NORTH CAROLINA — The second Trump administration is seeking to open expansive coastal areas to offshore drilling a decade after several local communities passed resolutions opposing the practice. A coalition of environmentalist groups filed a lawsuit to block the initiative.
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The groups include the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Surfrider Foundation. The lawsuit attempts to block the Trump administration from reversing coastal protections enacted by the previous administration.
“Offshore oil and gas drilling is a high-risk practice which threatens our coastal communities that rely on our oceans for tourism, recreation, shipping, and commercial fishing,” NRDC senior manager for ocean, energy, and nature Valerie Cleland told Port City Daily. “History has shown us that offshore drilling often results in catastrophe. Expanding the sale of public waters to private companies will increase threats to local economies, public health and water quality, and coastal wildlife.”
Former President Joe Biden invoked his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban offshore oil and gas leasing for more than 600 million acres of coastal waters — including the outer Atlantic continental shelf — before leaving office in January.
Trump issued inauguration day executive orders to rescind Biden administration offshore drilling protections, encourage offshore energy exploration, pause offshore wind production, and declare a “National Energy Emergency” directing federal agencies to remove regulatory barriers to new fossil fuel production.
“This is a new day for American energy, and we applaud President Trump for moving swiftly to chart a new path where U.S. oil and natural gas are embraced, not restricted,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers wrote in White House release last month.
The conservation groups argue Trump exceeded his statutory authority by revoking the ocean protections. Trump sought to rescind Obama administration drilling bans in part of the Arctic Ocean in 2017 but was unsuccessful; a federal judge in 2019 found the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gives the president the power to withdraw from leasing activity but does not explicitly authorize a president to revoke prior withdrawals.
The City of Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, and Topsail Beach are among hundreds of Atlantic coastal communities that have signed resolutions opposing offshore drilling on North Carolina’s coast. Former Kure Beach mayor Dean Lambeth was unseated in 2015 amid public backlash for signing a letter supporting seismic testing used to identify offshore gas and oil deposits, bolstering a grassroots movement resisting an Obama administration initiative to open areas of the southeastern coast to fossil fuel speculation.
The Kure Beach letter was written by an affiliate group of the American Petroleum Institute — the fossil fuel industry association’s lead lobby group — which argues Atlantic offshore drilling would provide economic and national security benefits.
Cape Fear River Watch executive director Dana Sargent is former chair of the Cape Fear Surfrider Foundation’s Not-the-Answer campaign, one of several advocacy groups that opposed API’s efforts to open North Carolina’s coasts to fossil fuel exploration a decade ago.
“Cape Fear River Watch stands with our partners in opposing offshore drilling,” she said Monday. “Beyond the devastating environmental and economic impacts to our ocean system, [offshore drilling] has been proven by countless economic studies to be an endeavor that will not reduce costs at the pump, will not produce significant U.S. jobs, and will move us closer to the tipping point relative to greenhouse gas emissions.”
Rep. Peter Stauber (R-Minn.) and Bruce Westerman (R-AK) pledged to work with House Republicans to rescind the Biden-era ban on coastal drilling at a hearing earlier this month. Expert witnesses included Peg Howell, founder of Hendersonville, NC-based group Stop Offshore Drilling in the Atlantic.
Howell worked in offshore drilling operations for U.S. fossil fuel companies Chevron, Mobil, and Marathon for decades but ended her support of the industry in 2010. This came after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe caused widespread contamination and enormous loss of oceanic wildlife, killed 11 workers, and cost over a billion in losses to coastal economies’ seafood and tourism industries.
Howell said she began her advocacy efforts after attending a 2014 information session in Wilmington about proposed offshore drilling operations.
“I was shocked to see our elected officials were advocating putting our coast and economy at risk,” she said.
As a state senator Rep. David Rouzer co-sponsored a 2011 bill to create a framework for coastal offshore drilling revenue and royalty payments to the state. The law also directed the state to coordinate offshore fossil fuel exploration with the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition, a group founded in 2011 operated primarily by fossil fuel industry advocacy groups.
Rouzer and Sen. Ted Budd voted against a 2019 bill to ban offshore drilling on the Atlantic Coast. PCD reached out to the congressman to ask his current position but did not receive a response by press.
In her testimony, Howell noted the U.S. is already the largest producer of natural gas and oil in the world. She argued the new effort to expand offshore drilling is “all about the money” rather than making energy more affordable or increasing U.S. energy independence.
Trump told a group of oil industry executives he would fulfill their regulatory requests in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations last April, according to the Washington Post.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy plan for a second Trump term includes a chapter by William Pendley — who served as acting director of the Bureau Land and Management in the first Trump administration — advocating the new administration sell offshore oil and natural gas leases to the maximum extent possible. A federal judge found Pendley unlawfully served in the position and ordered his removal from the office in 2020 because he never underwent a Senate confirmation hearing.
Project 2025 groups have received at least $30 million from fossil fuel billionaires’ philanthropic foundations, including the Koch Foundation and Scaife Family Foundation.
“Remaining fossil fuels on this planet need to stay in the ground,” Sargent said. “Our government should be focused on supporting research and development for alternatives so the U.S. can be a leader in this arena.”
