Who Decides Offshore Drilling, And Why Coastal Communities Pay the Price

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Along the coast, change

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rarely announces itself.

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Decisions that shape ocean

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ecosystems, local economies,

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and community safety happen quietly,

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far from the people who will

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live with the consequences.

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This episode is about distance.

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Distance between

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decision makers and coastlines.

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Distance between policy and place.

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And what that distance makes possible.

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This plan is about leasing.

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So it's about auctioning off our coasts,

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our public coasts for drilling.

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Right.

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And so it's not about this year.

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It's not about gas prices.

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This is about generations ahead.

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What do we want the world to be?

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And this country and this

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world are at a crossroads.

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Do we want to lock

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ourselves into decades more

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of fossil fuels?

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Do we want to drill

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further, deeper, more risky,

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every inch, or do we

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want to make the transition

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to clean renewable energy?

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This is, this plan is sort of at that

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crux of the decision

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because if we decide that

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we're going to drill Florida

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and then think about the

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long-term economic impacts

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of an oil spill of Florida in the summer

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or California in the summer,

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is that the future we want?

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No.

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Leasing is the moment where

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public waters are opened up.

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It happens before drilling,

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before the infrastructure,

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and often before public awareness.

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Once the leasing decisions are made,

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everything that falls

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become much harder to stop.

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It was actually earlier this year.

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On January 6th, President

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Biden protected 625 million acres,

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the entire East Coast, West Coast,

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Florida's Gulf Coast,

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and areas off Alaska.

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And that was a big historic moment.

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Yeah, I remember that.

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On his first day in office, President

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Trump did an executive order

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attempting to reverse that.

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And he's put forward a plan that in the

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initial stage opened everything

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to offshore drilling for consideration.

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But then the recent

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plan that just came out,

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the Atlantic and Pacific

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Northwest are taken out.

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And so we're now talking about areas off

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Florida, California, and Alaska.

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Are on the table right now.

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Okay. So nothing else, just Florida,

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California, and Alaska.

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And the Western and Central Gulf.

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But those are coming

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through the Congress passed

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in the big, you know, HR1, the big bill

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that they passed at the

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beginning of the year.

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They included a massive

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expansion in Cook Inlet in Alaska,

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and then in the Western and Central Gulf.

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So there is a phenomenal, like the first

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lease sale is about to come up.

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80 million acres is in, and that's the

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first of 30 in the

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Western and Central Gulf.

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And so area is off Louisiana and Texas.

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Some of these areas are definitely facing

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huge pressure for expanded drilling.

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So that's a part of this plan too.

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Yeah.

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But we're going to try

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and stop what we can.

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Those numbers aren't abstract.

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They represent how much ocean is put on

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the table in one single decision.

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What the leasing is about is because

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there's stages, then

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they have to put out leases.

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Someone has to buy the leases.

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The world is flooded with oil right now.

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At one point, there was a belief that we

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were going to run out.

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They're finding deep water oil and

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Guyana, North Sea, South China Sea,

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Nigeria, all around the world.

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They're finding massive, like deep water,

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more risky or near shore deposits in

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places there weren't before.

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So we really have to make a

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decision that we want to move on.

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We have to make a decision to stop

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expanding offshore drilling and change.

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So if we continue on the path we're on,

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there's really, I

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mean, history is so clear.

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Everywhere there's a massive

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expansion of offshore drilling.

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There are catastrophic oil spills.

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The language is

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technical, transactional even.

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There's no coastline in that description.

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No community and no ecosystem.

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It was so amazing last week to see the

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continued bipartisan

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overwhelming opposition.

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There was a letter from every single

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member of Congress from Florida, every

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Republican, Democrat, every senator,

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every representative.

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The governor wrote a statement and the

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military base, Eglin, that covers nearly

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all of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.

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It's the national testing and training

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range for the military, which does not

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want structure or flammable materials or

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oil spills happening.

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All of those in strong statements right

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out of the gates after

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this plan was introduced.

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So we certainly hope that the president,

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like last time, will hear those voices

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and pull it out and withdraw Florida.

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There is such strong opposition and those

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are the elected officials,

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but also the people, the public.

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And it wants to show on the coastline.

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Yeah, and they all lived through, almost

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all lived through Deepwater Horizon.

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Yes.

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So they remember.

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Yeah.

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So when something gets proposed, like,

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well, there'll be a hundred mile buffer.

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Buffers don't matter

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when there's an oil spill.

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Being allowed to comment is

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not the same as having power.

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For communities closest to these waters,

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the gap becomes real very quickly.

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Especially with elected officials, we

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love to invite them to our beach

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cleanups, the water testing events, you

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know, to show them that the place is not

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just the environment and the wildlife,

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but show them, you know, how business is

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and their constituents, you know, really

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depend on a clean coastal environment.

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So, and we're nonpartisan.

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We believe that, you know, it shouldn't

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be some sort of political stance one way

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or the other to want to

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protect our public resources.

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The decisions land somewhere. Risk isn't

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hypothetical. It's familiar. And it

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doesn't fall evenly.

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Oil spills happen all the time. The

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smaller ones tend to be underreported by

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the industry and not

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covered by the media.

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The larger ones can be catastrophic, not

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just for the environment, but for

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communities, for businesses.

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Yeah, maybe there's a

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recency bias that people have.

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But I can tell you as someone that lives

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in Orange County that

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people remember the spill.

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We just had a big people's hearing event

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in Costa Mesa and we had over 100 people

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turn up, including local officials who

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remember the challenges of dealing with

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amplify energy and, you know, their lack

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of forthrightness, their failure to turn

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off the spigot, if you will, while oil,

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you know, continue to flow

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into the marine environment.

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We had a woman who owns a charter fishing

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business and whale watching company out

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of Dana Point. She came and spoke out

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about it and then emailed me the next day

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to let me know that she submitted her own

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official letter to

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the federal government.

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So, yeah, when you see this stuff happen,

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it's hard to forget.

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Leasing doesn't just shape the present,

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it shapes the future.

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A lease today is almost a plan to drill

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10, even 20 years from now.

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They sit on that lease. First, there's a

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lot of, it's the ocean.

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It's not easy to get there.

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So, sometimes they lease it out before

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they have the capital and get

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a loan to do the survey work.

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They might drill a survey well, because

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these oil deposits are two, three miles

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underneath the mud. And that's all if

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you're drilling through a

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mile of ocean on top of that.

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So, these are incredibly complex

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operations and they're

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incredibly expensive.

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And since 2014 and fracking, it's just

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been so much easier for the oil companies

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to hire trucks rather than boats, right?

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So, it's still to this day, it's much a

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bigger return on investment for them to

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hire trucks and frack in West Texas or

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North Dakota than it is to make a long

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term plan to drill for

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oil deposits in the ocean.

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So, what that means is a lot of your

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smaller operators won't even be bidding.

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That means communities

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inherit decisions they didn't make.

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Lease sale is every speck of ocean we

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got. And that's kind of offensive because

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we have great coral reefs in places, in

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some places of Gulf.

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In other places, we have sand resources

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that we would like to utilize for coastal

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and ecosystem restoration. We have

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fairways. We have places that will be

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good for wind power.

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So, when you see these plans drop and

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they consider no one and nobody and they

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just let oil industry take whatever they

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want, that's not a plan.

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Leasing is expansive. Once it happens, it

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reshapes what the

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ocean is allowed to become.

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Cook Inlet Keeper got it start after the

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Exxon Valdez disaster. So, you know, most

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expensive oil spill in human history.

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And it happened in Prince William Sound,

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which was, I mean, on the map, it looks

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next door to us. We were we were getting

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oil up here in Cook Inlet. We're hundreds

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of miles away for reference.

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And this was it was absolutely massive.

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And there have been bigger

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ones, but this one was huge.

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From afar, places can look close

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together. On the ground, they are.

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Each of these lease sales that that

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happened, like the most recent one, Lease

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Sale 258, there was a they did a model on

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it on sort of the risk of a major spill

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that was associated with

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this particular lease sale.

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And they estimated that there was about a

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19 percent chance of a major spill

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happening. So this is the kind of thing

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that would be, you know, destructive

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across the board and could, you know,

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choke out our fish and also be just

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immensely destructive to wildlife, both

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in the in the ocean and also on land.

280
01:10:31,250 --> 01:10:35,041
And that's just one Lease Sale. When you

281
01:10:35,041 --> 01:10:36,875
start adding up the fact that we already

282
01:10:36,875 --> 01:10:39,583
have a bunch of when we have a bunch of

283
01:10:39,583 --> 01:10:40,458
sort of extractive

284
01:10:40,458 --> 01:10:42,708
industries further up the inlets.

285
01:10:43,791 --> 01:10:46,416
Plus, each newly sale coming in, having

286
01:10:46,416 --> 01:10:48,958
its own risk associated that risk becomes

287
01:10:48,958 --> 01:10:52,291
additive. So Lease Sale 258 is 20

288
01:10:52,291 --> 01:10:54,166
percent. When you add on the Lease Sale

289
01:10:54,166 --> 01:10:57,208
before that, it becomes 40 percent.

290
01:10:57,250 --> 01:11:01,833
And when you account for all of the

291
01:11:01,833 --> 01:11:03,958
current leases that are already happening

292
01:11:03,958 --> 01:11:06,625
in Cook Inlet, we're already hovering

293
01:11:06,625 --> 01:11:10,291
well over 50 percent of it, well over 50

294
01:11:10,291 --> 01:11:11,916
percent chance of a risk of a

295
01:11:11,916 --> 01:11:14,041
major oil spill in the area.

296
01:11:14,458 --> 01:11:16,791
These risks are modeled. They're known.

297
01:11:17,500 --> 01:11:19,000
And still the people closest to them

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01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:20,208
rarely shape the decision itself.

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01:11:20,250 --> 01:11:22,666
So we've made we have a bunch of

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01:11:22,666 --> 01:11:25,083
resources that we're making available for

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01:11:25,083 --> 01:11:27,375
people to go to to kind of help guide

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01:11:27,375 --> 01:11:29,166
them through this process. So on our

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01:11:29,166 --> 01:11:33,416
website, we have a page that is actually

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01:11:33,416 --> 01:11:39,208
dedicated to to oil and gas lease sales.

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01:11:39,250 --> 01:11:42,750
And on that page, we've got like talking

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01:11:42,750 --> 01:11:45,500
points that people can use. We've got the

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01:11:45,500 --> 01:11:46,666
link to the actual place where they're

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01:11:46,666 --> 01:11:48,250
supposed to where they can go to submit

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01:11:48,250 --> 01:11:51,208
the comments. And in a couple of hours

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01:11:51,208 --> 01:11:54,333
and at 5 30 today, we're going to be

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01:11:54,333 --> 01:11:57,500
doing a online like video training

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01:11:57,500 --> 01:11:59,083
session where we can kind of walk people

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01:11:59,083 --> 01:12:00,750
through the issue and how

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01:12:00,750 --> 01:12:01,208
to go about commenting on it.

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01:12:01,250 --> 01:12:04,833
And we're going to record that and put

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01:12:04,833 --> 01:12:06,875
that up online as well. So we're just

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01:12:06,875 --> 01:12:09,291
trying to get as much as we can out there

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01:12:09,291 --> 01:12:12,500
for people to both be aware that this is

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01:12:12,500 --> 01:12:14,833
happening and that, you know, this thing

320
01:12:14,833 --> 01:12:17,500
that's happening over the holidays that

321
01:12:17,500 --> 01:12:19,583
is trying to be stuck under their nose is

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01:12:19,583 --> 01:12:20,208
happening right now.

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01:12:20,250 --> 01:12:22,625
And they've got to they've got to get a

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01:12:22,625 --> 01:12:27,583
comment in by January 23rd, especially

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01:12:27,583 --> 01:12:30,625
because, you know, we've got like Lauren

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01:12:30,625 --> 01:12:34,291
said, we've got 12 lease sales either

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01:12:34,291 --> 01:12:36,583
that have either happened or about to

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01:12:36,583 --> 01:12:38,208
happen in Cook Inlet alone.

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01:12:38,791 --> 01:12:40,708
And this is because of, you know, the

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01:12:40,708 --> 01:12:43,875
various loopholes that the federal

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01:12:43,875 --> 01:12:46,625
government has been using to get rid of

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01:12:46,625 --> 01:12:48,958
to constrain public comment. This is

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01:12:48,958 --> 01:12:51,791
potentially like the only opportunity

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01:12:51,791 --> 01:12:54,000
that people are going to get to actually

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01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:55,208
make a public comment.

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01:12:55,250 --> 01:12:56,916
When participation requires guidance,

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01:12:57,208 --> 01:12:59,875
translation and navigation, it stops

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01:12:59,875 --> 01:13:02,250
being equal. The system may be open, but

339
01:13:02,250 --> 01:13:04,541
it isn't equally accessible. The people

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01:13:04,541 --> 01:13:06,583
closest to the ocean are usually the

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01:13:06,583 --> 01:13:08,250
first to notice change the first to

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01:13:08,250 --> 01:13:10,375
respond and the last to be heard.

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01:13:11,250 --> 01:13:13,291
And that distance is not accidental.