As Florida Congressional reps unite against Gulf drilling, state poised to OK Panhandle, Everglades oil exploration

Focus on the Legislature

By John Haughey | The Center Square

Florida’s Congressional delegation remains in near-unanimous opposition to lifting the federal moratorium on off-shore oil drilling, but Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is warning supporters the state is “about to allow oil drilling in the Everglades and Apalachicola basin.”

Fried in an email issued through Florida Consumers First, her political action committee, called for donations to finance an anticipated legal challenge should the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approve several “outrageous” on-shore drilling permits.

Exploratory oil drilling “would destroy our tourism industry and erase all of the tax money and efforts put into protecting these areas,” Fried stated in the email appeal, adding such activity would put “precious water, popular beaches, and wildlife at great danger of being tainted by an oil spill.”

Fried, Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, cited a Nov. 30 article by Craig Pittman in the Tampa Bay Times regarding two on-shore drilling permits the DEP appears poised to approve.

Texas-based Cholla Petroleum is asking the DEP to allow it to drill six exploratory wells in the Panhandle’s Calhoun County and a long-pending proposal to drill on Everglades land in Broward County.

The Broward County drilling permit application was submitted by Kanter Real Estate LLC, owned by Miami real estate developer and banker Joseph Kanter, on a 20,000-acre parcel in southwest Broward County for a proposed new town development that never got off the drawing board.

In 2016, Kanter applied for a permit to drill an exploratory well 11,800 feet deep on the land to ascertain if oil could be extracted there. The DEP rejected the application.

If February, a three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal issued a 14-page ruling that the DEP “improperly recast factual findings to reach a desired outcome” in upholding its rejection of Kanter’s drilling permit.

Fried states in the email that since the ruling, the DEP, DeSantis administration and state lawmakers have “done nothing” to stop or challenge drilling permit applications, adding there are “more on the way.”

Kanter’s project is among at least five pending oil drilling permit applications either in the protected Everglades or in nearby areas, including Trend Exploration’s request to drill in the Caracara Prairie Preserve, a Collier County natural area where the mineral rights remain in private hands.

Among exploratory oil proposals, the DEP has approved is Tocala LLC’s request to detonate explosives in 6,000 holes drilled across 110 square miles north of Big Cypress National Preserve.

Burnett Oil Co. has also received a permit to search for oil across another 110 square miles of Big Cypress using trucks to generate vibrations that detect oil.

As Fried raises alarm over potential Everglades and Panhandle drilling, senior Florida U.S. Sen. Mario Rubio last week blocked Katharine MacGregor’s confirmation as U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) deputy secretary until assured she will not lift the oil drilling ban in waters off Florida.

MacGregor, DOI’s deputy chief of staff, is President Donald Trump‘s nominee to assume the position, which oversees oil drilling. She helped craft DOI’s five-year Outer Continental Shelf Oil & Gas Program, which calls for a partial lifting of the moratorium in granting oil and gas leases off Florida’s Gulf Coast of Florida.

The moratorium expires in 2022. Both U.S. senators and 26 of Florida’s 27 congressional representatives want the moratorium extended another five years to 2027.

In September, the House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. Francis Rooney, R-Naples, with 12 Florida reps as co-sponsors, to establish a permanent moratorium in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The only Florida representative to vote against it was Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Gainesville.