Today Ryan Zinke’s Department of the Interior is wrapping up oil and gas leasing on public lands near the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. Though the administration walked back the initial leasing proposal, which also included areas near Yellowstone National Park, today’s leases remain a threat to protected public lands and big game herds in an area prized for its elk.
Local and state officials, business leaders, environmentalists, and coastal community residents held a rally today to speak out against the Trump administration’s proposal to open up more than 90 percent of the waters off from America’s coast, including an area near Massachusetts, to offshore drilling and seismic testing.
Today, in his remarks at an energy conference in Houston, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made his preference for supporting the oil and gas industry over protecting our public lands and waters clear.
Yesterday, the Department of the Interior announced the cancellation of an oil and gas lease sale near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a UNESCO Heritage Site in northern New Mexico. The controversial leases would have auctioned off an additional 4,434 acres in the Greater Chaco region for industrialized fracking, exposing local communities to increased pollution and threatening ancient ruins considered sacred by Indigenous Nations.
Last night, it was reported that the Department of the Interior will host a second public hearing in New York tomorrow on its draft offshore drilling plan.
An Interior Department advisory panel is considering making it even cheaper and easier for oil and gas companies to lease public waters for offshore drilling.
Last night, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California rejected the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) suspension of a key safeguard that would limit methane pollution from oil and gas drilling operations on public lands.
This afternoon, DC residents and District officials gathered to send a strong message of opposition to the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan.
Interior Secretary Zinke claims to be a geologist, but he can’t figure out how to stop digging himself deeper into a hole over his disastrous handling of the administration’s draft offshore drilling plan.
This morning, in a hearing before the House Natural Resources Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Acting Director Walter Cruickshank testified that, despite Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s earlier claims, Florida’s waters would in fact be considered in the administration’s offshore drilling plan.
Washington, DC -- Once again, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is having a disastrous week.
In the wake of questions about the rationale behind Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s removal of Florida from draft offshore drilling plans just days after it was released, Zinke is scrambling to create the appearance of a fair process.