David Helvarg, executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group, co-hosts “Rising Tide: the Ocean Podcast.” His latest book, “Forest of the Sea – The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp,” will be published in 2026.
In November, the Trump administration released a map that alarmed a lot of Californians. It showed the waters off the entire 1,100-mile state coastline carved into potential “program areas” for new oil and gas drilling.
For 40 years, there’ve been no new oil lease sales in the state’s coastal waters, and Californians of all political stripes overwhelmingly – 72% according to a Public Policy Institute poll – hope it stays that way. When its legacy offshore wells run dry, the state should be done with ocean drilling for good.
President Trump, of course, likes nothing better than to bait California, love-bomb the oil and gas industry, attack clean energy and overturn Biden-era actions (President Biden banned new drilling in the same federal waters Trump now wants to exploit). The latest Interior Department plan for six lease sales between 2027 and 2030 is one more White House jab at Golden State values.
But here’s the thing: It’s far, far from a done deal.
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First a little background. California’s earliest offshore wells were drilled in the 1890s from wooden piers in the town of Summerland. “The whole face of the townsite is aslime with oil leakages,” reported the San Jose Mercury News in 1901, as nearby Santa Barbara banned oil piers altogether. But by the 1960s, locals along the “American Riviera” had been convinced that offshore drilling technology was advanced enough that oil leaks and spills would be a thing of the past.
Then in January 1969, three days after Union Oil began drilling a fifth well on a new rig six miles off Santa Barbara, the well blew out. More than 3 million gallons of oil coated 35 miles of coastline. The sight of blackened beaches and thousands of dying, oil-covered birds, not to mention sea lions, dolphins and sea otters, helped give birth to the modern environmental movement, and to California’s enduring “Get Oil Out” ethic.
As Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, warned at a recent press conference, “Where you drill, you spill.”
Paul Thornton
The Santa Barbara catastrophe put an end to new oil leases in state waters (within three miles of shore), and the last lease farther out, in federal waters, dates to 1984. Every attempt since to reopen federal leasing has led to massive pushback, cancellations and to an evolving suite of federal and local laws and regulations meant to protect marine life and California’s $51 billion-a-year coastal economy.
Those rules mean the Trump administration’s plan is likely illegal. The Interior Department claims the new lease sales (including drilling not just in the Pacific, but in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska) will go ahead without environmental analysis, although since 1980, all offshore oil development has been reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA is one of the nation’s keystone environmental laws, and it is still in effect despite Trump’s attempts to gut it.
In many cases, the federal waters off California are also protected because they’re part of five contiguous national marine sanctuaries stretching miles out to sea from the shoreline. Just as in national parks, activities such as oil drilling are forbidden by law within sanctuary boundaries.
State law provides yet another layer of protection. Existing pipelines and infrastructure used to get oil ashore cannot be used by new wells, and no new infrastructure can be built in state waters. Many coastal counties and municipalities are in the process of prohibiting the building of onshore oil support facilities as well.
In other words, if Trump’s oil lease plan goes forward, lawyers on both sides of the drilling issue can look forward to years of full employment.
Market forces are another barrier to new lease sales.
Lisa Kaas Boyle
Despite Trump’s declaring a “national energy emergency” on Jan. 20, 2025 (and then trying to kill off clean energy projects), oil prices are low, at about $60 a barrel, and expected to drop below $50 this year (down from $95 post-COVID). In the short term (Trump’s only consideration), with commodity traders talking about an ongoing glut and the U.S., the world’s No. 1 producer of oil and gas, exporting a surplus, drilling off California doesn’t pencil out.
As for the long term, the enemy of the investment required for offshore drilling is uncertainty. Trump’s erratic economic decision-making, including his tariff policies, has already increased the costs of oil leasing, exploration and production. So far this year, the only new orders for offshore support vessels, for example, have been for wind production facilities.
Finally, given the prospect of a remade Congress after the midterm elections and the short horizon of Trump’s legal term in office, the oil industry may very well see California drilling posing far more costs than benefits. After all, its CEOs can read polling data and watch the news too.
So far, the Interior Department hasn’t scheduled public hearings on the president’s risky, unnecessary and unwelcome proposals, although a broadly based “Save My Coast” coalition has begun staging its own citizen hearings around the state. The coalition is also providing an accessible portal for sending comments on the leasing plan to Washington by the Jan. 23 deadline.
Since 1969 California has been a leader in protecting its coastline and the nation’s. The Trump administration is hellbent on reversing those defenses. Laws and market realities should prevail, but we can’t neglect the power of massive public outrage.
Correction, 10:27 a.m., Jan. 13: A previous version of this article incorrectly said new drilling lease sales will take place along the East Coast.
