Federal Judge Says Trump’s Order to Open Arctic Waters to Oil Drilling Was Unlawful

In April 2017, Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at ending the ban on offshore drilling in certain areas.  Smart Dissent painfully covered that here.  In late June, Trump spoke again on the topic (see here), claiming that progress is being made to make his "vision" a reality and sell our environment to the highest bidder.  

Fortunately, a federal judge will again save us for now.

In a major legal blow to Trump’s push to expand offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean was unlawful.

The decision, by Judge Sharon L. Gleason of the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, concluded late Friday that President Obama’s 2015 and 2016 withdrawal of about 120 million acres of Arctic Ocean from drilling “will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress.” She wrote that an April 2017 executive order by Trump revoking the drilling ban “is unlawful, as it exceeded the president’s authority.”

BOOM!

....immediately reinstates the drilling ban on most of the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Alaska, a pristine region home to endangered species including polar bears and bowhead whales where oil companies have long sought to drill. It also has broader implications for Trump’s effort to push drilling across the American coastline and on public lands.

Specifically, the Arctic Ocean drilling case could give legal ammunition to opponents of Trump’s efforts to roll back protections for two million acres of national monuments created by Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton.

....force the Interior Department to withdraw the waters of the Arctic Ocean from its forthcoming plan detailing where the federal government intends to lease federal waters to oil companies for offshore drilling. A draft of that plan published last year called for drilling off the entire United States coastline.

Read more at our source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/climate/trump-oil-drilling-arctic.html