President Joe Biden on Monday announced an executive action that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.
Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling 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.
“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 law does not give presidents explicit authority to revoke the action and place federal waters back into development, meaning President-elect Donald Trump would have to get Congress to change it before he could reverse Biden’s move.
As Biden’s presidency draws to a close, environmental and climate groups have advocated for him to withdraw areas off the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as other parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — giving the areas permanent protections from future drilling. The move would guard against future oil spills and against adding more planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels to the atmosphere.
“President Biden’s new protections add to this bipartisan history, including President Trump’s previous withdrawals in the southeastern United States in 2020,” said Oceana Campaign Director Joseph Gordon in a statement. “Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations.”
Despite a friendly posture towards the oil and gas industry, Trump also moved to ban offshore drilling while president. After proposing a major expansion in offshore drilling early in his first term, Trump in 2020 extended a ban on future oil drilling in the Eastern Gulf and expanded it to include the Atlantic coasts of three states: Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Still, Trump’s incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, lambasted the decision, writing in a post on X, “This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
The oil industry lashed out against the executive action, too.
“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.
But Biden noted in his statement that protecting coastlines from offshore drilling has bipartisan support.
“From California to Florida, Republican and Democratic Governors, Members of Congress, and coastal communities alike have worked and called for greater protection of our ocean and coastlines from harms that offshore oil and natural gas drilling can bring,” Biden said.
He argued that after the devastating 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the ban he imposed will help protect similar ecological disasters from happening again.
“Every president this century has recognized that some areas of the ocean are just too risky or too sensitive to drill,” Earthjustice vice president of litigation for lands, wildlife and oceans Drew Caputo said in a statement Friday.
Biden’s move was first reported by Bloomberg.
Little economic impact
It’s “not particularly consequential for US exploration and production going forward,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said on Friday. Kloza noted there are plenty of existing offshore rigs pumping oil in the Gulf of Mexico and added that offshore projects typically take 6-8 years to come online.
“I don’t see it as having any real impact on US supply, exports, imports,” Kloza said.
Biden agreed, arguing in his statement that preserving the environment and the coastlines will help local economies flourish.
“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,” Biden said. “Those are false choices.”
Still, the American Petroleum Institute blasted 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.”
Biden will establish the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California, the source said. Native tribes have been actively pushing the administration to protect the land from energy development.
Biden has so far conserved or expanded 10 national monuments as president.