Trump Plans to Drill 1.27 Billion Acres of Ocean. Here’s How We’re Fighting Back.

What happened: The Trump administration is making an unprecedented push to drill for oil and gas along U.S. coastlines. It just released a plan to auction off 1.27 billion acres of public waters to fossil fuel companies. This follows on the heels of its decision to hold its first offshore oil sale in the Gulf of Mexico with no environmental review – a move that Earthjustice is challenging in court.

Why it matters: The proposed ramp-up in offshore drilling would risk the health and well-being of millions of people who live along our coasts. It would also devastate countless ocean ecosystems that both humans and wildlife rely on.

The government is legally required to consider how offshore drilling will affect communities and the environment before it holds any lease sale. Members of the public now have an opportunity to voice our opposition to the Trump administration’s plan. And when the administration shirks its responsibility to gather this input, as it did when it announced the Gulf of Mexico lease sale earlier this month, our lawyers will hold it accountable.

We’ve successfully challenged President Trump’s past offshore oil lease sales that broke the law at the expense of coastal communities, and we’re ready to win again.

 What to know about Trump’s new offshore drilling plan

• The administration is proposing to auction off public waters across the country:
  • in California for the first time since 1984, with six offshore lease sales between 2027 and 2030
  • in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where an oil spill could contaminate the entire Gulf coast of Florida, with lease sales in 2029 and 2030
  • and in every available offshore area in Alaska, including a new area called the “High Arctic,” with over 20 lease sales through 2031

• In addition to these 34 scheduled oil sales, President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will also force 30 massive oil sales in the Gulf over the next 15 years and six in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.

We’re already fighting Trump’s offshore drilling schemes in court

• Earlier this month, the administration announced it would hold an 80-million-acre oil sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Dec. 10. This sale would be the first of the 30 mandated under the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

• Ignoring the law: The Trump administration announced it would bypass legal requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act, such as completing an environmental review disclosing potential harms to the public before proceeding with this or future offshore oil sales.

• Our lawsuit: Earthjustice challenged the administration’s actions on behalf of Friends of the Earth and Healthy Gulf. The Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Sierra Club are also parties and co-counseling in the suit.

The country doesn’t need more oil

• The U.S. is already producing more oil than at any time in history. Most of this is exported overseas, contrary to the administration’s false claims of an “energy emergency.”

• The oil industry has stockpiled thousands of unused leases. Even without the Trump administration’s planned sales, oil companies currently hold more than 2,000 active leases, spanning over 12 million acres of offshore territory in the Gulf. Over 80% of those leases have yet to start producing oil and gas.

Drilling harms coastal communities and ecosystems

• Offshore drilling brings the risk of devastating oil spills, which threaten human health, jeopardize entire ecosystems, and can upend local economies that rely on clean oceans for everything from fishing to tourism and recreation. In most spills, less than 10% of oil is ever recovered, according to one study — the rest remains, polluting the ocean.

• We saw the devastating impact of oil spills in the Gulf with BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which remains the worst oil spill in U.S. history. It killed 11 people, eliminated thousands of jobs in the Gulf region, and cost billions of dollars to clean up. It also wiped out over a million birds, fish, dolphins, and other marine wildlife.

• Oil is traumatic for marine wildlife. Wildlife exposed to oil can experience hypothermia, heart damage, enlarged livers, immune and reproductive dysfunction, and a generally painful death. Oil drilling has decimated the newly discovered Rice’s whale, which lost a fifth of its population as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Barely 50 individual whales remain.

• In the places where offshore drilling already happens, communities are burdened with significant amounts of hazardous air pollution that have led to the highest rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses in the country.

How we’re fighting back – and how you can help

• We’re arguing in court that the December oil sale upends decades of precedent that offshore lease sales are subject to legally required environmental review and public comment process.
• The Trump administration is taking comments on its national offshore drilling plan for 60 days. This is your chance to speak up for the health of our coastlines and those who depend on them.