November 5, 2025 — A U.S. District Court judge ruled on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s Interior Department may reconsider the Biden administration’s approval of the SouthCoast Wind project planned off the coast of Massachusetts.
The order is a victory for the Trump administration, which argued that it had identified issues with the project’s environmental analysis and that a review could result in a withdrawal of the SouthCoast permit.
August 22, 2024 — An Interior Department appellate board has rejected an offshore oil company’s attempt to abandon a 40-year-old oil well off the coast of California without following full decommissioning rules.
Judges at the Interior Board of Land Appeals determined this week that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement “had a rational basis” for denying Noble Energy’s request to abandon the well in the Santa Barbara Channel. It’s been capped since 1985.
Administrative Judge David Gunter and Chief Administrative Judge Silvia Riechel Idziorek said in a ruling that Noble’s justification had focused on shorter-term risks posed by the well, which is located 10 miles from the California coast. BSEE, by contrast, had focused on long-term safety issues like leaks from the wellhead because of corrosion, the judges wrote.
February 5, 2019 — President Donald Trump is nominating David Bernhardt to be Interior secretary, a move that puts a former oil lobbyist on track to take over the Interior Department.
If confirmed by the Senate, Bernhardt, the deputy secretary, would succeed Ryan Zinke at the helm of the Interior Department, an $11 billion agency that oversees drilling, grazing and other activities on public lands. Bernhardt has been acting secretary since Zinke left the Trump administration in January amid mounting federal investigations into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest.
Trump announced the nomination on Twitter Monday. The choice echoes Trump’s decision to put a politically savvy lawyer, Andrew Wheeler, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency after the departure of the president’s scandal-plagued first EPA chief, Scott Pruitt.
Like Zinke, Bernhardt is expected to continue charting a pro-energy course at Interior, having already played a leading role in shaping department policies to expand drilling, make sure economics are factored into endangered species decisions and alter the way the government analyzes the environmental consequences of projects.
September 13, 2018 — A plan to expand the network of federally protected coral reef systems in the Gulf of Mexico may not be ready for approval by the Trump administration until early 2020, officials said Wednesday.
That means about five years will have passed since officials first began discussing in 2015 expanding the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, located about 100 miles off the coast of Galveston.
The sanctuary designation, which prevents over fishing and harassment of marine life in the area, currently stretches across 56 square miles, or three banks. In May, the sanctuary’s advisory council approved a proposal that would expand that area to 206 square miles, or 17 banks.
But officials have identified some potential tweaks. For example, the new plan actually would eliminate some of the protected area around Stetson Bank, one of the three current banks.
“There has not been a final decision how proceed,” sanctuary Superintendent G.P. Schmahl said during a Wednesday advisory council meeting, adding that officials likely would adjust the Stetson Bank boundaries.
According to the Flower Garden Banks website, there are several more steps to go in the process. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the 13 federally designated national marine sanctuaries, still must ask the Department of Interior to analyse the plan to understand how it will impact energy and mineral resource development.