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oil spills
Green Group Warns Trump's Offshore Drilling Plan Risks 4,000+ Additional Oil Spills
The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that Trump's new five-year offshore drilling plan could release over 12 million gallons of oil into ocean waters around the US.
Jan 06, 2026
President Donald Trump's plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling could result in thousands of additional oil spills and put dozens of endangered species at increased risk, according to a new analysis by a leading conservation group.
In November, the US Department of the Interior published a draft plan to expand drilling over the next five years, replacing a more restrictive one drawn up by the Biden administration.
The proposal includes as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales across American coasts, covering approximately 1.27 billion acres, far more than previous administrations have offered.
The new plan opens up drilling in 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of Mexico, and six along the Pacific Coast. These are in addition to 36 new offshore oil lease sales mandated in last year's Republican budget reconciliation package.
An analysis published Tuesday by the Center for Biological Diversity found that the increase in drilling could lead to an additional 4,232 oil spills and dump an extra 12.1 million gallons of oil into ocean waters.
The calculation is based on average spill rates from pipelines and platforms from 1974 to 2015. However, it does not even include catastrophic events like the 2010 BP oil spill, which resulted in more than 210 million gallons of oil being released into the Gulf of Mexico.
"Trump’s ridiculously reckless drilling plan could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast,” said Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group estimates, based on prior figures, that 2,627 of those spills—more than half—will occur in the Gulf of Mexico, releasing about 7.5 million gallons of oil into the ecosystem.
The Gulf is home to several endangered species likely to be affected by the new drilling. The black-capped petrel's population is in rapid decline as pollution has destroyed its food source. Rice's whale has only about 50 individuals remaining and lost 20% of its population in the BP spill. Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which has experienced a population rebound after dropping to near extinction, would be imperiled by another spill.
In the Pacific, sea otters are uniquely vulnerable to oil spills because they coat their fur, which acts as insulation against the cold. Killer and blue whales, whose populations have been nearly wiped out, would also be in danger.
Meanwhile, Arctic animals already affected by climate change—like bowhead whales, Pacific walruses, and beluga whales—all face potential further damage to their habitats due to drilling off the coast of Alaska.
“Nobody wants beaches and marine life coated in crude, but that’ll be our future if Trump’s scheme goes forward," Monsell said. "Every new drilling project signs us up for decades of problems, and our wildlife and coastal economies will suffer the most.”
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Trump and Congress Just Gifted Big Oil a Multimillion Dollar Stocking Stuffer
By allowing an industry tax toward oil spill prevention and response to expire, GOP leaders are exposing the nation to the unnecessary risk of continued oil pollution, including major disasters like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon.
Dec 19, 2025
As Congress recesses this week without reauthorizing the Affordable Care Act subsidies needed by millions of Americans, it also quietly gave the oil industry a multimillion dollar tax break by allowing the 9 cent-per-barrel oil tax (on domestic and imported oil) into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to expire as well on December 31. The OSLTF, administered by the Coast Guard’s National Pollution Funds Center, is the nation’s central financial instrument for oil spill prevention and response, earning about $500 million per year from the nominal excise oil tax—about 0.1% of annual US oil industry revenue.
In our current political climate prioritizing industry over public interest, many feared that Congress and the Trump administration might simply allow the oil spill tax to expire, as a “Return on Investment” for industry contributions made to their political campaigns. Congress did just that. As they increase costs for millions of Americans, the Republican congress and administration are decreasing costs for some of the richest companies in the world.
For decades, Congress and the administration have remained stubbornly resistant to using the OSLTF to fund necessary oil spill prevention measures across the nation, and as tax revenue and spill damage recoveries continued to be collected, the fund balance has now grown to over $10 billion. Since the fund’s use for a single oil spill is limited to $1.5 billion, we have long proposed that a substantial portion of the remaining balance be used to better prevent oil pollution across the nation. Instead of just leaving all of this money in the bank, it should be put to work, while saving enough (perhaps $5 billion) for conventional oil spill response activities.
A transcendent lesson learned in all major oil spills around the world is that once oil is spilled, there is precious little that can be done to limit environmental damage. Historically, an average of 2-6% of total spill volume is actually recovered in major marine oil spills (Deepwater Horizon was about 4%, Exxon Valdez about 8%). These multibillion dollar spill responses may look good for oil company and government public relations, but they are virtually irrelevant in limiting environmental harm. Prevention is key to environmental protection.
As a fundamental cause of the 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disasters was inadequate government oversight, expanding drilling while cutting oversight is as reckless as it gets.
Spill prevention measures across the nation in need of more funding include enhanced Vessel Traffic Systems, escort-rescue tugs to prevent groundings and collisions of tankers and cargo ships in dangerous passages (e.g. the March 2024 cargo ship Dali collision with the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore Harbor), enhanced inspection of oil and liquefied natural gas tankers, and so on. However, the federal government has resisted using the fund for such preventive measures.
With the OSLTF tax expiration approaching this summer, we proposed that the fund’s 9 cent-per-barrel tax on domestic and imported crude oil (less than 0.2% of today’s crude oil price, or less than one cent-per-gallon of gasoline) be fully reauthorized, and that the fund’s use for many oil spill prevention measures be significantly expanded. Congress and the administration were unresponsive, raising suspicions that they intended to allow the oil tax to expire, which they just did.
One proposed use for the fund is to safely cap and decommission the millions of derelict, abandoned oil and gas wells across the nation, both onshore and offshore. Regarding these orphaned and abandoned oil wells, a 2021 scientific paper found that, of the 4,700,000 historic and active oil and gas wells across the US, only 1 in 3 (1,500,000) are considered safely plugged. Leakage from improperly abandoned oil and gas wells causes groundwater and air pollution, ecological damage, risk of explosions, and damage to human health.
Costs for well decommissioning and abandonment have been estimated to range from $10,000-$50,000 to plug old, shallow wells; $300,000 for newer, deeper wells; and up to $1 million for more complex wells. In a 2015 study, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated the cost to securely decommission the thousands of deepwater oil and gas wells in the US Gulf of Mexico (two-thirds of the 5,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico are in deep water) at $38.2 billion. The GAO study reported that, of the $38.2 billion in decommissioning liabilities, $2.3 billion were not covered by existing financial assurances; and of the remaining $35.9 billion in decommissioning liabilities, the federal government held $2.9 billion in bonds and other assurances, while waiving the remaining $33 billion for companies that passed a “financial strength test.” The GAO expressed concern about such extensive waivers of financial assurances, as this exposes the federal government to substantial future costs.
Clearly, abandoned oil and gas wells present enormous oil pollution risk, public safety hazard, and substantial government financial liability that we as a nation have ignored for too long. We have to do better, and using the OSLTF for this purpose would clearly be in the national interest.
Further, while the Trump administration recently proposed opening virtually the entire US Outer Continental Shelf (more than 1 billion acres of the nation's offshore waters) to oil and gas drilling, it slashed the budget for the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) by roughly 35%, from $220 million to just $143 million. As a fundamental cause of the 1989 Exxon Valdez and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disasters was inadequate government oversight, expanding drilling while cutting oversight is as reckless as it gets. Thus, an important use for the federal oil spill fund should be to expand BSEE's budget, as it is largely focused on preventing catastrophic oil spills from the nation's several thousand offshore oil rigs. There are countless other cost-effective pollution prevention measures as well that need OSLTF funding.
But with Congress and the Trump administration ignoring these real funding needs, and allowing the oil tax to expire (as a gift to their oil industry contributors), the nation remains exposed to unnecessary risk of continued oil pollution, including small chronic releases, as well as major disasters like the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon. So much for “government efficiency.” Hopefully Congress will come to its senses in 2026, and fix what it just broke.
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What’s Really Behind the GOP Drive to ‘Save the Whales’ From Offshore Wind?
Think tanks funded by ultra-conservative donors and fossil fuel companies coopted a coalition of “grassroots” opposition organizations to stop the development of clean energy, despite the fact that oil and gas are the true threats to ocean life.
Jun 29, 2024
As a communications director for an environmental nonprofit, much of my job boils down to separating fact from fiction and disseminating the former to the public. That’s why in June, National Ocean Month, at the top of my to-do list has been disentangling a convoluted narrative touted by Republican party officials. They claim offshore wind energy is threatening marine wildlife, begging the question, “Have Trump and his allies turned into unlikely environmental champions sporting ‘Save the Whales’ placards? Or is something more suspect lurking beneath the surface?”
Republicans have run with the myth that offshore wind energy development endangers whales drawing from vague theories about noise and electrical generation and the construction of turbines. This myth has stopped multiple wind projects in their tracks in New York and New Jersey. It has been the fodder of countless viral media moments. And most recently, it has propelled a lawsuit against a Biden administration wind project off the coast of Virginia. Despite the fact that scientists and experts say there is absolutely no evidence linking wind development to whale endangerment, this messaging spin has proliferated.
So how—and why—did the GOP successfully promulgate this false narrative without any scientific backing? Like all successful propagandists, they didn’t act alone. Think tanks funded by ultra-conservative donors and fossil fuel companies coopted a coalition of “grassroots” opposition organizations to stop the development of clean energy. The fossil fuel industry has weaponized its cronies in Congress and “the third sector” to maintain the status quo of oil and gas energy dominance. Where there was blatant climate denial years ago, there were industry-funded politicians parroting Big Oil talking points. And where there is clean energy policy obstruction and interference now, there are the same industry-bought politicians and community “environmentalist” allies with newly outfitted sloganeering.
The fossil fuel industry and its allies will continue to fight to the bloody end for the last drops of oil and the last scraps of profit, and we do not have time to entertain their deceit.
The fact is that investment in renewable energy would actually help whales and other marine species whose habitats are threatened by the effects of the climate crisis. But the richest layer in this ocean of conspiracy is that offshore oil and gas drilling, a major piece of the very industry backing this faux-ecological crusade to save the whales, is a direct threat to a seriously endangered species called Rice’s whale.
With estimates of fewer than 100 individuals in the wild, Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered species in the world and the only baleen whale resident year-round in the Gulf of Mexico. Since its reclassification three years ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has scrambled to protect its habitat and mitigate its declining numbers. In the NMFS’ list of primary threats to the species, the four most severe are “range curtailment from energy exploration and development, exposure to oil spills and spill response, vessel collisions, [and] anthropogenic noise during seismic survey.” For self-identified champions of marine species welfare, the organizations and think tanks behind the right-wing spin campaign about offshore wind’s endangerment of whales have been curiously silent about Big Oil’s offshore drilling operations that comprise every single one of those threats.
It is understandable that fossil fuel industry mythmaking would obfuscate the real ecological stakes in offshore energy development. Rice’s whale is but one environmental victim of the prolific and extensive fossil fuel industry’s oceanic damage.
When Big Oil drills, Big Oil spills. Since the turn of the century, there have been hundreds of oil tanker spills—spills that have released hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean. When Big Oil spills, wildlife populations and communities along the coast suffer. Seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and vegetation can be displaced, injured, or killed at each stage of the drilling process. They are also poisoned by crude oil and hydraulic fluids introduced by the drilling operations, which, once bioaccumulated up the food chain, sicken the people who consume them. Coastal communities also rely on the Gulf, in which offshore oil production accounts for 15% of total U.S. crude oil production, for fishing, boating, recreation, and tourism—to say nothing of the cultural connection they have to the ocean. Big Oil threatens these central facets of coastal life with spills and pollution. Offshore wind does not.
In the narrative battle over energy in the seas, the stakes are high. The fossil fuel industry and its allies will continue to fight to the bloody end for the last drops of oil and the last scraps of profit, and we do not have time to entertain their deceit. As National Ocean Month comes to an end, for the sake of our future, our ocean, and all who rely upon it, the importance of discerning fact from fiction cannot be lost on us.
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