WASHINGTON -- Working to dismantle his predecessor's environmental legacy, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday aimed at expanding drilling in the Arctic and opening other federal areas to oil and gas exploration.
With one day left to rack up accomplishments before he reaches his 100th day in office, Trump signed an order reversing some of former President Barack Obama's restrictions and instructing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review a plan that dictates which federal locations are open to offshore drilling.
It's part of Trump's promise to unleash the nation's energy reserves in an effort to reduce reliance on foreign oil and to spur jobs, regardless of fierce opposition from environmental activists who say offshore drilling harms whales, walruses and other wildlife and exacerbates global warming.
"This executive order starts the process of opening offshore areas to job-creating energy exploration," Trump said during a White House signing ceremony. "It reverses the previous administration's Arctic leasing ban and directs Secretary Zinke to allow responsible development of off-shore areas that will bring revenue to our treasury and jobs to our workers."
"Today," he said, "we're unleashing American energy and clearing the way for thousands and thousands of high-paying energy jobs."
The executive order reverses part of a December effort by Obama to deem the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic as indefinitely off limits to oil and gas leasing.
It also directs Zinke to review the locations available for offshore drilling under a five-year plan Obama signed in November. The plan blocked new oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. It also stopped the planned sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska, but allowed drilling in Alaska's Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage.
The order could open to oil and gas exploration areas off Virginia and North and South Carolina, where drilling has been blocked for decades.
Zinke said that leases scheduled under the existing plan will remain in effect during the review, which he estimated will take several years.
The order also directs Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to conduct a review of marine monuments and sanctuaries designated over the last 10 years.
Citing his department's data, Zinke said the Interior Department oversees some 1.7 billion acres on the outer continental shelf, which contains an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 327 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas. Under current restrictions, about 94 per cent of that outer continental shelf is off-limits to drilling.
Zinke, who is also tasked with reviewing other drilling restrictions, acknowledged environmental concerns as "valid," but he argued that the benefits of drilling outweigh concerns.
Environmental activists, meanwhile, railed against the signing, which comes seven years after the devastating 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Diana Best of Greenpeace said that opening new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling would lock the U.S. "into decades of harmful pollution, devastating spills like the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, and a fossil fuel economy with no future."
"Scientific consensus is that the vast majority of known fossil fuel reserves -- including the oil and gas off U.S. coasts--must remain undeveloped if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change," she said.
Jacqueline Savitz of the ocean advocacy group Oceana warned the order would lead to "corner-cutting and set us up for another havoc-wreaking environmental disaster" in places like the Outer Banks or in remote Barrow, Alaska, "where there's no proven way to remove oil from sea ice."
"We need smart, tough standards to ensure that energy companies are not operating out of control," she said, adding: "In their absence, America's future promises more oil spills and industrialized coastlines."
