President Trump targets Atlantic and Pacific coasts for new oil drilling

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The Trump administration plans to propose opening federal waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to offshore drilling, two people familiar with the plan said Wednesday, a move that is likely to antagonize coastal states governors — and make a direct jab at California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Full details of the plan were not yet known, but a push to bring drilling rigs to untouched sections of the U.S. coastline brought bipartisan opposition when Trump tried to carry out a similar plan during his first administration.

The proposal would be part of the Interior Department’s upcoming five-year plan on offshore oil lease sales, said the people who were granted anonymity because the plan wasn’t yet public.

The administration is expected to offer acres off the southern coast of California and “at least a small sliver” of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, one of the people said. It was unclear if that would include waters off Florida, where elected leaders of both parties have opposed drilling along their shoreline for decades because of the risk to the state’s tourism-based economy.

Interior’s plan, a framework used to schedule offshore lease sales in federal waters for a five-year period, could change by the time the initial proposal becomes a finished product, this person said.

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No drilling takes place now off the Atlantic Coast, though companies like Exxon Mobil had explored that option in the past. Oil production in the Pacific Ocean has declined for decades amid tighter California regulations that make it difficult to transport the oil from federal waters to the state’s coastline.

But even if the business case is relatively small, a bigger motive may be Trump forcing Newsom to take a stand on the issue, a third industry executive familiar with the expected plan’s outline said. Newsom, who had for years tightened state regulations on drilling, has more recently tried to moderate his position on fossil fuel production as he has increased his profile as a liberal foil to Trump.

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The Interior Department during the first Trump administration originally planned to put all federal waters in the Atlantic and Pacific on the table for drilling. That proposal ultimately failed, however, a victim of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s attempt to preemptively exempt federal waters off the Florida coast from offshore oil lease sales before the department had concluded a necessary review.

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