Chair Castor Urges Senate To Keep Offshore Drilling Ban In Build Back Better Act

WASHINGTON - Chair Kathy Castor of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released the following statement on Thursday, after news that the U.S. Senate is considering removing the ban on offshore drilling off the Atlantic, Pacific and the eastern Gulf of Mexico from their version of the Build Back Better Act:

"I urge my colleagues in the Senate from both sides of the aisle to restore the House-passed permanent ban on unnecessary and harmful offshore drilling," said Chair Castor. "Make no mistake: oil and gas drilling off our coasts is a direct economic threat to the state of Florida and to coastal communities across the United States. My constituents in Tampa Bay know this all too well. After the catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, our local economy took a huge hit - and it took billions of dollars to clean up the mess and help our small businesses recover. That's why the House-passed version of the Build Back Better Act included my bipartisan Florida Coastal Protection Act, which would permanently ban drilling off the Florida coast and prevent these terrible disasters from ever happening again. 

"We have a moral obligation to urgently reduce our carbon dioxide and methane pollution, which are fueling catastrophic extreme weather events across the country. That's why we must permanently ban drilling on our coasts and address the pollution spewed by hundreds of abandoned, leaky rigs and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I urge my colleagues in the Senate to reconsider."
 

###
 

Background:

• In June of 2020, the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis Democrats released the majority staff report Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and Just America. This report provides a roadmap for Congress—a Climate Crisis Action Plan—to build a prosperous, clean energy economy that values workers, advances environmental justice, and is prepared to meet the challenges of the climate crisis.
• House Democrats have already passed more than 250 of the recommendations in the Climate Crisis Action Plan, and have successfully worked to turn over 100 of them into law.