We’re Suing to Block Trump’s Illegal Ocean Drilling Plan

Today we filed the first major environmental legal challenge against the new Trump administration. There will be more to come.

We are challenging President Trump’s illegal attempt to sell our oceans to the oil and gas industry. Amid a flurry of anti-environment executive orders on his first day in office, Trump issued an order to revoke former president Biden’s protection of millions of acres of undeveloped public waters from future oil and gas drilling.

As the nation’s leading environmental law organization, Earthjustice is prepared to stand with our partners to fight for millions of people living in coastal communities across the country who adamantly oppose offshore drilling. We’ve also been here before: We stopped a similar scheme by Trump during his first administration.

What President Trump’s executive order means:

• Open protected public waters to oil and gas drilling: President Trump is seeking to revoke protections that former presidents enacted to protect vulnerable ocean territory along each U.S. coast from the harms of offshore drilling.
• The areas under threat include:
  • 269 million acres in the Atlantic Ocean stretching from Maine to Florida
  • Nearly 250 million acres in the Pacific Ocean
  • 65 million acres of the Eastern and Central Gulf of Mexico — including areas that were affected by the BP oil spill, the worst in U.S. history.
  • The areas also include 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea, 44 million acres off the Alaskan Coast, and 125 million acres in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas that President Obama protected, and that Trump attempted to reopen in his first administration.

Areas Withdrawn by Biden Admin.
from Oil and Gas Leasing

Previously Protected Areas Nearby

The ocean areas include invaluable ecosystems and waters that are vital for coastal resilience, tourism, sustainable fishing, and national defense.

Pacific Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

Gulf of Mexico

Trump Tries to Force Oil and Gas Drilling on Protected Oceans: Former President Biden permanently protected millions of vulnerable acres in the ocean. Trump cannot legally undo those protections. (Casey Chin / Earthjustice. Data: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management)

What’s at stake:

• The health and well-being of millions of people: Trump’s order to open up these areas to future offshore drilling poses significant threats to nearly every coastal community in the U.S., and the health and economic resilience of millions of people who rely on clean and healthy oceans for everything from tourism to commercial fishing.
• Ecological stability: Trump’s order also threatens countless marine species and entire ecosystems, which are destroyed when oil spills and other catastrophic accidents almost inevitably occur. Humans are inextricably connected to our surrounding environments, which we need to be stable for clean water, food, and much more.
• Sacrificing federal lands and waters to dirty fuel: The Trump administration’s order is part of a broader push to dramatically increase oil and gas drilling at the behest of the oil and gas industry. But the U.S. is already producing more oil than at any time in history and is the world’s largest producer of gas. And the industry doesn’t need more: Big Oil has not even begun to touch 80% (millions of acres) of the public waters that it already has under lease.
• Distraction: President Trump’s manufactured “energy crisis” serves to distract from the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis and ignores the reality of the oil industry’s vast stockpile.

The Trump administration will face a steep uphill battle.

• 50 years of presidential protections: Biden was one of eight presidents — including Trump in his first term — to legally protect our oceans from offshore drilling under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). However, the law does not authorize the president to revoke the withdrawals of prior presidents.
• Trump’s order is against the law: Only Congress can remove these protections. But most Americans want our public waters to remain off limits to new oil and gas drilling.
• Earthjustice successfully stopped Trump’s first attempt: We challenged the first Trump administration when it tried to undo Obama-era protections from offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean and parts of the Atlantic, arguing that the president had exceeded his executive authority.
• We won: A federal court agreed with us revoking Trump’s order and leaving these areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans completely off-limits for future drilling.
• We’ll see Trump back in court: Earthjustice is standing with our partners and the millions of people who stand to be harmed by oil and gas drilling off their coasts. The public health and safety of coastal communities, their economic resilience, and vital ecosystems, rely on these protections being restored.