The Trump administration reportedly wants to turbocharge offshore oil drilling in the U.S., including the coast of California. But it remains to be seen if any new rigs ever get built.
“Dead on arrival,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a short post on X, responding to a Washington Post story that the administration will soon propose six offshore lease sales in California between 2027 and 2030.
If put into place, the move would mark the first new oil and gas leases in federal waters off the coast of California since 1984.
The draft map reportedly also includes expanding offshore drilling in Alaska and along the eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico, renamed the Gulf of America by President Donald Trump via executive order earlier this year.
Officials at the U.S. Department of the Interior have not commented on the Washington Post story.
Oil and gas expert Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said the Trump administration could “absolutely” go forward with plans for new leases in federal waters, despite opposition from state officials.
California has jurisdiction for the first three nautical miles from the shore. But the federal government has control beyond that distance.
Hirs was quick to point out that even if the administration goes forward, the crucial question is whether companies will be willing to move forward on making significant investments in building offshore facilities.
“Just because leasing is permitted doesn’t mean somebody’s going to actually pony up real money for it,” Hirs said, citing expenses such as putting in new pipelines to bring the oil to shore, plus companies weighing whether it’s simply more cost-effective to boost production at oil and gas facilities on land than building new platforms offshore.
“It really comes down to, can they drill a well and extract the oil profitably” from new offshore facilities, Hirs said.
In addition, opposition from California policymakers would almost certainly create roadblocks for producers to access the permits needed to move any new projects forward.
“The Trump administration has yet to formally share with us their plan, but expensive and riskier offshore drilling would put our communities at risk and undermine the economic stability of our coastal economies,” Newsom’s deputy communications director Anthony Martinez said in an email.
David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, a transportation energy consulting company in Irvine, said “it seems unlikely” that oil companies would jump into the California offshore prospects, given state government opposition and the fact that the price of domestic crude is currently below $60 per barrel.
“That’s not enough money to go through all that,” Hackett said.
In an email to the Union-Tribune, a spokesman for Chevron said the oil company had no comment until it sees an official announcement from the Trump administration.
The American Petroleum Institute, the trade group that counts more than 600 members in the oil and gas industry across the U.S., said, “We will be happy to provide reaction once Interior publishes the plan and we have had a chance to review it.”
What’s out there now
There are 23 oil and gas production facilities in federal waters off the coast of California, according to the State Lands Commission, although some of them are no longer profitable to maintain. Twenty-two of those produce oil and gas, while the other is a processing facility.
In state waters, there are three offshore oil platforms — one off of Santa Barbara County and two in the Huntington Beach area. Earlier this year, a facility called Platform Esther off Seal Beach was decommissioned by the Lands Commission.
There’s also a set of artificial islands that produce oil, including the THUMS Islands in San Pedro Bay near Long Beach. The letters came from the names of the four oil companies at the time that formed the project decades ago — Texaco, Humble, Union Oil, Mobil and Shell.
As per a November 2021 report from the California Energy Commission, offshore production from facilities in federal waters equated to just 1% of all crude oil processed in California refineries. Within state waters, the report said offshore facilities accounted for about 6% of total California production from 2011 through 2020.
Trump’s moves
The administration’s reported road map for offshore drilling is part of a larger White House energy plan that includes boosting fossil fuels.
Almost immediately after Inauguration Day in January, Trump issued an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy,” that highlighted multiple directives. One of them specifically mentioned “exploration and production on federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future.”
Concerns about offshore oil facilities hit a peak in 1969 when a blowout at an offshore platform leaked 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil into the Santa Barbara Channel, killing about 3,500 sea birds and marine animals such as dolphins and sea lions.
The disaster provided the flashpoint to what many considered the start of the modern environmental movement in California.
State policymakers have set aggressive climate and clean energy goals, including deriving 100% of California’s electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045, if not sooner.
But there’s anxiety that gasoline prices may rise across the state, amid a pair of pending oil refinery closures.
In 2025, Phillips 66 announced the shuttering of its twin Southern California facilities in Carson and Wilmington by the end of this year. A few months later, Valero said it will shut down its 145,000-barrel-per-day refinery in the Northern California city of Benicia by the end of April 2026.
The Valero and Phillips 66 facilities combine to account for about 18% of the state’s crude oil capacity, leading fuel analysts to worry that the shutdowns will strain supplies of the specially blended gasoline that is sold to California drivers.
Already, some 63.5% of oil supplied to California refineries in 2024 came from foreign sources, led by Iraq, Brazil, Guyana and Ecuador, according to the California Energy Commission. The shuttering of the Valero and Phillips 66 facilities raises concerns that California will rely even more on overseas sources.
At the conclusion of this year’s session of the California Legislature, Newsom signed Senate Bill 237 that included provisions aimed at increasing crude oil production in the state and eased permitting requirements in Kern County, the heart of California’s Oil Patch.
SB 237 also mandated that oil produced offshore must be transferred to refineries by pipelines that use “the best available technology” in order to protect public safety.