President Trump extended a drilling moratorium to federal waters off the coast of North Carolina with a decision issued Sept. 25 under authority of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
The moratorium will run 10 years, from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2032. It is an extension of a moratorium covering the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.
Originally the moratorium applied only to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and was scheduled to expire June 30, 2022, but in early September Trump added another decade to its length and expanded it to the South Atlantic coast (OGJ Online, Sept. 8, 2020).
Trump did not offer an explanation for his North Carolina decision, but Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) mentioned the moratorium 5 days earlier in a video statement posted to his Senate website.
“This morning, I spoke with President Trump, and I asked him to extend the offshore drilling moratorium to North Carolina. I’m pleased to announce the president will be doing just that,” Tillis said Sept. 21.
Tillis is in a race for reelection, with polls suggesting he and his Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, are running neck-and-neck. Trump also has to worry about winning North Carolina in his own reelection bid.
Trade associations representing the oil and gas industry released statements expressing their disappointment.
The decision “takes thousands of new jobs and critical revenue for states off the table at a time when the economy is struggling,” said Lem Smith, vice-president of upstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute.
Moratoriums lead to “outsourcing of energy production and economic growth as countries such as Russia happily wait in the wings to make up our domestic energy supply gap,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association.