Despite a pledge by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that federal waters surrounding Florida will be exempted from the Trump administration's offshore drilling expansion plan, the oil industry is launching an advocacy campaign aimed at putting the state back in play.
- Campaign sponsored by American Petroleum Institute
- "Explore the Gulf" argues benefits of offshore drilling outweigh risks
- Overwhelming majority of Floridians oppose offshore drilling
Dubbed 'Explore Offshore,' it seeks to convince Floridians that the economic benefits of offshore drilling outweigh the environmental risks. Energy exploration off Florida's shores could bring the state 56,000 high-paying jobs and boost annual state revenue by $1 billion by 2035, the campaign predicts.
The effort is being sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, which has tapped former Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp to spearhead its message.
"We look forward to working with out local leaders to discuss ways to maintain our state's beauty while at the same time expanding opportunities to keep our nation energy independent," Kottkamp, who now works as a Tallahassee lobbyist, said in rolling out the campaign this week.
Florida was initially included among the states off which the administration is proposing opening federal waters to drilling leases. In January, Zinke traveled to Tallahassee at the behest of Gov. Rick Scott to tell reporters he'd had a change of mind.
"We're going to take the new oil platforms, new oil-gas platforms, off the table, off the Florida coastline," Zinke said while standing alongside Scott at a hastily-arranged press conference.
Within weeks, however, Zinke was all but contradicted by Walter Cruickshank, the interim director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who told a congressional committee Florida wasn't formally removed from the administration's consideration.
"We will be including it for the analysis in the decisions that will come out later this year," Cruickshank testified.
That admission has given the oil industry reason for renewed optimism that offshore drilling near the Sunshine State could come to pass. A key to convincing policymakers in Washington to give the green light, industry leaders have suggested, is strengthening public support in Florida.
But the campaign faces an uphill battle. Polls have consistently shown an overwhelming majority of Floridians oppose offshore drilling, particularly in the wake of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Opposition is so widespread that even Gov. Scott, who once supported offshore drilling, now opposes it as he eyes a challenging bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the fall.
"I think it's very important to continue our efforts to take care of our environment," Scott said at the press conference with Zinke.
And while Scott and Nelson disagree on most issues, the two political opponents are in lockstep on drilling.
"Oil on beaches is a killer of our economy," Nelson said on the Senate floor earlier this year.