The Trump administration’s draft offshore program, which would hold the first federal oil and gas lease sales off California since 1984, is still on its first of three drafts as its October completion target passes, but the groundwork for the California sales has kept moving.
When Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a new national offshore oil and gas leasing program last November, he set a target: replace the Biden administration’s 2024-2029 program with a new one “by October 2026.”
October is nearly over, and the program is still on its first of three drafts. But the parts of it that matter most to California, six proposed lease sales off the state’s coast, have kept moving through the federal pipeline, and the fight over them has spread from Washington to county boards up and down the coast.
What Interior has proposed
The draft proposed program, released Nov. 20, 2025, lays out as many as 34 lease sales from 2026 through 2031 across 21 of the country’s 27 offshore planning areas, covering about 1.27 billion acres. Twenty-one of the sales are off Alaska, seven in the Gulf and six in the Pacific, all of them off California.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s schedule would offer the Central and Southern California planning areas in 2027; the Northern, Central and Southern California areas in 2029; and Southern California again in 2030. No federal waters off California have been offered for lease since October 1984, and the Pacific has not been included in any national program since 1987-92.
The administration says the plan is about the long lead times in offshore production. “Offshore oil and gas production does not happen overnight. It takes years of planning, investment, and hard work before barrels reach the market,” Mr. Burgum said in announcing the proposal. He said the plan would ensure “that America’s offshore industry stays strong, our workers stay employed, and our nation remains energy dominant for decades to come.”
Jarrod Agen, executive director of the National Energy Dominance Council, said “putting a real leasing plan back on track” would mean “restoring energy security, protecting American jobs, and strengthening the nation’s ability to lead on energy for decades to come.” Interior notes that offshore production accounts for roughly 15 percent of domestic oil output.
The department has also stressed that the draft is not final. Including a planning area at this stage “does not guarantee that it will be included in the final program or offered for lease,” it said, and each sale would require its own review.
The groundwork for California sales
Even without the second draft, the California-specific steps have advanced. Earlier this year, BOEM issued two calls for information and nominations, the first formal step toward a sale, asking companies to identify areas of interest in the Central and Southern California planning areas; comments closed Feb. 26. The bureau then began a programmatic environmental impact statement covering potential sales in all three California areas. Its public scoping period closed March 30, and BOEM says it is analyzing the comments as it assesses next steps.
The bureau estimates that the California planning areas hold about 9.81 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 13.82 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to a summary by the law firm Liskow & Lewis. Today, all 30 active federal leases off the state are in the Southern California planning area, served by 23 platforms.
The Pacific areas had been withdrawn from future leasing by President Joe Biden in January 2025. President Trump rescinded those withdrawals on his first day back in office, a move environmental groups have challenged in federal court in Alaska.
The House committee’s split
The House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees offshore leasing, is divided along the same lines as the state’s delegation.
Its chairman, Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., has backed the administration’s push for regular offshore sales. When Interior published the long-term Gulf and Cook Inlet sale schedule required by last year’s tax and spending law, he said it was “the next step in solidifying American energy dominance and restoring our energy independence,” adding that “a predictable offshore leasing schedule will secure investment and increase revenues to states and the federal government.”
The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jared Huffman of San Rafael, and Sen. Alex Padilla led a Dec. 4, 2025, letter from 28 California Democrats opposing the California sales. “As we have repeatedly seen in California and other parts of the country, offshore drilling is a ticking time bomb,” they wrote, calling the proposal, combined with cuts to agencies that handle safety and spill response, “not only dangerous but outright reckless.”
The letter cited federal figures putting California’s marine economy at $51.3 billion in GDP and $26.7 billion in wages, and argued that the plan would undermine state laws that prohibit new offshore drilling and ban new leases for oil and gas infrastructure in state waters, which extend three nautical miles from shore.
The counties organize again
Local governments are reviving a tactic from the 1980s. Santa Cruz County has restarted the Local Government Outer Continental Shelf Coordination Program and hired Richard Charter, who ran it from 1980 to 1994, as coordinator. Santa Cruz County and the city of Santa Cruz have each contributed $29,000, and Monterey, Marin, San Mateo and Sonoma counties and the city of Monterey have also paid in, bringing the total to $192,000, New Times San Luis Obispo reported.
San Luis Obispo County joined on a 3-2 vote on Aug. 18, contributing $25,000. Supervisor Bruce Gibson said he had been “increasingly concerned about the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on California’s coastal protections.” Supervisors John Peschong and Heather Moreno voted no, saying they did not support paying taxpayer money to Santa Cruz County.
Mr. Charter said the coalition’s strategy is to discourage bidding by strengthening the more than two dozen local ordinances, known as “California’s Blue Wall,” that restrict onshore support facilities for new offshore drilling. “The whole orientation of the federal program is now aimed at opening new areas that they’ve never been able to open,” he told the paper.
What comes next
Under federal law, the program must go through a second draft, the proposed program, with its own comment period and a draft environmental review, before a final version goes to Congress and the president. Interior has not said when the second proposal will be released.
The House Natural Resources Committee’s majority and Democratic press offices, BOEM, the California Coastal Commission and the Western States Petroleum Association did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
Callum Petrossian covers the House Natural Resources, Energy and Commerce, and Transportation and Infrastructure committees, from power grids and offshore leasing to water projects, highways and disaster aid, for the Inquirer’s Energy & Environment desk. More from Callum Petrossian
