Environmentalists emboldened by President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline are now trying to convince the administration to close a door it opened last year to allow oil drilling off the Atlantic coast. Activists on Wednesday delivered 2 million petitions to the White House opposing the proposed sale of drilling rights from Virginia to South Carolina. More than 100 cities and counties across the East Coast have passed resolutions opposing oil exploration and related activities off their coasts and environmentalists have enlisted at least 100 members of Congress. The action comes as the Interior Department works on a plan to govern offshore oil lease sales from mid-2017 to mid-2022. An initial draft, published last January, penciled in one sale of south Atlantic acreage, along with three auctions of oil leases near Alaska and 10 in the Gulf of Mexico. That draft foreclosed auctions of territory along the […]