Biden to Ban New Oil Drilling Over Vast Stretch of US Atlantic, Pacific Waters

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(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden is set to order a ban on new offshore oil and gas development across some 625 million acres of US coastal territory, ruling out the sale of drilling rights in Atlantic and Pacific waters as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

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The move represents a sweeping effort to permanently protect coastal waters — and communities that depend on them — from fossil fuel development and the risk of oil spills. At the same time, Biden is keeping the door open for new oil and natural gas leasing in the central and western portions of the Gulf of Mexico that have been drilled for decades and currently provide about 14% of the country’s production of those fuels, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the decision is not yet public. 

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Biden’s decision, set to be announced on Monday, will further burnish his climate credentials, deepening his record of fostering conservation and zero-emission energy. It builds on a series of last-minute White House moves to safeguard lands and enshrine environmental protections before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. 

White House spokespeople didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment made outside normal business hours.

Unlike other steps Biden has taken to constrain fossil fuel development and the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, this one could have long-lived durability, complicating Trump’s intention of bolstering domestic oil and gas production. 

That’s because Biden’s planned proclamation is rooted in a 72-year-old provision of federal law that gives presidents broad discretion to withdraw US waters from oil leasing without explicitly authorizing revocations. 

Presidents of both parties — including Trump — have invoked the same statute to protect coral reefs, walrus feeding grounds and other American waters from Florida to Alaska. And while presidents have modified decisions by predecessors to exempt areas from oil leasing, courts have never validated a complete reversal.

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Congressional Democrats and environmental groups had lobbied Biden to maximize permanent protections against offshore drilling to safeguard vulnerable coastal communities, protect marine ecosystems from oil spills and fight climate change. Some environmental activists were divided on the best approach, worried that a too-broad declaration could jeopardize a legal tool that’s been used to conserve special marine areas since 1953.

Yet the planned proclamation is simultaneously muscular and strategic — indefinitely protecting some areas that Republican and Democratic politicians have jointly pushed to keep free from drilling without encroaching on long-active territory in the Gulf of Mexico that’s a foundation of US oil and gas production. 

The declaration would not affect drilling and other activity on existing leases. It also keeps a path open for Republican lawmakers to order more central and western Gulf oil lease sales as a way to raise revenue that could offset the cost of extending tax cuts.

Earlier: Trump’s Ready ‘Within Seconds’ to Issue Orders Spurring Drilling

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Environmentalists said Biden’s move ensures that oil companies won’t be able to tap reserves in the eastern Gulf and southern Pacific that have long beckoned industry. They added that the protections respond to growing public interest in limiting offshore oil drilling. 

The president would be delivering an “epic ocean victory” and “contributing to the bipartisan tradition of protecting our coasts” by enshrining the protections, said Joseph Gordon, a campaign director with the environmental group Oceana. 

Oil industry advocates said the planned action limits US energy might, even as the country stands on the cusp of an expected surge in electricity demand from data centers, artificial intelligence and manufacturing. Offshore energy development powers a long chain of economic activity that extends far from US coastlines, they argue, and oil and gas extracted in America yields less planet-warming pollution than elsewhere around the world. 

“Voters made their views clear about the importance of American energy, yet the Biden administration’s misguided approach continues to undermine our nation’s energy advantage,” said Dustin Meyer, senior vice president of policy at the American Petroleum Institute. 

Trump could order a reversal of Biden’s action, just as he tried to revoke President Barack Obama’s withdrawals during his first term in office. But Trump’s earlier attempt was rejected by a federal district court in 2019. 

Also, some of the waters that Biden is targeting overlap with territory near Florida and the southeast US that Trump himself temporarily withdrew from oil and gas leasing during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign. Trump’s withdrawals are otherwise set to expire in 2032. 

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