Democrat members of the House Natural Resources Committee are pushing for a permanent ban on all offshore oil and gas leasing in Atlantic and Pacific federal waters as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Oil and Gas Journal reports, citing a forum that took place on Wednesday. According to people present at the forum, the Democrat legislators were not satisfied with President Donald Trump’s extension of an already existing moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, to be in force from 2022 to 2032. These terms, in the view of the Democratic representatives, were not good enough. Some of those present at the forum expressed suspicions that Trump was politically motivated in the extension of the drilling moratorium as it spans states that could swing the election. What’s more, they noted that […]