Trump Opens Billions of Ocean Acres to Offshore Drilling

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THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump plans to open billions of acres to offshore drilling

Preparing for an offshore drilling bonanza. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The Trump administration announced plans Thursday to open nearly 1.3 billion acres of waters on the Americans coasts to oil and gas drilling. The Department of the Interior proposed holding as many as 34 lease sales, including six off California and in a remote region of Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never taken place. The New York Times called the plan one of President Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.”

The move comes months after the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rescinded the designation of just 3.5 million acres of federal waters to offshore wind development, as I reported here at the time. The administration went on to halt work on active projects and file lawsuits to try to yank back already-granted permits for offshore turbines. Even the oil industry came to wind developers’ defense, arguing that President Donald Trump was setting a dangerous precedent, as I wrote here last month.

2. House advances permitting reform bill

That’s what makes a particular measure in the permitting reform bill that passed out of the House Committee on Natural Resources last night so eye catching. The bipartisan SPEED Act — which Heatmap’s Jael Holzman described as doing “stuff energy developers of all stripes say they want” including “time-clocks on when federal permits are issued and deadlines on when court challenges can be filed” — advanced out of committee on a vote of 25 to 18. Surprisingly, Republicans voted in favor of a bill that included language explicitly saying federal agencies cannot revoke, suspend, alter, or interfere with any already-approved permit of an energy project. Halting the assault on offshore wind has long been a Democratic condition for passing the legislation, though top administration officials have balked at the idea of easing off the wind industry.

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3. Energy Department cuts two major clean-energy offices in reorganization

The Department of Energy unveiled a sweeping internal reorganization that included eliminating two major clean-energy offices. The agency is cutting the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, a new organizational chart the agency released Thursday morning shows. The department is “aligning its operations to restore common sense to energy policy, lower costs for American families and businesses and ensure the responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a statement.

Some of the moves seemed puzzling. When a former agency employee sent me the new org chart yesterday morning, I noticed that the Energy Department had axed its Water Power Technologies Office. The Trump administration has expressed support for hydropower. But the source told me that it will now fall under the new Office of Critical Materials and Energy Innovation, effectively lumping in the oldest type of power plant with mining and cutting-edge energy technology. The Loan Programs Office, the agency’s internal lender, got a rebrand to the Office of Energy Dominance Financing, which Heatmap's Emily Pontecorvo called last month.

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4. Gas exports threaten to spike Americans’ heating bills

Natural gas prices are on track to climb by almost $3.90 per million British thermal units this winter as exports increase and production remains flat, according to the latest forecast from the Energy Information Administration. When, shortly after taking office, the Trump administration revoked a study that warned increasing exports of liquified natural gas risked raising prices at home, Wright dismissed his predecessors’ findings as defying the straightforward logic that increased demand would increase supply. But new production hasn’t matched soaring demand from power plants and heating. And this winter is forecast to be particularly cold. The EIA projected that prices in 2026 will average $4 per million British thermal units, roughly 16% higher than in 2025. That, the federal analysts wrote, was “primarily due to the increased liquified natural gas exports.” LNG exports this year are on track to beat last year by 25%.

5. China starts construction on two more nuclear plants

China’s march toward dominance in atomic energy continues at a steady pace. The country poured the first concrete for two new nuclear power stations, NucNet reported. The start of the new projects put Beijing closer to its ambitious goal to reach 70 gigawatts of installed reactor capacity, up from 55 gigawatts at last count, by the end of this year. China is expected to fall slightly short of the target. But it’s on track to meet the goal by the early part of next year.

Beijing isn’t stopping there. The plants that just started construction are expected to come online in at most five years (an inconceivably swift schedule for a modern U.S. or European nuclear project), and the state-owned China General Nuclear plans to build as many as five more, World Nuclear News noted.

THE KICKER

The California Public Utilities Commission approved two new programs to make in-window heat pumps and 120-volt induction stoves more affordable and available. The programs, led by the agency’s California Market Transformation Administrator, give manufacturers challenges and provide a suite of interventions to spur factories to bring down costs and ramp up production. “We want as many people as possible to have access to zero-emissions appliances to heat and cool their homes and cook their food,” Rebecca Barker, senior associate attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement. “These initiatives will transform the market so anyone can walk into their local home improvement store and find these options readily available.”