Rick Scott and Ashley Moody file bill to shield Eglin Gulf test range from offshore drilling

U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody on Friday, Oct. 2, introduced the Protecting Florida's Offshore Military Readiness Act, a bill aimed at keeping oil and gas activity out of the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range, the vast stretch of water off Florida's coast where the military tests weapons and trains pilots. The Florida Republicans say the measure is needed to prevent interference that could hamper the Department of War's ability to maintain military readiness in the Gulf of America, and it arrives as the Interior Department moves toward finalizing a new five-year offshore leasing program that includes a proposed lease area inside the range.

For Florida, and especially for the Panhandle communities that depend on Eglin Air Force Base and its neighboring installations, the bill is the latest and most direct move in a fight that has united the state's congressional delegation across party lines. It also revives a debate that Floridians have watched for decades: whether the eastern Gulf, long protected by presidential moratoriums, should be opened to energy development.

What the bill would do

According to the senators' announcement and published reports, the legislation would establish a moratorium on oil and gas exploration and production within the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range, known in military shorthand as the EGTTR. Reports describe the range as covering roughly 123,000 square miles of the Gulf, a figure that Florida's congressional delegation also cited in a letter to the White House last year.

The bill, as described in reports, would preserve valid leases already in effect when it becomes law, so it would not unwind existing energy operations. The restrictions would also come with an off switch: they would end if the secretary of war certifies to Congress that the range is no longer of critical use to the military. That structure ties the drilling ban directly to the range's military value rather than to environmental or tourism arguments, a framing that may appeal to colleagues who otherwise support expanded domestic energy production.

Scott framed the bill in national security terms. "Protecting the range means protecting America's military readiness," he said in the senators' release.

Moody emphasized the range's uniqueness. "The Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range is a national military asset that can't be replicated anywhere else in the country, and the work done there directly shapes the lethality of our future military," she said.

Why the range matters to the military

The Gulf Test Range gives the armed forces something increasingly rare in the continental United States: a huge, largely uncluttered expanse of airspace and water where aircraft can fly at high speed, munitions can be fired over long distances and new weapons systems can be evaluated without endangering populated areas. Reports trace the range's establishment to 1983 and describe it as stretching from roughly the area of Hurlburt Field in Okaloosa County toward the southern tip of the Florida peninsula.

Florida's delegation has described the range as the largest multi-domain military training and testing complex in the country. Its value depends on keeping the water and airspace free of obstructions. Drilling rigs, production platforms, support vessels and the helicopter traffic that serves them would introduce fixed structures and moving traffic into an area where the military currently has wide latitude to operate, and defense officials have long warned that such encroachment would force test planners to shrink or reroute missions.

The concern is not new. Over the years, Pentagon assessments and Florida lawmakers have repeatedly argued that oil and gas activity east of the Military Mission Line, a boundary that roughly separates the heavily developed central and western Gulf from the eastern Gulf, would be incompatible with live weapons testing. That argument helped sustain the moratoriums that have kept the eastern Gulf largely closed to new leasing for most of the past two decades.

The Panhandle's stake

The Panhandle is home to a dense cluster of military installations that rely on the range or benefit from its presence. Eglin Air Force Base near Valparaiso and Niceville is the hub, while Hurlburt Field, home to Air Force Special Operations Command, sits just to the west. Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, rebuilt after Hurricane Michael in 2018, and Naval Air Station Pensacola, the cradle of naval aviation, round out a corridor where military payrolls and contracts anchor local economies.

In its December 2025 letter to President Donald Trump, the Florida delegation said Eglin alone supports about 20,000 personnel and generates roughly $11 billion in economic impact each year. Those figures help explain why Panhandle officials treat any threat to the range as a threat to their communities. Defense contractors, housing markets, schools and small businesses in Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Walton, Bay and Escambia counties are tied to the bases.

The region also has a long memory of base-closure rounds, when communities lobbied hard to keep missions in Florida. Local leaders tend to view limits on the range as the kind of change that could, over time, make it harder for the bases to win new missions or keep existing ones.

The leasing plan that set off the fight

The bill responds to the Interior Department's draft proposed 2026-2031 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, released in November 2025. The draft lays out 34 potential lease sales across federal waters: 21 off Alaska, seven in the Gulf and six along the Pacific coast. It also created a new planning area carved from what had been the Eastern Gulf planning area off Florida, and a proposed eastern Gulf lease area in that plan falls within the Eglin range.

The draft is the first of three stages in the federal process for adopting a five-year program. A public comment period on the draft closed in January, and the Interior Department has said it aims to finalize the program around October 2026, which gives the Florida senators' bill an obvious sense of urgency.

The plan marks a sharp departure from the bipartisan practice of the past two decades. Presidents George W. Bush, Trump during his first term and Joe Biden each placed moratoriums on leasing in the eastern Gulf. Trump's 2020 action, taken shortly before that year's election, was widely seen as a nod to Florida voters and extended protections through mid-2032. The new draft program would put the region back on the table for at least part of those waters.

A rare bipartisan front in Florida

Opposition to eastern Gulf drilling is one of the few issues that reliably unites Florida's politicians. In December 2025, Scott and Moody led all of Florida's members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, in a letter to Trump urging the administration to change course on the draft plan. The letter argued that drilling in the eastern Gulf could damage the state's environment, threaten its tourism economy and encroach on the military test range, and it said the plan would break with Trump's own earlier moratorium.

That letter was notable because it put Florida Republicans at odds with an administration they otherwise strongly support, and with a broader energy dominance agenda that calls for expanding domestic oil and gas production. The new bill takes that position a step further by seeking to write protections into law rather than relying on executive decisions that can be reversed by the next president.

Previous attempts to permanently ban drilling off Florida's Gulf coast through legislation have drawn support from Florida lawmakers in both parties but have struggled to advance in Congress, where members from energy-producing states have resisted broad, permanent restrictions. By tying the moratorium specifically to the military range and giving the Pentagon a way to lift it, the new bill appears designed to clear some of those objections.

Beaches, tourism and the memory of Deepwater Horizon

Although the bill is framed around military readiness, the political energy behind it in Florida comes from more than defense concerns. The Panhandle's sugar-white beaches, from Pensacola Beach to Destin, Panama City Beach and the quieter stretches of Walton County's scenic Highway 30A, draw millions of visitors each year and support a large share of local jobs.

Many residents still remember the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, when an explosion on a BP-leased drilling rig off Louisiana killed 11 workers and unleashed one of the largest marine oil spills in history. Tar balls and oil reached Panhandle beaches that summer, and even areas that saw little oil suffered as tourists canceled trips. Businesses along the coast spent years pursuing claims and rebuilding their reputations.

That experience hardened opposition to drilling across Florida's political spectrum. Fishing interests, environmental groups, tourism boards and coastal local governments have consistently argued that the risk of a spill in the eastern Gulf, with currents that can carry oil toward Florida's coast, outweighs the potential economic benefits of new leasing.

What supporters of drilling argue

The administration and energy industry groups have described the new leasing program as a historic opportunity to boost domestic production, lower energy costs and strengthen national security by reducing reliance on foreign supplies. Industry groups praised the draft program when it was released, arguing that predictable access to federal offshore acreage is essential for long-term investment.

Supporters of expanded leasing also note that the central and western Gulf already host extensive oil and gas infrastructure that coexists with military operations in other areas. They contend that careful planning can reduce conflicts. Florida lawmakers and defense advocates counter that the eastern Gulf range is different because of the scale and type of testing done there, which often requires clear airspace and water over long distances.

The Interior Department has not publicly detailed how it would address military concerns specific to the Eglin range in a final program. Federal law requires the department to weigh a range of factors, including national security, in deciding which areas to include.

What's next

The bill now goes to committee in the Senate, where its path is uncertain. Standalone measures restricting offshore leasing have historically faced long odds, and supporters will need backing from senators outside Florida, including some who favor expanded production. Floridians should watch whether companion legislation is filed in the House, where members of the state's delegation have backed similar efforts before, and whether lawmakers try to attach the language to must-pass legislation such as the annual defense authorization bill.

The more immediate deadline is administrative. With the Interior Department aiming to finalize its 2026-2031 program around October, the key question is whether the final version keeps, shrinks or removes the proposed lease area within the Eglin range. A decision to drop or scale back that area would ease the pressure on Congress to act, while keeping it would likely intensify Florida's push.

Panhandle residents, base communities and coastal businesses will also be watching for any statements from the Department of War about how leasing would affect operations on the range. The bill's reliance on a secretary of war certification means the Pentagon's view will carry heavy weight in any final outcome, both in Congress and within the administration.