Donald Trump clearly enjoys his superlatives. He proclaimed himself to be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” he lauded his hiring of the “best people,” having “the best words,” getting “the biggest crowds,” and so on. It was no surprise, then, when President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed a new Draft Five Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program pushing for the “largest number of (oil) lease sales in U.S. History.” In fairness to this terrifying description, if the Administration succeeds with their plan as introduced, they would indeed open more than 90% of our coast to new offshore drilling!
Fracking and acidizing threaten our marine wildlife, recreation, clean air, and water quality and yet they are taking place without proper environmental review from oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, home to a National Park, a Marine Sanctuary, and a network of Marine Protected Areas. EDC has been a leader in discovering fracking was taking place from platforms off our coast, and filed the first ever lawsuit challenging the federal government’s lack of adequate review. Linda Krop discusses our continued work on this issue and protect our precious coast from the potential impacts for these dangerous practices.
As required by EDC’s recent lawsuit settlement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (“BSEE”) (agencies of the U.S. Department of the Interior) on Monday announced the availability of a draft environmental analysis of the use of fracking and acidizing from offshore oil platforms in southern California, including […]
You may have heard about fracking and acidizing being utilized onshore in California, but offshore? As crazy as it sounds, oil companies have been fracking and acidizing from offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel for two decades. Crazier still, until recently no one but the oil companies (including local elected officials and state regulators with the California Coastal Commission) was even aware that offshore fracking experiments were being conducted off California’s irreplaceable coastline.
