Biden bans new offshore oil and gas drilling along much of U.S. coastline
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along much of the U.S. coastline, a move aimed at cementing his environmental and climate legacy as he prepares to leave.
The White House said on Monday that the order would protect 625 million acres of ocean along the U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast of Washington state, Oregon and California, and parts of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers have long known: Drilling along these shores can cause irreversible damage to the places we cherish and is critical to meeting our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said. is unnecessary.
The executive action will not prevent oil and gas companies from obtaining leases in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, which produce nearly 15% of the nation’s oil supply. However, the move is expected to complicate the policy agenda of incoming President Donald Trump, who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and boost U.S. oil production despite already reaching record levels.
The Trump transition team said it was a shameful decision aimed at “political revenge against the American people.”
Biden’s actions are likely to be challenged in court by the oil industry and face resistance from congressional Republicans. But legal experts say overturning the order could be challenging and may require congressional action.
Biden is using powers under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect those areas from drilling — similar to what former President Barack Obama used in 2016 to ban offshore drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic waters. The mechanism is the same.
In 2019, a federal judge ruled that former President Trump’s executive order lifting an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean was unlawful.
During the 2020 campaign, Trump used the same executive authority to extend a moratorium on offshore drilling off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, even as he criticized Biden’s actions.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has been working for more than a decade to ban offshore drilling off the U.S. Atlantic coast, welcomed Biden’s action, saying it builds on the legacy of Presidents Obama and Trump who moved to protect the southern coast from drilling. .
“Crucially, it is extremely difficult to repeal actions such as these that are rooted in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Federal courts have previously said that these protections cannot be revoked by presidential action and would require Congress to change the law to do so,” said Nat Mund, director of federal affairs at SELC.
Consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners said the ban in the eastern Gulf of Mexico would affect about 40% of the undiscovered economically recoverable oil and gas resources on the U.S. outer continental shelf.
“Based on recent jurisprudence, time-limited rollbacks appear irreversible under existing executive branch powers. However, Republican lawmakers may try to use the filibuster-proof Budget Reconciliation Act later this year to reinstate the portions of today’s rollbacks Or all the land,” Clearway said.
