The White House announced Monday that President Joe Biden would ban new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline.
The order will protect some 625 million hectares of ocean along the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea from “environmental and economic risks and damage,” the White House said in a statement announcing the decision announced.
It is also an attempt to protect Biden’s climate legacy from the energy policies that will be pursued by Republicans and the energy policies of newly elected President Donald Trump.
Biden will use an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which gives the president the power to indefinitely withdraw unleased lands from the outer continental shelf.
While former President Barack Obama used the law in 2016 to protect 119 million acres of land, Monday’s move is much bigger and will be seen as a major victory for environmental groups who have long argued that further drilling contradicts the stated purpose of the US government to cut spending. emissions that lead to climate change.
Last year was the hottest year in history.
“Drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It’s not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement.
“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we transition to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” he added.
Biden’s decision brings the total area of ocean he has protected to 670 million hectares – more than any other president – and could frustrate Trump’s plans to get an economic boost by doubling the increased oil and gas production that he oversaw during his first administration.
President Biden at the White House on January 5, 2025.
During his first administration, Trump used an executive order to attempt to reverse Obama’s decision to invoke OCSLA during the final month of his presidency, but that decision was overturned by the court. That means it may take an act of Congress to reverse Monday’s announcement by the Biden administration.
The week after winning the 2024 presidential election, Trump named Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as his pick to lead the Department of Energy.
Wright has previously written about the need for more fossil fuel production to lift people out of poverty, and in a video posted to his LinkedIn profile in 2023, he said that “there is no climate crisis, and we are not in the middle nor in an energy transition.”
While many of the protected areas have not attracted much interest from the energy sector, the Biden administration also said the ban would cover the entire U.S. eastern Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Both areas have been of interest to oil companies, although Trump himself took steps to prevent drilling in those areas during his first administration.
In 2020, Trump issued a moratorium on drilling in areas where oil and gas exploration faced widespread opposition from Republicans in Florida and voters in North Carolina.
In many of the areas protected by Monday’s announcement, Biden said, “development that would do little or nothing to meet the nation’s energy needs.”
Reacting to the news, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement that “President Biden’s actions today are part of our work in this administration to make bold and lasting changes that reduce the impact of oil and gas drilling on coastlines of our country. ”
“Today, the President is taking action that reflects what states, tribes, and local communities have shared with us: a strong and overwhelming need to support resilient oceans and coastlines by protecting them from unnecessary oil and gas development,” she added.
Citing lessons learned from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill – when 134 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico – Biden said that “we don’t have to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our oceans healthy. , our coastlines are resilient and the food they produce safe and energy prices low. Those are false choices.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
