The Trump administration plans to open large areas of the east and west coasts and Alaska to offshore oil drilling, the Houston Chronicle reported on October 21, 2025. The new areas in federal waters are part of the administration’s proposed five-year offshore oil drilling program and would include areas previously withdrawn for environmental protection.
The plan would open lease sales in federal waters off Alaska in 2026, the coasts of southern and central California in 2027, and along the Atlantic Coast in 2028. The plan, however, would exempt Florida, Georgia and South Carolina from offshore drilling. It would also, reportedly, remove the requirement for draft environmental impact statements for the leases.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act allows the president to “from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.” The withdrawal of these lands has recently become a heightened political issue.
Trump has long supported increased offshore drilling and, during his first term in 2017, he issued an executive order stating that it was U.S. policy to encourage energy exploration and production on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). His five-year leasing plan proposed leases in the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic oceans. A court ruling that only Congress, and not the administration, can repeal a ban on drilling in the Arctic Ocean put the broader five-year plan on hold. (see California’s Energy Transition from Oil State to Fossil Free: Introduction Part Three—Offshore Drilling).
In 2022, President Joe Biden withdrew much of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts from drilling in his five-year plan for 2023-2028. In January 2025, Biden issued an executive order banning new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline, including significant areas of the California coast. Upon taking office in 2025, Trump repealed Biden’s executive orders that withdrew the OCS areas from leasing.