RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina will be included in the 10-year moratorium on offshore drilling that President Donald Trump originally extended only from Florida to South Carolina, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis said in a news release and video announcement Monday.
News of the moratorium came as welcome news to environmentalists who had criticized Trump for not including North Carolina in his original executive order prohibiting offshore drilling leases between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2032.
“If it is true that Sen. Tillis convinced the White House, that is fantastic news,” said Erin Carey, director of coastal programs for the North Carolina Sierra Club.
Tillis said in a video that he spoken to Trump on Monday morning about extending the moratorium to North Carolina. “I’m pleased to announce that the President will be doing just that,” Tillis said. “Our coastal communities and our tourism are vital to our state’s economy, and I’m thankful to President Trump.”
In 2017, Trump announced an aggressive expansion of offshore drilling that would have opened parts of the Atlantic Ocean and offshore Alaska to oil and gas drilling.
But on a trip to Florida this month, he announced the 10-year drilling moratorium for the Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia coasts.
Officials in Virginia and North Carolina questioned whether Trump picked those three states for partisan reasons.
Carey said the timing of Tillis’ announcement is “terribly convenient” since the Republican first-term senator is in a close race for reelection, facing Democrat Cal Cunningham. “He’s never supported our cause,” she said of Tillis.
Cunningham’s campaign released a statement calling Tillis’ position a “flip flop” that was at odds with his previous actions.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has opposed offshore drilling and seismic testing.
At least 44 North Carolina municipalities have opposed offshore drilling, seismic testing, or both, The News & Observer reported.
Many coastal communities, some of them with Republican elected leaders, have opposed offshore drilling for years, fearing that oil spills or the sight of drilling rigs would damage the tourism industry on which those communities depend.
Bob Woodard, Republican chairman of the Dare County board of commissioners, said the board had another resolution opposing offshore drilling and seismic testing on its Monday meeting agenda. Woodard said he got a call from Tillis’s office Monday afternoon, so that’s one item the board wouldn’t need to talk about.
Woodard said he has spoken many times with Tillis’ staff about the county’s opposition to offshore drilling.
“Our board has passed numerous resolutions in opposition to offshore drilling on our coast,” Woodard said. “Our constituents have been opposed to this for numerous years. We’re a tourist-driven economy. We can’t afford that risk.”
Tillis’ first speech on the Senate floor was in favor of allowing drilling off the North Carolina coast, The News & Observer reported.
“Keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, the drilling that we’re talking about in North Carolina off our coast is greater than 30 miles off the coast — far beyond the sight horizon of our beautiful beaches of North Carolina,” Tillis said in the 2015 speech.
Tillis seemed to pull back last year, telling E&E News that he wanted a “science-based, fact-based policy decision.”
Michael Flynn, coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, said they were excited to see Tillis’ press release about the moratorium, and hope that it turns into a permanent ban on drilling along the Atlantic Coast.
Flynn didn’t know whether constituent opposition to drilling or the upcoming election changed Tillis’s mind. “But even President Trump’s first announcement of this moratorium was a 180-degree shift plus some,” Flynn said. “It’s an outcome we’re supportive of.”
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