Trump's offshore oil ambitions sinking

A clumsy roll-out has imperiled a plan to open nearly all of America's waters to drilling

"After talking with @FLGovScott, I am removing #Florida from the draft offshore plan," the US interior secretary Ryan Zinke tweeted on 9 January. It's a tweet he and the Trump administration could come to regret. The announcement came after a meeting with Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott in which the latter had lobbied Zinke to remove the state from a recently released draft proposal that would open waters off nearly every inch of America's coastlines to oil and gas drilling. Zinke's quick acquiescence to Scott's request raised protests from nearly every corner. Democrats saw a cheap political stunt. The prospect of offshore drilling is deeply unpopular in Florida, where coastal comm