Wyden Statement on Trump Administration’s Decision to Allow West Coast Drilling
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued the following statement after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced plans to allow oil and gas exploration off the Pacific Coast. The move reverses a decades-long ban that protected the West Coast from oil and gas drilling.
“Just a week after the Trump administration proposed to eliminate critical offshore drilling safety and environmental protections, Zinke now wants to open nearly the entire United States’ coast to drilling. With America more energy secure now than ever, Trump’s fear-mongering and falsehoods about our country’s energy supply reveal a shameless agenda to prop up oil and gas industries at the expense of coastal fishing, recreation economies and the environment,” Wyden said.
“I will never stop fighting to keep in place the widely supported, decades-long ban on oil and gas drilling off the coast of Oregon and all along the West Coast.”
Wyden is a cosponsor of the West Coast Ocean Protection Expansion Act, which would permanently ban offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf of Oregon, Washington and California. He has long been a supporter of the current ban on drilling off the West Coast.
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