The Trump administration Thursday announced
a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of
U.S. coastal waters,
including a remote region off Alaska in the high Arctic where drilling has never
before taken place.
The plan is one of President Donald Trump’s
most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the
burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.
It comes at same time that dozens of
countries have been
calling for a phaseout
of oil, gas and coal at the United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil,
an event that the United States is skipping this year.
Under the proposal, made public Thursday,
the Interior Department would hold seven lease sales through 2031 for the Gulf
of Mexico, which Trump calls the Gulf of America. The agency would also auction
drilling rights off the California coast for the first time in roughly four
decades, teeing up ("Teeing
up" (tee sth. up) 主要是指在高爾夫球運動中，將球放在球座（tee）上準備擊打；但在引申義上，它也可以指安排、準備好某件事物（例如會議、計畫）以便稍後進行或執行，表示把事情準備就緒、搭好舞台，就像把高爾夫球放在球座上等待開球一樣。) a clash
(to fight or argue打鬥，打架;發生衝突;爭論，爭辯) with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has promised to block oil drilling
there and has emerged
as one of Trump’s chief adversaries.
In a notable omission (the act
of not including something or someone that should have been included, or
something or someone that has not been included that should have been疏忽，遺漏，疏漏), the plan would not allow
drilling in areas of the Atlantic Ocean off Florida, Republican-led states where
leaders worry about possible oil spills and want to block drilling along their
coasts.
The move reverses the stance taken by the Biden administration,
which held the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in U.S. history, part
of its effort to reduce future fossil fuel production to address climate change.
Trump’s tax and spending law, enacted in
July, mandated (the authority given to an
elected group of people, such as a government, to perform an action or govern a
country授權;委任) at least 36 oil and gas lease sales
in federal waters,
including 30 in the Gulf and six in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. The 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act
(《外大陸棚土地法案》 (Outer Continental
Shelf Lands Act)，簡稱OCS法案，是美國一項重要的聯邦法律，授權總統及內政部管理和開發外大陸棚（即領海以外的聯邦管轄海域）的石油、天然氣、風能等資源，以平衡能源開發、海洋保護及公共利益。) also requires the government to update a plan for offshore leases
every five years.
Oil industry leaders embraced the plan, noting that ("Noting that" (注意到、指出、提到) 是一個片語，用來引出一個觀察、一個事實，或一個需要被注意到的重點，表示發言者已經留意到某件事並將其提出來，常在正式書信或報告中見到，例如 "Noting that
the deadline is near, we must act quickly" (注意到截止日期快到了，我們必須迅速行動))。drilling generates
billions of dollars in annual tax revenue for the federal government as well as
state and local government.
Environmentalists said more drilling would unleash more greenhouse gases. Scientists say the world needs to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible in order to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. (Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman)
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