A federal congressional bill targeting the reversal of offshore drilling protections, first introduced by U.S. Rep. Higgins (LA) on Jan. 16, had its first hearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources on May 20.

The bill was proposed on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which is interested in opening areas along the California coast to new offshore drilling. The bill includes the U.S. coastline areas and the Gulf of Mexico, which currently have protection from oil drilling under a Jan. 6 Presidential Memorandum signed by President Joe Biden.

Biden’s protection order included approximately 650 million acres of Outer Continental Shelf lands in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Alaska planning areas. The memoranda cited environmental

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