Kathy Castor, Florida environmental leaders balk as Donald Trump rescinds offshore drilling ban

A ban on offshore oil drilling in Florida has become a bipartisan issue.

President Donald Trump isn’t just renaming the Gulf of Mexico. One of his first executive orders attempted to open waters along the nation’s coastline to offshore oil drilling.

Hours after his inauguration, Trump rescinded a recent executive order by former President Joe Biden that banned new oil and gas drilling leases in public waters off Florida’s coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The new President went a step further and issued his own order on “Unleashing American Energy” that made that clear coastal waters would be open to new leases.

That executive order makes it U.S. policy to “encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future.”

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa Democrat, criticized Trump’s order, along with others like pulling out of the Paris climate accords.

“After President Joe Biden acted to permanently ban oil drilling off the Florida coast, Trump is seeking to reverse this critical protection,” Castor said. “Floridians understand the damage that oil drilling and extreme weather events can do to our pocketbooks and way of life. The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was a wake-up call to the dangers of dirty and dangerous oil drilling and the risks it poses.”

A link to Biden’s prior order no longer links to any content. It was rescinded despite a belief among many environmental groups that the Democratic President’s action invoked statutory protections that could not simply be reversed by the incoming administration.

Progress Florida Executive Director Mark Ferrulo said he doubts Trump’s attempt to rescind a drilling prohibition will stand up in court. He notes Biden’s order specifically directed policy based on authority from the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. That’s a bill Trump’s administration during his first term challenged. But the Supreme Court upheld the law in 2019.

“Most of the legal experts I have seen said Trump’s executive order has no legal teeth,” Ferrulo said. “The underlying law Biden used is pretty clear: You can protect areas but you cannot remove protections.”

Of note, Trump in his first term specifically excluded Florida waters from an aggressive plan to increase offshore drilling. And in 2020, he extended a 10-year drilling moratorium on any part of Florida’s coast or the entire Atlantic seaboard. At the time, Trump billed himself as a “great environmentalist.”

Ferrulo stressed longtime opposition in Florida to drilling off the coast.

“There is a united, bipartisan coalition of opposition that includes the military, the recreational fishing industry, local hotel and lodging associations and Republican and Democrat members of Congress,” he said.