Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe came out on Thursday against President Donald Trump’s plan to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic Ocean off the state’s coast, the Hill reports.
Trump signed an executive order in April reversing a moratorium on offshore drilling put in place by his predecessor. McAuliffe initially supported offshore drilling, so long as Virginia got a cut of the profits. But now he says its clear such a profit share won’t happen.
“President Trump’s proposal to end the revenue sharing agreement with the Gulf States is a clear indication that we cannot trust the president to give Virginia its fair share of the revenues that would result from offshore exploration,” McAuliffe said in a statement. He also noted that the Trump administration is “actively working to cut funding from the very agencies that would be charged with protecting Virginia’s coastal environment in the event that exploration went forward.”
McAuliffe joins the governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and hundreds of other city, state, and federal officials, in formally opposing the expansion of drilling off their coasts.
