Trump’s imaginary oil crisis
The Trump administration’s unprecedented threat to open most federal waters to oil and gas drilling is true to post-factual form. Amid record domestic energy production and a global consensus for reducing carbon emissions, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposes taking serious environmental risks opposed by most of the coastal population for the sake of extracting even more fossil fuels.
Set in motion by President Trump’s reversal of former President Barack Obama’s order blocking new energy leases along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, Zinke’s draft plan envisions offering 47 new leases in offshore waters from Alaska to California and Maine to Florida starting next year. That could open unexploited areas in the federal portion of the continental shelf, which begins 3 miles offshore, along the central and northern coast of California as well as the East Coast.
Drilling off California is currently confined to the south. New energy leases have been prohibited in California waters since the state’s largest oil spill, off Santa Barbara in 1969, and no new federal leases have been sold since the 1980s.
But this isn’t just another partisan controversy pitting California liberals against the Trump administration. The opposition to offshore drilling is widespread and bipartisan in coastal states, where a boon to energy companies is a threat not only to the environment and wildlife, but also to the countless businesses that depend on recreation and fishing. Among the prominent Republicans who have objected to expanded drilling are Southern California Rep. Darrell Issa, Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and outgoing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Zinke’s plan would be the latest in a series of administration gifts to the fossil fuel industry. It has also loosened safety measures required after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, opened the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling by signing Congress’ tax overhaul, pulled out of the Paris climate accord, and rescinded hydraulic fracturing regulations.
One might get the impression that the administration is contending with an energy crisis, but hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have in fact fueled a boom in oil and gas extraction from shale formations in the nation’s interior. The United States last year exported more fossil fuels than ever before, and oil prices have only recently risen enough to spur new shale drilling. They remain well short of justifying expanded offshore operations in most of the areas Zinke contemplates. Royal Dutch Shell, for instance, has given up most of its leases off Alaska.
Especially in the current market, additional offshore drilling would be attractive to energy companies in areas that already have the required infrastructure, which makes the prospects for drilling off Northern California and the East Coast merely theoretical for the time being. Zinke’s plan faces a public comment period before it becomes final, while Congress and the courts would also have opportunities to review new oil and gas leases.
The plan should struggle to survive such scrutiny. Like many of the administration’s signature initiatives, it’s a risky, reactionary solution to a problem that does not exist.