The Current State of Offshore Oil and Gas Activities
Since our last post on offshore drilling ahead of the Trump administration coming into office, we’ve seen some major developments — including President Trump’s apparent plans to open up the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines to offshore drilling and an upcoming public comment period where we’ll all have the opportunity to speak up for our coasts:
- In January, days ahead of the end of his term, President Biden announced a historic withdrawal of ocean areas from oil and gas leasing. Just three weeks later, after he was sworn into office, President Trump issued an executive order to announce his intent to revoke those protections.
- Then in April, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) began the process for creating a new five-year leasing program to replace the Biden administration program, which is currently operational and set to run through 2029. This first step was a request for information and comment (RFI) on the preparation of a new five-year program, which will be followed by a Draft Proposed Program (DPP) that’s expected in the coming weeks. This DPP is believed to include proposals to begin selling off rights to drill in northern Alaska and the Gulf next year, as well as off the East and West coasts by 2028.1 Neither coast has seen a single offshore lease sale since 1984 — more than 50 years ago — due in no small part to strong local opposition. Once the DPP is published, there will be a 60-day comment period where the public can voice concerns with and opposition to proposed lease sales.
- Finally, on July 4th, Congress mandated minimum annual offshore oil and gas lease sales in southern Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico in its passage of the budget reconciliation bill. The Department of Interior has set the schedule for these sales, with the first one slated for December 10, 2025. These sales are considered separate from those scheduled in the current five-year leasing program.
In sum, despite widespread opposition and record U.S. oil production, Congress and the Trump administration are trying to expand offshore oil and gas leasing to further their “drill, baby, drill” agenda. An agenda which stands to come at the expense of coastal communities, industries like fishing and tourism, and marine and coastal wildlife.
Thanks to a long, bipartisan tradition of ocean conservation, however, there are protections in place that render hundreds of millions of areas of the outer continental shelf (i.e., lands submerged under federal ocean waters) ineligible for oil and gas leasing. Two important protections are presidential withdrawals made under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and national marine sanctuaries established by Congress or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The Trump administration has indicated that it may not honor these protections. That’s why Defenders is pushing back and encouraging our members to tell BOEM to prioritize our beaches, coastal economies, and marine life over oil and gas profits. Read on to learn more about OCSLA Section 12(a) withdrawals and national marine sanctuaries, and how you can help protect them.
Areas Withdrawn by the President Under OCSLA Section 12(a)
Section 12(a) of OCSLA allows the president to withdraw any unleased areas of the outer continental shelf from oil and gas leasing “from time to time.”2 Since OCSLA’s enactment in 1953, there has been a longstanding bipartisan tradition of using this authority to protect our nation’s oceans. Eight presidents spanning the political spectrum — including President Trump, on more than one occasion — have made over a dozen Section 12(a) withdrawals of more than 625 million acres over the past 55 years. Cumulatively, these withdrawals cover the entire Atlantic coast; the Pacific coast of California, Oregon, and Washington; the Eastern Gulf, which borders Florida; and several portions of the Arctic Sea surrounding Alaska. A vast majority of these protected areas are covered by the historic permanent Section 12(a) withdrawals made by President Biden in January 2025. Not only has President Trump attempted to revoke those Biden withdrawals through an executive order but also BOEM now appears to be preparing to auction off protected waters in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans.
The question of presidential authority to permanently withdraw areas from leasing, or reverse such withdrawals and make those areas available for leasing again, has been playing out since the first Trump administration. After Trump revoked multiple permanent Obama-era Section 12(a) withdrawals, the District of Alaska — the only court to have ruled on the issue until this month — found that those revocations exceeded the President’s authority under OCSLA.3 But a judge in the Western District of Louisiana appears to have now reached a different conclusion in assessing an industry challenge to President Biden’s 600-million-acre withdrawals.4 And at this moment, two more cases raising questions as to the President’s authority to apply or revoke Section 12(a) withdrawals are still pending in the Eastern District of Texas (brought by the State of Texas and a Texas-based oil and natural gas producer to separately challenge President Biden’s withdrawals)5 and the District of Alaska (filed by environmental groups challenging President Trump’s revocations of President Biden’s withdrawals).6
As the status of permanent Section 12(a) withdrawals remains an open question and formerly withdrawn areas — like the North Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific, and Northern Alaskan coasts — hang in the balance, public opposition to offshore drilling in those areas has only become more important. Pushback from everyday people has halted offshore drilling plans before, and it can do so again.
National Marine Sanctuaries
National marine sanctuaries protect and conserve ecological, cultural, or historical resources of special national significance in U.S. oceans, gulfs, and the Great Lakes. Since the passage of the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA) in 1972, NOAA and Congress have designated 18 sanctuaries covering more than 629,000 square miles of ocean and Great Lakes waters. Sanctuaries protect diverse ecological and cultural resources — from coral reefs, kelp forests, and whale migration corridors to historic shipwrecks and Indigenous homelands — and are managed with the primary objective of protecting the resources that spurred their designation.
Part of the way the NMSA protects these important marine areas is by prohibiting any incompatible uses that could threaten their ecological, cultural, or historical resources. Specifically, Section 310 of the act allows for the issuance of special use permits for a national marine sanctuary “only if [the permitted] activity is compatible with the purposes for which the sanctuary is designated and with protection of sanctuary resources.”7 Oil and gas leasing clearly would not meet either standard, which is why oil and gas activities are already expressly prohibited in many national marine sanctuaries.
Valid sanctuary purposes must, at minimum, include protecting the special qualities, living marine resources, or resource or human use values that make a sanctuary nationally significant and thus worthy of designation. Offshore drilling only threatens these interests. Individual oil and gas leases risk certain harm from the construction and operation of a well and create the possibility of catastrophic spills, chronic pollution, or the disturbance of important habitat. It is difficult, therefore, to imagine how any valid sanctuary purpose would not be adversely affected by — and thus incompatible with — oil and gas development.
Nor would oil and gas leasing be compatible with the protection of sanctuary resources, which are defined as any resource that contributes to the conservation, recreational, ecological, historical, educational, cultural, archeological, scientific, or aesthetic value of the sanctuary. These may include habitat for imperiled wildlife, biodiversity hotspots, significant historic sites, popular recreational areas, scenic views, or Indigenous use and heritage. An activity, like oil and gas development, that risks catastrophic damage to the surrounding area and does nothing to advance resource conservation is inherently adverse to protecting such resources. The importance of ensuring that marine sanctuaries remain unmarred by offshore drilling and seismic blasting is only heightened by the ecological sensitivity of many sanctuaries, from southern Florida where corals, seagrasses, and mangroves are especially vulnerable to oil and gas activities to the West Coast, which is home to endangered sea otters imperiled by the threat of oil spills.
How You Can Stand Up for Our Oceans
Given the uncertainty surrounding these protections, speaking up for your coast is more important than ever. BOEM is rumored to be issuing its DPP, the next step in the offshore leasing planning process, this fall. The DPP will provide analysis of each planning area then present a draft proposal, which may narrow the areas that are still under consideration for oil and gas leasing in the next five-year program. Once the DPP is published, we’ll have 60 days to submit comments voicing our opposition to the inclusion of any remaining areas.
Though Defenders will be working with our partners on another round of detailed technical comments, we also need YOU to add your voice to the mix! Public opposition has pushed BOEM to change course in developing new five-year plans before, meaning the more people who share their concerns, the clearer it will be to BOEM that places we love shouldn’t be auctioned off to the highest bidder. To make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to speak up for our oceans, make sure to sign up for Defenders’ email alerts and check out other actions you can take to build resistance.
Keeping protections like Section 12(a) withdrawals and national marine sanctuaries in place is critical in ensuring the health of our nation’s oceans, as well as the people and wildlife who depend upon them. The government may try to sell off our protected waters for profit, but we won’t let them, at least not without a fight.
1 Tracy J. Wholf & Seiji Yamashita, Trump Administration Aims to Auction Offshore Oil Leases Along U.S. Coastlines That Have Been Off-Limits For Decades, CBS News (Oct. 24, 2025), cbsnews.com/news/trump-offshore-oil-leases-us-coastlines/; Rachel Nostrant, Exclusive: Leaked Documents Detail Trump’s Plans to Open the East and West Coasts to Offshore Oil Drilling, Houston Chronicle (Oct. 21, 2025), houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/offshore-leasing-trump-interior-houston-oil-alaska-21112497.php.
2 43 U.S.C. § 1341(a) (“The President of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.”).
3 League of Conservation Voters v. Trump, 363 F. Supp. 3d 1013, 1020–25 (D. Alaska 2019), vacated as moot and remanded sub nom. League of Conservation Voters v. Biden, 843 F. App’x 937 (9th Cir. 2021). This case was found to be moot after President Biden reinstated the revoked withdrawals.
4 Louisiana v. Biden, No. 2:25-CV-00071, 2025 WL 2808502, at *6 (W.D. La. Oct. 2, 2025).
5 Texas v. Biden, Sabin Ctr. for Climate Change Law: Climate Litigation Database, climatecasechart.com/collections/texas-v-biden_e7686e.
6 Northern Alaska Environmental Center v. Trump, Sabin Ctr. for Climate Change Law: Climate Litigation Database, climatecasechart.com/collections/northern-alaska-environmental-center-v-trump_bdca9b.
7 16 U.S.C. § 1441(c)(1) (emphasis added).
8 See, e.g., 15 C.F.R. § 922.7(a)(1) (Channel Islands NMS, off the coast of California); id. § 922.122(a)(1) (Flower Garden Banks NMS, off the Texas and Louisiana coasts); id. § 922.152 (Olympic Coast NMS, off the coast of Washington state); id. § 922.244(a)(1) (Papahānaumokuākea NMS, off the Hawai’ian coast); Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and Protection Act, Pub. L. No. 101-605, § 6(b), 104 Stat. 3089, 3092 (1990) (Florida Keys NMS, off the coast of Florida).
Author
Victoria Molyneaux
Areas of Expertise: National Environmental Policy Act and Administrative Procedure Act
Victoria joined Defenders as a legal fellow in 2024 after spending a year
