Padilla, Huffman Denounce Trump Administration’s Plan to Sell Off California’s Pristine Coastline
Draft proposal seeks six California lease sales despite clear legal limits and decades of bipartisan coastal protections
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.-02) released the following statement condemning the Trump Administration’s draft 2027-2032 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. The plan proposes opening vast swaths of previously protected federal waters — including the California coast — to new oil and gas drilling for the first time in over 40 years.
“With this draft plan, Donald Trump and his Administration are trying to destroy one of the most valuable, most protected coastlines in the world and hand it over to the fossil fuel industry.
“They didn’t listen to Californians. They didn’t listen to communities up and down the West Coast. Instead, Trump wants to take a wrecking ball to our communities while trampling over anyone who stands between him and what billionaires demand.
“These lease areas are not only irreplaceable, but allowing drilling in these areas would undermine military readiness and pose risks to national security. But Trump doesn’t care. Californians remember every spill, every dead dolphin and sea otter, every fishing season wrecked by contamination. We built stronger, cleaner, more resilient coastal communities — and a burgeoning $1.7 trillion coastal economy — in spite of all that. And we’re not going to stand by and watch it get destroyed by Trump’s oil and gas pet projects.
“This plan targets California and the whole West Coast because they think we will roll over. They are wrong. We’re going to fight this with everything we have.”
The Trump Administration’s draft 2027 to 2032 Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing plan released on November 20 marks the most aggressive push in decades to open all of the California coast to oil and gas drilling.
The proposal includes six lease sales off California between 2027 and 2030, the first attempt to drill in these waters in more than 40 years. This move directly targets areas President Biden withdrew from future leasing in January 2025, when he protected 625 million acres in the Pacific, Atlantic, Eastern Gulf, and Arctic. Trump tried to wipe out those protections on his first day back in office, repeating the same maneuver a federal court rejected in 2017 when he attempted to undo President Obama’s Arctic and Atlantic withdrawals.
Senator Padilla and Representative Huffman have been leading the charge against offshore oil and gas leases. Last month, Padilla and Huffman led over 100 lawmakers in demanding President Trump and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum immediately cease any plans to open new offshore oil and gas leases in U.S. federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the Arctic Ocean and northern Bering Sea off of Alaska, and in the Eastern Gulf.
On Earth Day, Padilla and Huffman, along with Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Representative Frank Pallone (D-N.J.-06), announced a pair of bills to permanently protect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans from the dangers of fossil fuel drilling. Padilla and Huffman’s West Coast Ocean Protection Act would permanently prohibit new oil and gas leases for offshore drilling off the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. In 2021, Senator Padilla joined West Coast Senators in calling on Senate leadership to include the West Coast Ocean Protection Act in the Senate version of the budget reconciliation bill after an estimated 126,000 gallons of oil spilled off the coast of California.
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