Biden bans offshore oil and gas drilling in part of US ocean territory

Joe Biden, the president of the United States has signed an executive order prohibiting future offshore oil and gas development in certain areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, just days before leaving office, a decision Trump will find difficult to reverse once sworn in.

Biden’s executive action will prohibit new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of U.S. ocean territory. This ban will prevent oil companies from securing leases for new drilling operations along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, as well as parts 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.”

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The action, which invokes 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.

The law does not grant presidents explicit authority to reverse such actions and reopen federal waters for development. This means that the newly elected Donald Trump would need Congress to amend the law before he could overturn Biden’s decision.

Environmental and climate groups have urged him to permanently protect areas in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, along with other parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, from future drilling. Such a move would safeguard these regions from potential oil spills and prevent additional planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels from entering 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.