Less than a week after announcing the Trump regime’s radically aggressive plan to open up 98 percent of U.S. coastal waters to drilling for oil and gas, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said Tuesday after meeting with Republican Gov. Rick Scott that offshore Florida would be excluded from the plan. His brief statement is here. Like Scott, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, and 20 members of the 27-member Florida congressional delegation had also voiced strong opposition to the plan. But Nelson is wary:
Mr. Nelson criticized the move as political posturing, and said he did not believe Mr. Zinke would fully exempt Florida from the plan. Governor Scott is expected to challenge Mr. Nelson for his Senate seat in November.
“I have spent my entire life fighting to keep oil rigs away from our coasts,” Mr. Nelson said in a statement. “But now, suddenly, Secretary Zinke announces plans to drill off Florida’s coast and four days later agrees to ‘take Florida off the table’? I don’t believe it. This is a political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott.” [...]
Environmental groups accused Mr. Zinke of currying political favor with Governor Scott while pushing ahead with opening up coastal waters elsewhere.
In announcing the retreat, Zinke—who had touted the opening of most coastal waters to drilling as a key element in what the regime has been promoting as “American energy dominance”—said "Florida is obviously unique." This prompted Xavier Becerra, a Democrat who is attorney general of California, to tweak Zinke on Twitter:
Donald Trump is eager to see Scott run against the three-term Nelson this year. Scott has yet to decide whether he will take on Nelson, who will be a tough candidate to beat. Backing off from leasing Florida coastal waters could help boost Scott in a state where the majority of members of both parties have long opposed oil and gas drilling off their coasts, all the more so after the Deepwater Horizon disaster tainted Gulf of Mexico waters, and for a time hurt tourism throughout the region. Tourists brought $109 billion to Florida in 2016.
Scott isn’t alone in opposing drilling leases. Governors in California, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington are also against the plans.
Before the exemption of Florida, the Trump plan had proposed 47 lease sales across the entire outer continental shelf, including drilling off all but a small slice of the Alaska coast.
But even with smooth sailing, it could take as long as 18 months to get the details of leasing established. And the plan is headed for rough waters. Opposition of governors together with the efforts of environmental activists will have to be overcome, and that could take years. As Sam Ori noted at Forbes this week:
For starters, states control the waters nearest to their shores, meaning any pipelines intended to bring resources onshore would likely require state approval. Companies could in theory bypass this by opting to develop resources using floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels, but states also have authority under a myriad of existing laws, like the Coastal Zone Management Act, that will allow them to stall the leasing process from the beginning and file lawsuits throughout the process, forcing oil companies to tie up capital for decades with no clear return.
Litigation in the matter began last May when Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, and seven other environmental advocacy organizations filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Alaska against expanding offshore drilling when Trump announced April 28 that the Interior Department would reverse President Obama’s move to withdraw Arctic and Atlantic coastal waters from any drilling.
Obama’s withdrawals were undertaken under Section 12(a) of the Offshore Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. Attorneys in the suit argue that Trump doesn’t have the authority to reverse these protections and that his move “exceeds his constitutional and statutory authority and violates federal law.” “Until Trump, no president has ever tried to reverse a permanent withdrawal made under OCSLA, which does not authorize such a reversal,” said the groups in a statement at the time.
Since that aspect of OCSLA authority has not been tested in the courts, the outcome is uncertain. But whatever it is, Trump and Zinke have picked a fight with a slew of politicians and activists who will not be easy to defeat.