Roy Cooper says state will sue if kept in federal offshore drilling plan
WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH, N.C. — Give North Carolina the same exemption from potential offshore oil exploration recently extended to Florida or face a lawsuit, Gov. Roy Cooper said was his message to the Trump administration in an appearance Monday in Wrightsville Beach.
“No way. Not off our coast,” Cooper said of oil exploration. “As governor, I know what’s at stake here. I’m going to fight to keep our coast safe.
“Offshore drilling is just a bad deal for our state.”
On Jan. 9, following a meeting with Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke abruptly tweeted that he was “removing Florida from consideration for any new oil and gas platforms.” That prompted governors of other states, including North Carolina, to ask for the same ruling.
“The reason? Coastal tourism along with local and state opposition,” Cooper said. “So, last week, I called Secretary Zinke to ask, ‘What about us?’”
During a press conference after his short speech, Cooper said he didn’t want to speculate on whether Zinke’s ruling was partisan in nature, saying Zinke’s stated reasons for Florida’s exemption were enough for him.
“They have already admitted that offshore drilling is a threat to coastal tourism,” he said. “They’ve already admitted that local opposition matters. We have coastal tourism. We have local and state opposition. We want to be exempt, too.”
Cooper said that, if North Carolina isn’t given the same consideration as Florida, “we will sue the federal government.”
But whether Florida is actually exempt is a confused matter. Late last week, officials in the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which manages offshore oil leases, said Florida was still part of the bureau’s analysis and that Zinke’s announcement was not a formal action.
New Hanover also says ‘no’
Earlier Monday, New Hanover County became the latest to adopt a resolution opposing offshore drilling. The resolution wasn’t originally part of the agenda but was hurriedly added after board Chairman Woody White on Jan. 4 tweeted his opposition to offshore drilling.
“The potential damage to North Carolina’s beaches and coastline, should a spill occur, would be devastating to our natural resources and irrevocably harm New Hanover County’s tourism-based economy,” White said, reading from the resolution.
The resolution — which county commissioner Rob Zapple said during the meeting was something he wanted to see adopted in 2015, “but the timing wasn’t right” — was passed just hours before Cooper appeared in Wrightsville Beach.
N.C. Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, also spoke in favor of the resolution, saying his parents had a cottage at Wrightsville Beach “so we could spend the warm summer months enjoying the beach.”
“It was there that I came to love our pristine beaches,” he said. Davis, a former commissioner himself, said the condition of the beaches “are under the threat of offshore drilling” and urged the board to adopt its resolution.
Mike Giles, a coastal advocate for the N.C. Coastal Federation, said Cooper’s appearance at the coast Monday gives him optimism that North Carolina will not be included in offshore oil leases.
“I think as you ride around, coastal people are all talking about” offshore oil, he said. “They don’t want it.”
Tim Buckland is a reporter for the Wilmington (N.C.) StarNews.