The new US-Canadian environmental agreement is aimed largely at cutting methane emissions and preserving the Arctic, but it could have repercussions on the other end of the continent.
In the next few weeks, the Obama administration is expected to announce a revised plan for offshore oil and gas exploration that might open much of the Atlantic coast for the first time in decades. A draft released in early 2015 has drawn intense opposition in towns up and down the coast, though governors of most of the affected states have come out in support of the plans.
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But the deal that President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau laid out last Thursday at the White House signals new hurdles for companies interested in the far North. The question the Southeast is now asking is whether that means tougher rules for would-be drillers there — or whether it will only increase pressure on Obama to allow Atlantic exploration.
“Hopefully, it signals that the administration is continuing to think about its legacy when it comes to how some of our fossil fuel resources are used, and whether or not they’re made available moving forward,” said Hamilton Davis, the energy program director for the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League.
Related: Obama and Trudeau Seal a Deal on Cutting Methane Emissions in the US and Canada
In Thursday’s agreement, Washington and Ottawa pledged to work together to achieve the greenhouse gas cuts they offered in December’s Paris climate accords, to boost renewable energy, and protect the fast-thawing Arctic, which is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the globe. From now on, commercial ventures in the region will have to meet “the highest safety and environmental standards,” the White House said.
“This means that going forward, decisions on activities like shipping, commercial fishing, oil and gas exploration, and drilling will depend in part on ensuring commercial activity does not diminish our ability to meet our climate change and Arctic stewardship goals,” US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told reporters Thursday morning.
Jewell said American regulators already consider the potential climate impact of a new drilling project. “But with today’s announcement, the president and the prime minister are raising the bar by committing to the idea that adherence to national and global climate goals will be a key consideration in deciding whether commercial activities move forward,” she added.
The news comes six months after oil major Royal Dutch Shell gave up on years of efforts to drill off Alaska’s frigid Chukchi Sea coast, writing off more than $7 billion in the process. After powering through years of intense public opposition and a disastrous first attempt in 2012, the company’s first wells came up dry.
The environmental activist group Greenpeace, one of the leading voices of the anti-Shell campaign, said Thursday’s announcement means Obama has effectively closed the Arctic to offshore drilling.
“We believe the same principles should apply to drilling off the Atlantic coast,” Greenpeace spokesman Rodrigo Estrada Patiño said. Any oil extracted from off the East Coast would be effectively “unburnable” if the world is to limit climate change to the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, he said.
In January, the Obama administration called for new rules to rein in emissions of methane — a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide— from oil and gas operations. It also halted coal-mining leases on federal lands while the Interior Department reviewed its policies on that score.
“The trend here with the administration’s decisions over the last year suggest to me there’s good chance they’re also rethinking the Atlantic,” Davis said. It would be “fantastic” if the new offshore drilling plan comes out, “And we see that same trend there as well.”
The governors of the four states involved — Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia — have expressed varying support for drilling. A 2015 study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute found that allowing oil exploration off the coasts would inject nearly $200 billion into those states’ economies and create about 280,000 jobs.
But scores of city councils, trade associations, and citizens’ groups have rallied against the proposal for the past year. A 2015 study conducted for the Southern Environmental Law Center found existing industries like tourism, recreation, and fisheries are already far larger than what drilling could provide — and could be jeopardized by a major accident like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. South Carolina’s three coastal congressmen — two Republicans and a Democrat — have come out against drilling, and more than 100 cities up and down the coast have passed resolutions of opposition.
Thursday’s announcement was encouraging, “because it means the administration has been taking a hard look at new science,” said Alice Keyes, vice president for coastal conservation at the coastal advocacy group One Hundred Miles.
“We’ve got a $2 billion tourism industry here on the Georgia coast,” Keyes said. “We don’t want to jeopardize that for such a dirty investment.”
Related: Environmental Activism in the US Is Popping Up in a Surprising Place
Follow Matt Smith on Twitter: @mattsmithatl
