If there ever was any doubt, New York and New Jersey’s governors separately announced, once again, that they do not want oil and gas activity off their respective states’ coasts. This includes onshore infrastructure, they added.
“The federal government’s plan to open coastal waters to drilling shows an absolute disregard for science and history,” New York’s Andrew A. Cuomo (D) said in Albany on May 4 as he proposed legislation to prohibit onshore as well as onshore leasing to support oil and gas operations off the Empire State’s coast.
“Offshore drilling would make our coastal communities vulnerable to the dangers of oil spills and other drilling disasters and jeopardize the health of our robust marine economy,” he said. “New York will do everything in its power to prevent environmental disasters and will continue to safeguard its offshore assets and bolster its efforts to support renewable energy development.”
Cuomo explained that this “Save Our Waters” bill would prohibit leases for oil and gas exploration and production in New York waters, including those off New York City and Long Island and in the Hudson River. It would bar infrastructure on state land associated with offshore production in the North Atlantic. And it would prevent transportation of crude oil produced from federal waters there within navigable waters of the state.
The bill came after Cuomo formally asked on Mar. 9 that New York be exempt from the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s draft proposed 2019-24 offshore oil and gas program. It complements state efforts to move toward offshore wind and other cleaner power generation sources, and to use waste materials from sources including the demolished Tappan Zee Bridge to build artificial reefs in Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.
Two weeks earlier, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed an equally thorough bill into law. A-839, which passed the state’s senate unanimously and cleared its assembly in a 72-1 vote, bans offshore E&P in the Garden State’s ocean waters.
DEP restrictions
It also prevents the Department of Environmental Protection from issuing permits for any facility or infrastructure related to activity in both federal and state waters off New Jersey’s coast.
The bill further requires the DEP to review any proposed oil or gas development in the Atlantic region of the US exclusive economic zone to determine if the proposal can reasonably be expected to affect New Jersey waters.
“The bipartisan legislation I am signing into law, on the eighth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Spill, will block oil companies from drilling in state waters,” Murphy said on Apr. 20. “We simply cannot allow the danger of drilling off our coast.”

Nick Snow
NICK SNOW covered oil and gas in Washington for more than 30 years. He worked in several capacities for The Oil Daily and was founding editor of Petroleum Finance Week before joining OGJ as its Washington correspondent in September 2005 and becoming its full-time Washington editor in October 2007. He retired from OGJ in January 2020.