Saving Seafood

Trump administration aims to auction offshore oil leases along U.S. coastlines that have been off-limits for decades

October 27, 2025 — The Trump administration is proposing to auction offshore oil drilling leases across new portions of the U.S. coast as soon as 2026, according to internal Department of Interior draft documents viewed by CBS News.

New leases would include waters off New England, the Carolinas and California.

Offshore oil leases are common along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, as well as parts of Alaska, but there are currently no active oil leases on the Atlantic coast, and California has not had a new oil lease since 1984.

This comes as the Department of Interior formally announced plans this week to reopen 1.56 million aces in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, reversing a Biden administration decision to limit oil drilling in the Arctic.

That decision drew a strong rebuke from Democrats, including Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who accused the administration of rewarding the fossil fuel industry for its support of the president. “This decision is not about energy dominance—it’s about donor dominance,” Markey said in a statement. “The Trump administration must immediately reverse its shortsighted decision. The Arctic Refuge is not for sale.”

Read the full article atThe Trump administration is proposing to auction offshore oil drilling leases across new portions of the U.S. coast as soon as 2026, according to internal Department of Interior draft documents viewed by CBS News.

New leases would include waters off New England, the Carolinas and California.

Offshore oil leases are common along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, as well as parts of Alaska, but there are currently no active oil leases on the Atlantic coast, and California has not had a new oil lease since 1984.

This comes as the Department of Interior formally announced plans this week to reopen 1.56 million aces in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, reversing a Biden administration decision to limit oil drilling in the Arctic.

That decision drew a strong rebuke from Democrats, including Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who accused the administration of rewarding the fossil fuel industry for its support of the president. “This decision is not about energy dominance—it’s about donor dominance,” Markey said in a statement. “The Trump administration must immediately reverse its shortsighted decision. The Arctic Refuge is not for sale.”

White House outlines priorities on oil and gas, offshore carbon storage

September 8, 2025 — The White House’s regulatory agenda landed Thursday, solidifying plans for rules that could boost the oil and gas industry and laying out a timeline for offshore carbon storage regulations.

The spring Unified Agenda offers the latest look at the Trump administration’s efforts to expand domestic energy production — while not providing a deadline for standards for carbon dioxide pipelines.

During the first seven-plus months of the Trump administration, officials have focused on jettisoning initiatives advanced under former President Joe Biden that sought to impose more requirements on fossil fuel businesses.

Read the full article at E&E News

US delays rule on Gulf of Mexico whale protections by two years

July 15, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will delay by two years a final rule designating protections for the endangered Rice’s whale in the oil and gas drilling region of the Gulf of Mexico, according to an agreement with environmental groups filed in a federal court.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service agreed with green group Natural Resources Defense Council to finalize by July 15, 2027 the geographic area deemed critical for the Rice’s whale survival. The previous deadline had been Tuesday, July 15, of this year.

The agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 3 was seen by Reuters on Monday.

Read the full article at Reuters

SOUTH CAROLINA: McMaster, Fry call on White House to uphold ban on offshore oil and gas drilling

June 12, 2025 — Some of Donald Trump’s closest political allies are urging him to continue a moratorium on offshore gas and drilling leases along the South Carolina coast as the White House pursues its broader domestic energy policy.

“There is no question that our country must unleash American energy, expanding domestic production, cutting red tape and reassuring our energy independence,” U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, R-7th District, wrote in a Tuesday latter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “At the same time, I believe energy development must be pursued in a way that respects the distinct economic and environmental realities of each region.”

Fry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested that Burgum keep in place a 2020 Trump memorandum exempting South Carolina from offshore oil and gas projects until at least 2032.

Read the full article at WBTW

Trump order opening Arctic Alaska waters to oil leasindraws legal challenge

February 24, 2025 —  Environmental groups on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration to overturn an executive order seeking to open Arctic waters off Alaska, as well as waters in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to oil drilling.

Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order, which revoked protective actions taken by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, violated the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the plaintiffs argue in their lawsuit.

The law “authorizes the President to withdraw unleased lands of the outer continental shelf from disposition. It does not authorize the President to re-open withdrawn areas to disposition,” said the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage and which the plaintiffs said is the first environmental lawsuit filed against the new Trump administration.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior declined to comment, citing a policy of avoiding comments on pending litigation.

Trump’s order seeking to open more areas to leasing, which was followed by an order by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with the same purpose, comes at a time when previous ideas for remote offshore drilling in Alaska appear stalled or fizzled.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

Should Offshore Oil Rigs Be Turned into Artificial Reefs?

November 20, 2024 — Even before I could make out the silhouette of Platform Holly on the foggy horizon, I could see and smell oil. Ripples of iridescent liquid floated on the sea’s surface, reflecting the cloudy sky. But the oil wasn’t coming from a leak or some other failure of the rig. Milton Love, a biologist at the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explained that it was “kind of bubbling up out of the seafloor.” Our boat, less than two miles from the central California coast, was sailing above a natural oil seep where the offshore energy boom first began.

For thousands of years the Chumash, an Indigenous group native to the region, identified these oceanic seeps and their naturally occurring soft tar, known as malak, which washed up on the shore. Sixteenth-century European explorers noted oil off the coast of modern-­day Santa Barbara, and in the 1870s the U.S. oil boom reached California. In the late 1890s the first offshore oil wells in the world were drilled from piers off of Summerland Beach; 60 years later the state’s first offshore oil platform was deployed to drill the Summerland Offshore Field.

Since then, 34 other oil platforms have been installed along the coast, and more than 12,000 have been installed around the world. These hulking pieces of infrastructure, however, have finite lifetimes. Eventually their oil-producing capacities tail off to the point where it is no longer economically viable to operate them—that, or there’s a spill. Today 13 of California’s 27 remaining offshore platforms are what’s known as shut-in, or no longer producing oil.

Read the full article at Scientific American

US Gulf of Mexico oil firms begin hurricane damage checks, ports reopen

September 13, 2024 — U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil producers on Thursday were conducting safety checks and preparing to restart some output after Hurricane Francine disrupted operations, while a Louisiana oil refinery ramped up production and export ports reopened.

Francine missed Texas and hit the Louisiana coast on Wednesday with up to 100 mph winds (161 kph), knocking out power to up to 375,000 customers and bringing heavy rains and flooding to the state. Its winds dropped quickly and the storm was over southern Mississippi on Thursday where another 14,000 customers were without power.

As drillers began to assess damage, the extent of Francine’s impact on energy production emerged with new, higher estimates of lost output from the 169 offshore platforms evacuated.

Energy producers reported on Thursday they had shut-in 42%, or 730,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Gulf of Mexico oil production and 53%, or nearly 992 million cubic feet of natural gas, offshore regulator Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

Read the full article at Reuters

Industry groups appeal court order threatening Gulf of Mexico oil production

September 13, 2024 — The American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil trade group in the United States, has joined forces with several other top energy industry organizations to protest a court order they claim threatens oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.

API, EnerGeo Alliance, the National Ocean Industries Association, and Chevron USA said the order puts “current and future U.S. energy supply” at risk in an appeal filed Wednesday evening.

Read the full article at The Washington Examiner

Top oil trade group warns court order could shut down Gulf of Mexico production

September 10, 2024 — The American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil trade group in the United States, is warning that a court order issued last month could shut down all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil industry group sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Friday, saying that the decision issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland could put the country’s “economic security in jeopardy.”

It comes just weeks after the district court ruled in favor of a number of environmental groups that filed a lawsuit after the National Marine Fisheries Service issued its 2020 Biological Opinion on offshore oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read the full article at The Washington Examiner

Interior releases rule for high-pressure offshore oil drilling

August 30, 2024 — The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a final rule for offshore oil development Thursday, dictating how to safely drill into oil reservoirs with extremely high temperatures and pressure.

The offshore oil industry has increasingly shifted toward drilling into deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where in some cases the oil reservoir pressure exceeds 15,000 pounds per square inch and temperatures top 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

BSEE’s new requirements are a response to the high risks of drilling in these areas. It was at a high-pressure prospect in 2010 that a failed blowout preventer in an exploratory well led to an explosion that killed 11 men and sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Read the full article at E&E News