President Joe Biden is making a sweeping move to ban all future offshore oil and natural gas drilling on America’s East and West coasts, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s North 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. It is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement announcing the decision.
President Joe Biden speaks on the death of former U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100, at the Company House Hotel, in Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Dec. 29, 2024.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters
According to the White House fact sheet, this move blocks drilling in more than 625 million acres of U.S. oceans.
The fact sheet adds that Biden took those actions under “Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act” and adds that his actions “have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing” in the designated areas.
“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,” Biden added.
Gas is flared off from a flame boom aboard DCOR LLC’s Edith offshore oil and gas platform in the Beta Field off the coast of Long Beach, California, U.S., on Tuesday, May 18, 2010. Senators from California, Oregon and Washington introduced legislation last week to ban offshore oil drilling off the West Coast amid mounting concern about the BP Deepwater Horizon rig spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico. Photographer: Tim Rue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg via Getty Images
The fact sheet says that after this sweeping move, “Biden will have conserved more lands and waters than any other U.S. president in history.”
The action comes as President-elect Donald Trump continually made his “drill, baby, drill” promise on the campaign trail, vowing to unlock America’s drilling capabilities in an effort to lower energy costs for Americans.
But the law Biden used, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, was written so a presidential action under its authority is permanent, differing from other executive actions. If the Trump administration were to attempt to reverse Biden’s actions, Congress would likely have to change the law.
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
Source: abc news
