This week marks the 13th memorial of the BP Deepwater Horizon (April 20, 2010) disaster. The spill lasted 87 days, killing 11 workers, hundreds of thousands of animals, and irreparably damaging coastal wetlands. Today, offshore drilling remains a threat to Florida’s economy.
On Sunday, April 16, 2023, 17 organizations joined together to call on Gov. Ron DeSantis to take a stand against new leasing in the federal government’s offshore drilling plan and to protect Florida’s economy and way of life. The coalition ran full-page ads in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Tallahassee Democrat newspapers.
Support for protecting Florida from offshore drilling is bipartisan and strong in Florida. In 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 9, which added a ban on offshore drilling in state waters to the state’s constitution, by almost 70%. Florida is on the frontline of the climate crisis and, according to a previous Oceana report, preventing new leasing would have the equivalent climate benefit of taking every car off the road for the next 15 years.
