Gavin Newsom declares Trump admin cannot drill for oil off California's coast

( Post Millennial )

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to propose offshore oil drilling off the coast of California, plans that Governor Gavin Newsom says are "dead on arrival."

Per the Washington Post, which obtained a draft map of the plans, the Trump administration plans to propose six offshore lease sales between 2027 and 2030 along the state’s coast. The administration is also planning lease sales in the Gulf of America. 

Newsom said, when asked about the plan, "Over our dead body. Period. Full Stop. He wants to open up the coast of California to oil drilling, but he has no interest in opening up oil drilling rigs right off the coast of Florida, not right across the street from Mar-a-Lago." He added, "It’s never going to happen." 

It is currently unclear what locations on the coast the administration is considering for oil drilling leases. Per the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, there are over 146 million acres of ocean in the oil and gas leasing program between California’s three ICE planning areas. In 1969, California issued a moratorium on all new leases following the Santa Barbara oil spill. 

In 1947, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v California that "California is not the owner of the three-mile marginal belt along its coast, and the Federal Government, rather than the State, has paramount rights in and power over that belt, an incident to which is full dominion over the resources of the soil under that water area, including oil."

In response to the California case ruling, Congress passed the Submerged Lands Act of 1953. The SLA was upheld in 1954 by the Supreme Court in the case of Alabama v Texas. The SLA granted states jurisdiction over three nautical miles from the coast, with exceptions for some states and territories, where this jurisdiction extends to nine nautical miles offshore. 

Under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, also passed in 1953, the US has jurisdiction over all outer continental shelf submerged lands extending beyond state coastal waters, which is the 3 nautical mile boundary set forth in the SLA. 

In his last month in office, former President Joe Biden issued two Presidential Memoranda "to protect all US Outer Continental Shelf areas off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and natural gas leasing. The withdrawals have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing in the areas withdrawn." Trump revoked the ban in his first day in office. Biden’s order permanently withdrew 625 million acres of ocean between all covered areas from new leasing for oil and natural gas drilling.

In his first term in office, a federal court ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority when he authorized offshore drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. US district court judge Sharon Gleason wrote, "The wording of President Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawals indicates that he intended them to extend indefinitely, and therefore be revocable only by an act of Congress."