By Kennedy Maize
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum can’t seem to figure out how to reconcile his offshore energy leasing policies with national security. Managing the linkage has left him looking less interested in substance than in bowing to Donald Trump’s often uninformed likes and dislikes.
First, at Trump’s order, he halted work on five developing offshore wind energy projects on what turned out to be a bogus claim that they interfere with national security, specifically military radar. Multiple federal courts debunked that unsubstantiated claim. Work resumed on the projects
Now Burgum’s and the White House’s plans for expedited offshore oil and gas exploration and production off the Florida and California coasts face what look like real problems of harmful impacts on national security. The new policy also produces furious bipartisan political opposition.
Last November, Interior’ Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced a proposed new five-year plan for offshore oil and operations. It encompasses some 1.27 billion acres, including 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven off the Gulf of Mexico, and six off the Pacific coast.
The Interior Department proposal also “includes the Secretary’s decision to create a new administrative planning area” for the South-Central Gulf of Mexico.
The Washington Post last week (May 22) reported, “Military officials are worried about Trump’s oil drilling plan.” According to the article, “Military leaders and bipartisan lawmakers say a Trump administration plan to allow oil platforms in an empty expanse of the Gulf of Mexico and off of Southern California would obstruct some of the largest military operations areas in the country.”
The problem, the Post said, is that the areas where the administration wants to expand oil and gas operations “overlap between areas of drilling expansion and military test and training zones off the coast of both states — something that concerns both Republicans and Democrats.”
Offshore oil and gas drilling is controversial and politically charged, regardless of whether the operations are off the coasts of red or blue states. Voters in deep red Florida in 2019 amended the state constitution to ban drilling in state waters, covering up to three miles off the Atlantic coast and 10 miles off the Gulf coast.
In his final days in office in January 2025, President Biden withdrew some 625 million acres of federal waters from future oil and gas leasing, which the law firm of Holland and Knight described as “the largest withdrawal of its kind in U.S. history.” Trump promptly overturned Biden’s action when he took office days later.
Responding to Interior’s proposal, in December Florida’s entire congressional delegation — 22 Republicans and seven Democrats — wrote to Trump opposing “any attempts to expand offshore oil and gas drilling off Florida’s coasts.” They noted, “The Gulf Test Range is the largest multi-domain military training and testing complex in the country, and its unique geographic characteristics enable critical preparation for real-world contingencies.”
Retired Navy captain and head of the South Florida Defense Alliance Rick Miller told the Post, “It’s almost strategically backwards. For a modest potential increase in oil production capacity, we’d be giving up a tremendous amount of national defense capability.”
Moving westward, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic governors Tina Kotek of Oregon and Bob Furguson of Washington wrote a letter to Burgum opposing the Bureau of Ocean Management’s plan, which they said would impede commercial fishing, tourism, shipping, and “military operations.”
When Interior announced its proposal in November, Newsom responded that it was “dead on arrival.” Interior has held no federal oil and gas lease sales in the region since 1984. According to Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which jointly manages the agency’s oil and gas program,1,621 wells have been drilled on federal waters offshore of Southern California since 1963.
In April, DOI announced it will combine BOEM and BSEE into a new “Marine Minerals Administration.” The reorganization partially reconstitutes the previous Minerals Management Service (MMS).
In 2011, the Obama administration, in the wake of the disastrous 2010 blowout and explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform off the Louisiana coast, the world’s largest documented oil spill, broke up MMS and created BOEM to conduct leasing and BSEE to focus on environmental issues. The investigation of the disaster found widespread problems in MMS, as well as criminal activity by the contractors. 
The explosion killed 11 and injured 17. In 2012, licensee BP and the Justice Department settled federal criminal charges, with BP pleading guilty to 11 counts of manslaughter, two misdemeanors, and a felony count of lying to Congress.
The rapid rise of opposition to the administration’s new offshore oil push has led the Interior Department to tap dance around its plan, pointing out that it is only a proposal, with a final plan likely to come in October. Interior’s Elizabeth Peace told the Post, “No final decisions have been made. The proposal simply identifies the areas that remain under consideration as analysis continues.”
She added that BOEM is talking to the Defense Department “to ensure that offshore energy activities and military operations can coexist.”
