Trump Signs Executive Order Reversing Obama Offshore Drilling Protections
Trump’s latest executive order is a giant giveaway to the oil industry.
President Obama dedicated a significant portion of his presidency to protecting the environment and fighting climate change. And a key aspect of that was protecting large offshore territories from oil and gas drilling.
Well, Donald Trump has dedicated a significant portion of his presidency trying to undo President Obama’s legacy and his latest executive order is no different. Trump signed an order Friday that begins the process of undoing President Obama’s offshore drilling protections.
Trump’s order immediately repeals most of President Obama’s ban on drilling in large portions of the Arctic Ocean, which Obama intended to be indefinite.
Trump’s executive order is a devastating blow to the environment and a giant giveaway to the oil industry.
But Trump’s order wasn’t just about letting oil companies drill for oil in the ocean, it was also about easing safety standards put in place after the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion which killed 11 people and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. According to the New York Times, “But Mr. Trump also took aim at regulations on oil-rig safety. In the final years of the Obama administration, the Interior Department implemented several new rules aimed at improving the safety of specific pieces of offshore drilling equipment that had failed during the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and were found to have been responsible for the deadly BP oil rig explosion that caused that spill.”
