President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to find new ocean expanses in the Atlantic and the Arctic for offshore drilling is unlikely to reach its goals anytime soon, but instead will kick off a years-long review and a legal battle.
“This executive order starts the process of opening offshore areas to job-creating energy exploration,” Trump said at a White House ceremony. “It reverses the previous administration’s Arctic leasing ban and directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to allow responsible development of off-shore areas that will bring revenue to our treasury and jobs to our workers.”
Despite Trump’s assertion that the nation needs to wean itself of foreign oil, US oil imports have declined in recent years as domestic production boomed, mainly through improved drilling techniques that opened up production in areas once out of reach.
And environmental law and policy experts questioned Trump’s authority to reverse Obama’s withdrawal of certain areas in the Arctic or Atlantic to drilling, a question that will likely be decided in the courts.
“It’s not quite as simple as the president signs something and it undoes the past,” said Sean Hecht, a University of California, Los Angeles environmental law professor.
Legal experts say the law has never been used by a president to remove protections, just to create them.
Legal scholars said Trump would enter uncharted territory if he seeks to undo a national monument proclamation in an effort to remove environmental protections.
The president could issue a new proclamation eliminating a specific monument, but since it's never been done, the courts again would likely decide whether the tactic is allowed under the act.
Under Trump’s order, Interior Secretary Zinke will start to review the government’s plan that dictates which federal locations are open to offshore drilling, known as the 5-year plan.
The administration can redo the 5-year-plan, but it is a long process. Zinke said the leases scheduled under the existing plan would remain in effect during the review, which he estimated would take several years before any new leases are possible.
The new 5-year plan could indeed open new areas of oil and gas exploration in areas off Virginia, Georgia and North and South Carolina, where drilling has been blocked for decades.
Many lawmakers in those states support offshore drilling, and Alaska’s governor and its Washington delegation all supported the order.
But the plan faces broad opposition from the fishing industry, tourism groups and even the US military, which has said Atlantic offshore drilling could hurt military maneuvers and interfere with missile tests the Navy relies on to protect the East Coast.

Source: Arab News