Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis pushes back on federal oil drilling

By Madeline Shannon
The Center Square

California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, along with other state officials and environmental advocates, announced her opposition Tuesday afternoon to President Donald Trump’s efforts to expand oil drilling off the California Coast.

The announcement follows a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior that Kounalakis sent in November. She urged the federal government to remove California from the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling. The letter stated that moving forward with offshore drilling would cause immense harm to the environment and communities of California’s coast.

“This is no place to try to re-open offshore drilling,” Kounalakis said during a news conference in the state Capitol in Sacramento. “The costs are just too high. We are saying no way – not over our efforts to ensure that we keep the Trump administration off of our coastline.”

Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-San Luis Obispo, also sent a letter to the Sable Offshore Corp., alleging that well testing in May of last year signaled that the company was planning to re-start oil drilling operations at the Santa Ynez Unit, a crude oil and natural gas processing facility in the Santa Barbara Channel.

“For the first time in 40 years, we have a president who is pushing to expand oil drilling off our shores,” Addis said during the news conference. “It’s a threat to the industries that sustain us while providing minimal economic benefit for the people, as well as disastrous consequences for public health and vulnerable marine habitats.”

According to Kounalakis’ letter, more than $80 billion in revenue is generated from industries along the coast, including agriculture, tourism and clean technology. Worries abound that the coast along Santa Barbara, which would be the site of most of the new oil drilling leases the federal government proposed, would endanger the area in the same ways as the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill and the 2015 Refugio Spill, the letter stated.

“We know exactly what happens when marine life is destroyed,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, said during the press conference. “Fisheries are shut down. Tourism collapses, and communities lose millions in revenue. This is not speculation, this is history.”

California’s latest move to oppose offshore drilling follows an auction of oil and gas drilling rights in the Gulf of America in December, a major win for the Trump administration to expand energy production off American shores, according to The Center Square’s previous reporting.

The Center Square reported that U.S. oil production rose by 44,000 barrels a day in September 2025, putting the country’s oil production at a record 13.84 million barrels daily.