Revealed: Interior department official says he is ‘thrilled’ by Trump’s ‘knack for keeping the attention of the media and public focused somewhere else’;the Trump administration has spearheaded an effort in recent years to open undeveloped federal waters to oil and gas drilling.. in the coming weeks, the interior department is planning to officially propose a five-year program for oil and gas leasing in federally-controlled coastal waters, up to 200 nautical miles and more from the shoreline. Already the Trump administration is moving to permit a handful of private companies to start using seismic surveys in the Atlantic, a controversial practice in which air guns shoot loud blasts into ocean waters to identify oil deposits. Some scientific studies suggest that seismic surveys can harm or potentially kill marine creatures, including dolphins, whales, fish and zooplankton."