The Trump administration proposed a plan Thursday that would open federal waters off the California coast to new oil and gas leasing for the first time in four decades and reignite a long-simmering fight with Florida Republicans over drilling along that state’s Gulf Coast.
The proposed five-year schedule for offshore oil and gas leasing represents the most aggressive in decades, with the Interior Department considering as many as 34 auctions in federal waters between 2026 and 2031. That includes as many as six sales off the Southern California coast, two in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and 21 sales off of Alaska, including in an area of the High Arctic previously untouched by oil drilling.
The administration’s announcement also sticks an oily thumb into the eye of the international climate community currently meeting in Brazil to discuss, among other things, ways to ratchet down global greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Biden administration slammed the brakes on offshore oil and gas leasing and crippled the long-term pipeline of America’s offshore production,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “By moving forward with the development of a robust, forward-thinking leasing plan, we are ensuring that America’s offshore industry stays strong, our workers stay employed, and our nation remains energy dominant for decades to come.”
The plan’s offering of new leases in California waters — reported by POLITICO last month — looks designed to antagonize Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender who in recent months has sought to moderate his position on fossil fuel production. Newsom, speaking at the COP 30 conference, called the administration’s move to open new waters off the California coast to drilling “dead on arrival.”
Rich Goldberg, who served as a senior counselor to the Trump administration’s National Energy Dominance Council through August, said in an interview that oil and gas issues present a clear policy split between the Trump administration, which has gone all-in on oil and gas development, and California, which has emphasized renewable energy.
“This is really a core fight and the demonstration of two world views that come to have concrete results in one of our largest states,” Goldberg said. “So this is a fight worth taking on to have a very public demonstration of the contrast in policies and results.”
The plan proposes sales off Southern California in 2027, 2029 and 2030, off Central California in 2027 and 2029, and Northern California in 2029.
Companies are already producing oil and gas off the California coast in territory originally leased by the mid-1980s, but drilling there has declined for decades. A series of congressional and presidential actions stifled new leasing in the Pacific and strict environmental regulations made it difficult to transport the oil from federal waters to the state’s coastline. A recent effort by one company, Sable Offshore Corp., to restart production off Southern California has run into major state and local opposition.
The proposal to lease acres in the resource-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico, which President Donald Trump has renamed the Gulf of America, could also run into political headwinds. The plan includes sales in the region, which oil companies have long sought to tap, in 2029 and 2030, after the Trump administration leaves office.
Florida politicians of both parties have opposed drilling for decades over fears that an oil spill would devastate the state’s tourism industry. After the first Trump administration’s plan to open up nearly all federal waters to drilling drew heavy backlash, Trump extended a preexisting moratorium on drilling off Florida’s coasts until 2032.
It was not immediately clear whether the new proposed sales fall within the moratorium, which extends roughly 125 miles offshore.
Republican lawmakers have already panned the idea after POLITICO reported last month that the plan would include the eastern Gulf and Atlantic coasts. The Republican pushback persuaded the administration to remove the Atlantic coast from consideration, POLITICO also reported.
Even without any Atlantic sales, the proposal would tee up auctions in regions with serious political and economic hurdles to development, such as Alaska’s High Arctic. That will test oil companies’ willingness to “drill, baby, drill,” especially as crude prices remain low.
The plan includes 21 sales off Alaska, mostly in 2030 or later. It includes sales each year beginning in 2027 in the Cook Inlet, sales in the Beaufort Sea in 2026 and 2030, Chukchi Sea in 2028 and 2030, and the High Arctic in 2030.
The last Arctic Ocean lease sale was held in 2008. An attempt by Shell to drill in the region in 2012 ended in a high-profile failure.
The aggressive leasing schedule would represent a major jump from the current plan, which was finalized under the Biden administration and remains in effect. That plan includes just three offshore lease sales between 2024 and 2029, the fewest since the modern offshore program began in 1980.
Interior’s plan, a framework used to schedule offshore lease sales in federal waters for a five-year period, could still change before it is finalized, likely next year.
The discretionary sales in Thursday’s plan are in addition to dozens of lease sales mandated under Republicans’ new budget law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
Environmental groups have criticized the Trump administration’s leasing push, arguing oil companies already producing at record levels don’t need additional acreage offshore. They also point to the potential impact on endangered species such as whales, which the administration has sought to protect by throttling the growth of offshore wind.
“The last thing America needs now is a massive expansion of offshore drilling that could shut down our shores with catastrophic oil spills,” Joseph Gordon, campaign director at Oceana, said in a statement. “Congress, and coastal state leaders, must stand together to defend all of our coasts and demand that the Trump administration go back to the drawing board to take their states out of the final plan.”
But Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, said the expansion of lease sales into new regions like the Eastern Gulf would be critical to maintain U.S. competitiveness, especially as onshore shale wells get less productive.
“We need to make sure we’re not missing out on potential strategic opportunities 10, 15, 20 years down the road, because the production we have now is because of decisions we made 10, 15 years ago,” Milito said in an interview prior to the plan’s release.
Milito said casting a “wide net” in the proposed plan would allow the government to gather input from companies on the areas’ geology and potential drilling interest, which could then be used to narrow the final plan.
The first Trump administration proposed an initial plan with 47 lease sales off nearly every coast, but ultimately pared it down to just 11 auctions, 10 in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet.
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is set to hold its first offshore lease sale under the Trump administration in December, auctioning off roughly 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. The sale was one of the three scheduled under the Biden administration’s plan, and was also mandated in the budget law. Environmental groups sued Interior on Tuesday to block the sale.
BOEM will take public comment on the draft leasing schedule for 60 days beginning Nov. 24. The agency typically releases a second draft narrowing the initial proposed program and takes public comment again before finalizing the plan.
Noah Baustin contributed to this report.
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