Biden issues executive order banning offshore drilling in 625 million ocean acres
This story is an update to Biden to ban new oil drilling over vast areas of US Atlantic, Pacific waters.
President Joe Biden has issued an executive action that is designed to permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Analysis from multiple political pundits suggests that the manner of this designation could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.
Specifically, Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of ocean along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
Biden’s order would not affect the central and western parts of the Gulf of Mexico, where most US offshore drilling takes place.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks.”
The action invoked the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law that gives presidents broad authority to withdraw federal waters from future oil and gas leasing and development.
Analysts have noted that the law does not give presidents explicit authority to revoke the action and place federal waters back into development, meaning that President-elect Donald Trump would have to get Congress to change it before he could reverse Biden’s move.
Trump on Monday declared that, after he’s inaugurated on Jan. 20, Biden’s drilling ban will “be changed on day one. I will unban it immediately,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I have the right to unban it.”
Industry trade groups were critical of the executive action. “President Biden’s decision to ban new offshore oil and natural gas development across approximately 625 million acres of US coastal and offshore waters is significant and catastrophic,” Ron Neal, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America Offshore Committee, said in a statement. “It represents a major attack on the oil and natural gas industry.” Neal said the ban would severely limit the industry’s potential for future oil and gas exploration in new areas, hurting the industry’s long-term ability to survive.
The American Petroleum Institute was also critical of Biden’s decision. “American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restrict it,” API CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement. “We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.”
The National Ocean Industries Association called Biden’s decision “a strategic error, driven not by science or voter mandate, but by political motives.” NOIA president Erik Milito said that the move “directly undermines American energy consumers and jeopardizes the vast benefits tied to a thriving domestic energy sector. Even if there’s no immediate interest in drilling in some offshore areas, it’s crucial for the federal government to maintain the flexibility to adapt” to unexpected global events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said. “Blanket bans only serve to transfer energy production and economic opportunities abroad, inadvertently bolstering countries like Russia at the expense of US interests.”
