WASH­ING­TON — The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on Thurs­day moved to vast­ly ex­pand off­shore drilling from the At­lantic to the Arc­tic oceans with a plan that would open up fed­er­al wa­ters off the Cal­i­for­nia coast for the first time in more than three decades.

The new five-year drilling plan al­so could open new ar­eas of oil and gas ex­plo­ration in ar­eas off the East Coast from Geor­gia to Maine, where drilling has been blocked for decades.

Many law­mak­ers in those states sup­port off­shore drilling, al­though the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors of North Car­oli­na and Vir­ginia op­pose drilling off their state coasts.

In­te­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke an­nounced the plan Thurs­day, say­ing that re­spon­si­ble de­vel­op­ment of off­shore en­er­gy re­sources would boost jobs and eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty while pro­vid­ing bil­lions of dol­lars to fund con­ser­va­tion along U.S. coast­lines.

The five-year plan would open 90 per­cent of the na­tion's off­shore re­serves to de­vel­op­ment by pri­vate com­pa­nies, Zinke said, with 47 leas­es pro­posed off the na­tion's coast­lines be­tween 2019 and 2024. Nine­teen sales would be off the coast of Alas­ka, 12 in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, nine in the At­lantic and sev­en in the Pa­cif­ic, in­clud­ing six off Cal­i­for­nia's coast.

"This is a draft pro­gram," Zinke said in a con­fer­ence call with re­porters. "Noth­ing is fi­nal yet, and our de­part­ment is con­tin­u­ing to en­gage the Amer­i­can peo­ple to get to our fi­nal prod­uct."

In­dus­try groups praised the an­nounce­ment, which would be the most ex­pan­sive off­shore drilling pro­pos­al in decades. The pro­pos­al fol­lows Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump's ex­ec­u­tive or­der in April en­cour­ag­ing more drilling rights in fed­er­al wa­ters, part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion's strat­e­gy to help the U.S. achieve "en­er­gy dom­i­nance" in the glob­al mar­ket.

"To kick off a na­tion­al dis­cus­sion, you need a na­tion­al plan - some­thing that has been lack­ing the past sev­er­al years," said Ran­dall Luthi, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Ocean In­dus­tries As­so­ci­a­tion. For­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma blocked At­lantic and Pa­cif­ic drilling un­der a five-year plan fi­nal­ized in 2016.

A coali­tion of more than 60 en­vi­ron­men­tal groups de­nounced the plan, say­ing in a joint state­ment that it would im­pose "se­vere and un­ac­cept­able harm" to Amer­i­ca's oceans, coastal economies, pub­lic health and ma­rine life.

"These ocean wa­ters are not Pres­i­dent Trump's per­son­al play­ground. They be­long to all Amer­i­cans and the pub­lic wants them pre­served and pro­tect­ed, not sold off to multi­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies," read the state­ment, which was signed by lead­ers of the Sier­ra Club, Nat­ur­al Re­sources De­fense Coun­cil, League of Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal groups.

"This ex­treme pro­pos­al is a shame­ful give­away" to the oil and gas in­dus­try, which sup­port­ed Trump in the elec­tion cam­paign, the groups said.

The pro­pos­al comes less than a week af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­posed to rewrite or kill rules on off­shore oil and gas drilling im­posed af­ter the dead­ly 2010 rig ex­plo­sion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. (AP)