Obama's offshore drilling plan meets heavy resistance along Atlantic coast

Irate residents in small coastal towns say Obama's plan to open a new fossil fuel frontier would harm endangered marine life - as politicians warn of 'tragedy'

Kure Beach, North Carolina, doesn't seem a likely place to call itself "ground zero" for a key plank of Barack Obama's presidential legacy. The small coastal town's concerns rarely stretch beyond its golden beaches and shucked oysters; but it has found itself at the forefront of a struggle to head off a huge expansion in US oil drilling.

Obama's interior department has proposed prising open the US's Atlantic seabed for oil and gas drilling, ending various congressional and presidential bans that stretch back to 1984. The nascent 2017-2022 plan, to be finalised by the end of the year, would lease out nearly 104m acres of the Atlantic - stretching from Maryland down to Georgia - to petroleum companies.