The Trump administration’s latest effort to dramatically boost oil and gas production is landing in California, with the Interior Department on Friday opening up 720,000 acres between the Bay Area and Fresno to potential drilling.

The move gives an immediate go-ahead to 14 drilling leases in San Benito, Monterey and Fresno counties, mostly projects near existing drill sites, projects that have been pursued for years by fossil fuel companies looking to expand.

But the action also opens the door for new leases in eight other counties, raising the prospect of additional drilling in such spots as the Santa Cruz Mountains, the East Bay hills and eastern Santa Clara County.

Interior Department officials plugged the expansion of oil and gas development on federal land as advancing the nation’s energy independence and economic potential. However, the drilling did not sit well with environmentalists, with some threatening to fight the move in court.

New federal land has not been opened up for fossil fuel extraction in the region since at least 2013. Two conservation groups sued the Interior Department six years ago over drilling leases and forced the agency to evaluate the ecological impacts of fracking before moving forward with any new land deals.

Still, even with the lawsuit out of the way and a pro-drilling administration in power, industry experts have said an oil boom in Northern California remains unlikely.

Fossil fuel companies generally stick with areas where drilling infrastructure is already in place and where there are known quantities of oil and gas. Companies also would have a harder time getting federal permits for wells if they seek out areas that haven’t been developed. Even when a company secures a lease, new drilling must pass environmental muster.

Conservation groups, though, say they don’t want to take any chances. Should the price of oil go up or new technology make extraction cheaper, more land could become viable for fossil fuel operations.

Environmentalists say new oil rigs will inevitably harm California’s landscape, citing disruptions to land and water. And they don’t want more dirty energy when it’s contributing to the planet’s warming.

“If we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, then we need to move away from fossil fuel,” said Clare Lakewood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued the federal government over its drilling leases. “This means no new leases now, and it means rapidly phasing out production.”

Friday’s action by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management caps a nearly decade-long effort to implement a new oil and gas leasing plan on federal land in the agency’s Central Coast district.

In May, the BLM presented an environmental analysis of its plan, effectively meeting the court’s order to study and minimize fracking disturbances. Fracking is a popular way of extracting fossil fuels by using high-pressure water and chemicals but it has been known to pollute groundwater and even trigger earthquakes.

The Center for Biological Diversity said Friday that it did not think the federal government had adequately addressed the impacts of fracking and was considering additional legal action to prevent the BLM from issuing new oil and gas leases.

The protest period for the BLM’s plan, which drew 436 letters of concern, including one from Gov. Gavin Newsom, ended over the summer.

The decision to move forward with the leasing plan, formally issued in a record of decision with an accompanying Resource Management Plan, makes 680,000 acres of federal land available for surface drilling and 42,000 acres available without surface equipment across 11 counties. No leases will be made available on designated BLM wilderness.

The acreage is nearly twice what the BLM had been looking at during the Obama administration.

An industry group praised the decision, saying it could broaden the nation’s energy portfolio and reduce reliance on fossil fuel production overseas.

“Every barrel produced responsibly in our state, under the toughest environmental standards in the world, is a barrel that we likely don’t have to import from foreign sources,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Sacramento-based Western States Petroleum Association, in an email.

BLM officials estimate that up to 37 new oil and gas wells will be developed in the region over the next 20 years as a result of Friday’s decision.

About 110 wells currently operate on federal land across the agency’s Central Coast district, with active drilling in Fresno, Monterey, San Benito, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. The counties in the district where BLM land is not currently drilled include Merced, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Stanislaus.

The oil and gas development in the 11-county region is responsible for hundreds of jobs and as much as $90 million of state royalties annually, according to BLM spokeswoman Serena Baker.

The drilling on federal land, though, is just a fraction of the total fossil fuel development in the counties that the BLM’s Central Coast district administers. When state and private lands in the area are counted, the region hosts 18,200 wells, according to federal figures.

While Newsom criticized the federal government’s push for drilling leases as being in conflict with California’s policies and “commitment to reducing the consumption of fossil fuels,” the state has similarly moved forward with new drilling.

Over the past year, the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources has approved scores of new wells.

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