The Trump administration is set to unleash its offshore, five-year oil drilling plan within weeks, Reuters reported , quoting an unnamed source in the know. The plan is being prepared amid strong opposition from the local authorities of coastal states. Last year, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed to open up more than 90 percent of the coastal waters in the U.S. outer continental shelf in 47 lease sales that would include areas off the coast of California that were last leased during the 1980s. The U.S. outer continental shelf holds technically recoverable reserves estimated at 550 million barrels of oil and 1.25 trillion cu ft of natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico was made the focus of the 2017-2022 plan because of the consistent interest of oil and gas explorers in the area, the high resource potential, and not least, the extensiveness of production infrastructure, a statement […]