On Friday, the federal agency in charge of offshore oil and gas drilling announced that it will be rewriting its core regulations to replace all references to “Gulf of Mexico” with “Gulf of America.”
The change by the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management is only the latest in a series of actions by federal agencies, and a review of the Federal Register — the official journal of the federal government — shows most agencies have already implemented President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, which instructed the federal government to replace the gulf’s name in official records.
That order also officially renamed Denali to Mount McKinley, the name used by the federal government between 1896 and 2015 for North America’s tallest peak.
In February and March, the domestic names committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names formalized the president’s order and a subsequent one by the U.S. secretary of the Interior about the Gulf of Mexico and Mount McKinley.
At Denali National Park, websites changed the name of North America’s tallest mountain within 10 days; it was listed as Denali on Jan. 28, and by Jan. 30, it was “Mount McKinley.”
The printed brochures took longer but are now updated.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which handles ocean mapping, changed the gulf’s name on ocean charts, and the U.S. Geological Survey changed the name in the Geographic Names Information System, the federal government’s core database. Even the agency in charge of the nation’s spy satellites altered its records.
As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center has already updated its maps, and the U.S. Coast Guard changed its regulations in March.
Other agencies, including the BOEM, have taken longer to act. In late May, the federal agency in charge of pipeline safety changed its regulations.
More actions are coming, according to notices published in the Federal Register, the official daily journal of the federal government.
In August, the Federal Aviation Administration will change parts of its aviation maps to account for the new names.
Additional changes are expected in the coming months from other agencies and from states, which have been slower to act on the new names.
• James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. This article originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.
