WASHINGTON _ The Trump administration's long-awaited decision on whether to allow seismic testing for oil and gas beneath the Atlantic Ocean is causing heartburn for the energy industry, which eagerly awaits the fulfillment of President Donald Trump's push to allow offshore drilling in U.S. coastal waters.
Five seismic survey companies want federal permission to shoot loud, pressurized air blasts into the ocean every 10 to 12 seconds around-the-clock for months at a time over 330,000 square miles of ocean from Florida to the Delaware bay, in search of fossil fuel deposits beneath the ocean floor.
If approved, the activity would reverse an Obama-era denial of testing permits in the Atlantic Ocean and represent a major advance of Trump's "America-First Offshore Energy Strategy."
