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Who Decides Offshore Drilling, And Why Coastal Communities Pay the Price · How To Protect The Ocean

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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.
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  And that's just one Lease Sale. When you
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  start adding up the fact that we already
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  have a bunch of when we have a bunch of
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  sort of extractive
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  industries further up the inlets.
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  Plus, each newly sale coming in, having
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  its own risk associated that risk becomes
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  additive. So Lease Sale 258 is 20
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  percent. When you add on the Lease Sale
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  before that, it becomes 40 percent.
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  And when you account for all of the
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  current leases that are already happening
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  in Cook Inlet, we're already hovering
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  well over 50 percent of it, well over 50
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  percent chance of a risk of a
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  major oil spill in the area.
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  These risks are modeled. They're known.
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  And still the people closest to them
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  rarely shape the decision itself.
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  So we've made we have a bunch of
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  resources that we're making available for
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  people to go to to kind of help guide
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  them through this process. So on our
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  website, we have a page that is actually
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  dedicated to to oil and gas lease sales.
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  And on that page, we've got like talking
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  points that people can use. We've got the
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  link to the actual place where they're
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  supposed to where they can go to submit
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  the comments. And in a couple of hours
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  and at 5 30 today, we're going to be
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  doing a online like video training
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  session where we can kind of walk people
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  through the issue and how
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  to go about commenting on it.
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  And we're going to record that and put
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  that up online as well. So we're just
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  trying to get as much as we can out there
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  for people to both be aware that this is
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  happening and that, you know, this thing
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  that's happening over the holidays that
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  is trying to be stuck under their nose is
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  happening right now.
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  And they've got to they've got to get a
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  comment in by January 23rd, especially
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  because, you know, we've got like Lauren
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  said, we've got 12 lease sales either
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  that have either happened or about to
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  happen in Cook Inlet alone.
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  And this is because of, you know, the
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  various loopholes that the federal
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  government has been using to get rid of
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  to constrain public comment. This is
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  potentially like the only opportunity
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  that people are going to get to actually
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  make a public comment.
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  When participation requires guidance,
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  translation and navigation, it stops
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  being equal. The system may be open, but
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  it isn't equally accessible. The people
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  closest to the ocean are usually the
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  first to notice change the first to
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  respond and the last to be heard.
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  And that distance is not accidental.