at the very beginning” of the long process of writing a new five-year plan for selling offshore oil and gas leases.
Bernhardt’s remark was a defeat for oil companies eager for new offshore acreage and represents the latest snag in a tortured two-year bid by the Trump administration to expand coastal waters available for drilling.
Trump in 2017 ordered the Interior Department to consider scheduling new sales of drilling rights along U.S. coastlines, with an eye on annual auctions of territory in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska, and the mid- and south-Atlantic.
The agency responded in January 2018 with a draft plan opening the door to selling drilling rights in more than 90% of U.S. coastal waters.
In the court ruling March 29, an Alaska-based judge found Trump exceeded his legal authority in trying to resume oil and gas leasing in
Top British officials have decided to let the Chinese technology giant Huawei help develop an ultrafast 5G wireless network in the United Kingdom, according to reports, in spite of pressure by U.S. officials to freeze out the company on security grounds.
The leaked decision by the United Kingdom’s National Security Council — a panel led by Prime Minister Theresa May — risks inflaming tensions between the U.K. and the Trump administration as Huawei flexes its muscles as the world’s dominant supplier of telecom equipment. And it instantly created a political firestorm among members of Parliament determined to hunt down the source of the leak.
The U.K.’s decision to move forward with Huawei will not be official until it is announced by the secretary for digital culture and reported to Parliament. But the council’s conclusion to let Huawei participate, even in a limited way, in the U.K. 5G rollout is a significant diplomatic defeat for the United States, which has argued that Huawei’s networking equipment cannot be trusted — and could be used for spying or to disrupt networks.
After the reports, White House national security council spokesman Garrett Marquis said on Twitter that the Trump administration is continuing to work “across government & with allies & partners to mitigate risk in the deployment of communications infrastructure.”
He added: “As the President has said, ‘5G networks must be secure. They must be strong. They have to be guarded from the enemy — we do have enemies out there …’”
Some analysts said the U.K. decision sets a precedent that other countries are likely to follow.
“Now countries are less likely to do a complete ban,” said James Lewis, a cyberpolicy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has followed the international 5G debate closely.
Lewis said it was still possible that the British decision, when it is announced, could reduce risk to a manageable level. “If the British implement their restrictions in a tough way, it’s not a big deal. If they implement them in a soft way, then Huawei will be all over the network,” he said.
For instance, Huawei will continue to be barred, as it is in the 4G networks, from the “core” of Britain’s 5G network, which contains routers and switches handling massive volumes of traffic, officials said. The limitations are also expected to include geographic restrictions near sensitive networks.
But not all experts are so sure such restrictions will be sufficient.
Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s former prime minister, said that even if Huawei is limited to the network “edge,” or where radio antennae connect with user devices, the risk is still there.
“With 5G, we have had to recognize that the core/edge distinction no longer exists,” Turnbull said in a speech Thursday in New York. That is why Australia last year became the first nation to put in place new requirements on “high risk” vendors that effectively banned Huawei from the country’s 5G network. Such vendors, the government determined, could be subject to directions from foreign intelligence services to act contrary to national security.
“Our decision was not taken lightly” or based on “near term threats,” he said. Rather, it was “a long-term prudent hedge.”
Reports indicated that several members of the security council, including the home, foreign and defense secretaries, had expressed reservations about the plan. The United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters intelligence service last month delivered a scathing assessment of Huawei security risks in the 4G networks. But, according to media reports, May gave the green light.
The decision was first reported Wednesday by The Daily Telegraph after May and other ministers on the council met to discuss Huawei’s possible role in the 5G network.
Proponents of 5G say the wireless technology will lead to mobile download speeds of up to 100 times faster than what is found on the 4G LTE in many smartphones today. And, they say, it will pave the way for future technologies such as self-driving cars and a world of networked, smart appliances. The United States is racing against other countries to get a critical mass of consumers connected to 5G, in hope that U.S. businesses will be the ones to create the Uber and Spotify of the future. more than 125 million acres of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans that former President Barack Obama had sought to protect. Legal appeals could stretch until at least 2020, interfering with the Interior Department’s initial bid to sell drilling rights in the Beaufort Sea this year.
“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,” Interior spokesman Molly Block said by email.
In an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal, Bernhardt said the Interior Department may be forced to wait for potentially lengthy appeals of that case before making a final decision on the offshore oil plan.
“By the time the court rules, that may be discombobulating to our plan,” Bernhardt told the newspaper.
Even before the court ruling,
the department had struggled to take the next step: unveiling a formal proposed schedule for selling offshore oil leases through at least 2024. The effort was complicated by political concerns, after former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke publicly assured Republican Sen. Rick Scott, who was Florida’s governor at the time, that he was “removing Florida from consideration for any new oil and gas platforms.”
Governors along the U.S. East Coast cried foul, demanding similar protections, as coastal communities and city councils passed resolutions objecting to offshore drilling near their shores.
The Republican-led Georgia House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing offshore drilling earlier this month. And South Carolina joined a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration over planned seismic surveys designed to pinpoint possible oil along the U.S. East Coast, with the support of the state’s Republican governor and attorney general.
Democrats also have capitalized
on opposition to offshore drilling in campaigns for office. For instance, freshman Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C., made offshore drilling a signature issue in his successful bid for the House last year.
The issue also squeezes some Republican lawmakers seeking re-election, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has pushed the Trump administration for more details on how it will protect coastal communities.
“Bipartisan opposition to offshore drilling from a growing number of local, state and federal officials across America has made this a political loser for President Trump, and he knows it,” said Kevin Curtis, executive director of the NRDC Action Fund, an affiliate of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Every candidate for federal office in 2020 will be asked whether they stand with Trump and the oil companies or with the families, business owners, and local officials who oppose the expansion of dirty, dangerous and climate-wrecking drilling off our beaches.”