New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal
TRENTON – News that the federal government would back off its effort to expand off-shore drilling for oil due to a recent legal defeat, prompted New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal to issue a statement Thursday, April 26 calling offshore drilling “bad policy” that’s bad for New Jersey.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said the Interior Department had indefinitely sidelined its plans to allow offshore drilling along the Atlantic, including off New Jersey’s coast. In the interview, Bernhardt claimed that opposition from state officials and adverse decisions blocking other efforts to expand domestic drilling caused him to postpone Interior’s plans to further expand offshore drilling, Grewal said.
In 2017, President Donald Trump ordered the Interior Department to investigate selling drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, and off Alaska and the mid- and south-Atlantic Ocean. On March 29, a judge in Alaska ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority in pushing for leases in Alaska, an area that former President Barack Obama had protected.
According to a report Thursday by Jennifer A. Dloughy of Bloomberg News, unnamed members of the Trump administration think the push for offshore drilling could result in lost votes in the 2020 election. The legal defeat for drilling in the Arctic also “complicated the effort,” she wrote.
“I’ve said from day one that offshore drilling is bad law, bad policy, and bad for New Jersey,” Grewal said in his statement. “I am glad the Interior Department is finally listening and has agreed to indefinitely postpone drilling off New Jersey’s coast.”
Grewal called the decision “a huge win” for the state, its residents and for the coastline.
“This is why we go to court: to protect New Jersey’s interests from the assault coming out of Washington.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Grewal promised to continue the fight in the future.
“…if the federal government tries to bring drilling to New Jersey’s shore ever again, I will fight back just as hard a second time,” he said.
