Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Co-Chair of the Senate Oceans Caucus, released the following statement on the executive order on offshore oil and gas drilling, which President Trump signed today:
“The only thing this order accomplishes is making a spectacle of putting dirty fossil fuel interests over the fishing, tourism, and other job-creating industries that rely on our oceans. There has never been commercial oil and gas production along the Northeast’s Atlantic coast and there never should be. If this administration tries, we will fight them tooth and nail. Along our southern Atlantic coast, even red state communities rose up against the Obama administration when it tried to green-light drilling; they are sure to do the same to President Trump. Our coastline and special places are too valuable – in Rhode Island and across America – to be sacrificed to fossil fuel company avarice.”
