Enlarge / Oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. There are nearly 5,000 functioning oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and 27,000 abandoned wells. (credit: Dave Walsh/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)
This week, New Jersey’s attorney general sued the US Department of the Interior (DOI) for failing to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking more information about why the DOI exempted Florida from offshore oil drilling lease auctions but not any other state.
The drama started earlier this year when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke moved to open more than 90 percent of federal offshore land to lease by oil and gas companies for oil drilling. State waters extend three miles offshore, at which point federal control over the waters and sea bed underneath it begin. This means that states don’t always have a lot of control over whether there’s an offshore oil drilling rig 3.1 miles offshore and beyond.
But some states contend that they should have more say in whether the federal government leases out its waters to offshore oil drilling because the states bear the economic brunt of any oil spills that happen. (The Deepwater Horizon rig, for example, was 41 miles off the coast of Louisiana.) For that reason, Democratic and Republican governors alike, from 10 of the states near newly opened federal waters, have opposed the Trump administration’s efforts to open up their offshore areas.
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