Stop all drilling off our coasts: A NRDC Petition

The Obama Administration just released a new five-year plan that puts our cherished Atlantic coast off-limits to Big Oil for now, but opens the fragile Arctic to dangerous new oil and gas leasing and drilling. Any drilling in these pristine waters threatens the Arctic and its wildlife with the risk of a devastating oil spill and will drive more climate-wrecking carbon pollution for generations to come.

U.S. Blocks Oil, Gas Drilling in Atlantic Coastal Waters

The Obama administration on Tuesday pulled back its plan to sell new oil and gas leases off the southeast U.S. coast, ceding to environmental concerns and continuing a trend among federal agencies to slow fossil fuels development in an era of climate change. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the decision was made because many coastal communities oppose oil drilling off their shorelines.

Bill Introduced to Cap Old Oil Wells

State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson has just introduced a bill to monitor and cap California’s old, abandoned and leaking oil wells. It is estimated that there are more than 200 of these so-called ‘legacy’ wells in California, the majority located along the Summerland and Ellwood beaches in Santa Barbara County and along the Central Coast.

Estimates of offshore drilling’s benefits exaggerated, report says

A report released Tuesday and prepared for the Southern Environmental Law Center, contends that the potential economic benefits, as cited in a prior report released in 2013 by the American Petroleum Institute, have been exaggerated and don’t take into account the potential loss of jobs in tourism, commercial fishing and other business sectors.