Trump order could open California waters to oil drilling

President Trump signed an executive order Friday seeking to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, a move that triggered an immediate backlash in California, where wounds are still raw from past fights to protect the state’s coastal waters.

Trump’s action calls for the Department of the Interior to reconsider allowing energy development in areas that President Obama put off-limits, many of which have been taboo for decades. It also directs federal agencies to review restrictions in spots that recently won protection as national marine sanctuaries.

While not naming California directly, the order means swaths of the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans that aren’t part of the federal government’s oil leasing plan today could be added to the drilling docket. That includes waters near La Jolla, Malibu and Mendocino that have long been eyed by energy companies.

Furthermore, sanctuary sites established within the past decade, including a 2015 addition to the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary off the Sonoma County coast, could lose their status. The order also makes it more difficult to establish new marine sanctuaries, complicating plans for the proposed Chumash Sanctuary offshore of San Luis Obispo County.

An oil drilling rig in the Santa Barbara Channel off the city of Goleta, Calif. President Trump Friday signed an executive order that seeks to roll back some Obama administration rules on offshore drilling. An oil drilling rig in the Santa Barbara Channel off the city of Goleta, Calif. President Trump Friday signed an executive order that seeks to roll back some Obama administration rules on offshore drilling. Photo: Associated Press Photo: Associated Press Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close Trump order could open California waters to oil drilling 1 / 32 Back to Gallery

“It hasn’t been, really, since the 1980s that we’ve had any realistic threat of new drilling in California — up until now,” said Richard Charter, a Bodega Bay resident and senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation, a marine conservation group.

“The Trump administration has really touched a nerve here,” said Charter, who has battled drilling efforts for decades. “The first sound that you’re going to hear is every lawyer who has ever worked on this opening up their briefcase.”

The president’s executive action is the latest effort to rewrite Obama’s environmental policies, following an announcement earlier in the week of a similar review of protections for the country’s national monuments. At a White House briefing Friday, Trump billed the America First Offshore Energy Executive Order as critical for the economy and national defense.

“Renewed offshore energy production will reduce the cost of energy, create countless new jobs and make America more secure and far more energy independent,” Trump said.

The administration maintains that too much of the nation’s outer continental shelf, about 94 percent, is out of bounds for energy companies. The oil industry agrees, and widely praised the executive order.

“Developing our abundant offshore energy resources is a critical part of a robust, forward-looking energy policy that will secure our nation’s energy future and strengthen the U.S. energy renaissance,” said Jack Gerard, president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association representing oil and gas interests.

In California, more than two dozen oil rigs operate off the coast, all in the southern half of the state, though no new drilling has commenced since the 1980s. The state in 1969 banned new oil leases within 3 miles of the coast, where the state has jurisdiction, and the federal government has not issued a new lease in the federal waters off California since 1984.

While the process for approving new leases is arduous, lawmakers and environmentalists in the West are taking the threat seriously, pledging not only to fight attempts to undo protections but also to add more of them.

State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, who represents an area where a 1969 oil spill helped propel the modern environmental movement, said Friday that she’ll introduce legislation next week to outlaw new drilling infrastructure.

Although the state doesn’t have a say over federal waters, her bill would prohibit California agencies like the State Lands Commission from approving new pipelines or piers needed to bring oil ashore.

“President Trump and his oil cronies may want to drill,” Jackson said, “but we are going to prevent that from being feasible.”

Meanwhile, 27 U.S. senators, including California Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, penned a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke asking him to respect the federal government’s current five-year plan for selling oil leases.

Before leaving office, Obama narrowed the areas where the government would allow drilling through 2022, removing chunks of ocean along the southeast Atlantic coast and in the Arctic. Waters off the California coast have long been excluded from the leasing plan, at the demand of Congress.

The U.S. senators opposing Trump’s order fear that more oil leases would not only heighten the risk of a major spill but contribute to global warming.

“This issue was settled,” Feinstein said in an email to The Chronicle. “Coastal communities made it clear they don’t want offshore drilling. The president’s executive order ignores those concerns and the real threat of climate change to give oil and gas companies access to new areas that they do not need.”

Issuing a new drilling lease, should the administration decide to move forward, would likely take at least two years and involve significant environmental study and public hearings, if not a prolonged legal battle.

Besides calling for a review of the leasing plan, Trump’s order appears to target Obama’s permanent ban on drilling in the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The former president tapped the obscure Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 last year to safeguard the Alaskan coast, and legal experts say it’s unclear whether the current administration has unilateral authority to undo the protections.

The executive order also directs the Interior Department to re-examine safety regulations for oil platforms drawn up in the wake of the devastating 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

For marine sanctuaries, Trump’s action calls on federal agencies to review all of the sanctuaries created or expanded in the past 10 years, assessing their potential to produce energy or minerals, and report back in six months. No new sanctuaries can be created without similar review.

While the oil industry may be enthusiastic about the president’s order, oil prices remain relatively low and companies may choose to continue meeting consumer demand through less expensive means, like fracking, instead of setting their sights offshore, experts say. However, they might see a timely opportunity to secure ocean-drilling leases for the future.

Franz Matzner, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Beyond Oil Initiative, said the sale of oil leases may find its biggest opponent in the public.

“When you ask Americans what they prefer, they prefer investments like solar and wind,” Matzner said. “This is an unprecedented assault on the very concept of responsible management of our public lands.”

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander