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 625 million acres of ocean along America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea from "environmental and economic risks and harms," the White House said in a statement announcing the move.
It is also an attempt to protect Biden’s climate legacy from the energy policies set to be pursued by Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump.
Biden will use an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president the power to indefinitely withdraw unleased lands from the outer continental shelf.
While President Barack Obama used the act in 2016 to protect 119 million acres of land, Monday’s move is much larger and will be viewed as a significant victory for environmental groups that have long argued further drilling contradicts the U.S. government’s goal of slashing emissions that lead to climate change.
Last year was the hottest in recorded 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 is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement.
“As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren,” he added.
Biden's decision takes the total area of ocean he has protected to 670 million acres — more than any other president — and it could frustrate Trump's plans to get an economic boost from doubling down on the increased oil and gas production he oversaw in his first administration.
During his first administration, Trump used an executive order in an attempt to overturn Obama’s decision to invoke the 1953 law during the final month of his presidency, but the courts struck down that decision. That means it may take an act of Congress to reverse Monday’s announcement by the Biden administration.
The week after he won the 2024 presidential election, Trump named Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright as his pick to lead the Energy Department.
Wright has 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, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.”
While many of the protected areas have not tended to draw much interest from the energy industry, the Biden administration also said the ban would cover the entire U.S. Atlantic coast and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Both areas have been of interest to oil companies, although Trump himself moved 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 drew wide opposition from Republicans in Florida and voters in North Carolina.
In many of the areas protected by Monday’s announcement, Biden said, “development ... would do little, if anything, to meet the nation’s energy needs.”
Citing the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 — when 134 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico — Biden said that “we do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low. Those are false choices.”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement that “President Biden’s actions today are part of our work across this Administration to make bold and enduring changes that recognize the impact of oil and gas drilling on our nation’s coastlines.”
“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.
The announcement got a jubilant reaction from environmental groups.
“These protective policies will ensure safer conditions and more room for prosperity for millions of people living along American coasts, for thousands of businesses that rely on undisturbed oceans, and for vulnerable wildlife,” Drew Caputo, a vice president at Earthjustice, a nonprofit group dedicated to litigating environmental issues, said in a statement.
Joseph Gordon, campaign director of the ocean conservation nonprofit group, said in a statement: “Our coastlines are home to millions of Americans and support billions of dollars of economic activity that depend on a clean coast, abundant wildlife, and thriving fisheries. President Biden’s new protections add to this bipartisan history, including President Trump’s previous withdrawals in the southeastern United States in 2020.”
