The Trump Administration proposed last week to open more than 700,000 acres of federal land to new oil and gas drilling along California’s Central Coast.
The plan is the Bureau of Land Management’s commitment to a 2013 court order to issue a more detailed environmental impact assessment of oil and gas drilling and the potential impacts of fracking, before proposing new acreage to fossil fuel development in the state.
The Administration’s plan faces an uphill battle in California, which has been challenging nearly all federal environmental-related and emission proposal rules and which continues to pledge its commitment to the Paris Agreement regardless of the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from it.
While the federal government says that the plan to open more federal land to drilling in California will create jobs and economic opportunities for the local communities, California’s governor and environmental organizations already voiced their opposition to the proposal, while energy experts say that the oil industry won’t be flocking to drill in Central California because it is expensive.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) says that its plan would affect some 800,000 acres of Federal mineral estate, primarily located in the Fresno, Monterey, and San Benito counties. The BLM forecasts that up to 37 new oil and gas wells could be drilled over the next 20 years on federal land in the planning area. According to the BLM, the oil and gas industry on private and public lands in those three counties directly supports around 3,000 jobs and US$623 million in tax revenue.
The BLM’s plan, released on May 9 and published in the Federal Register on May 10, now has a 30-day protest period and 60-day governor’s consistency review.