President Joe Biden is poised to issue an executive order permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some U.S. coastal waters, ensuring protections for sensitive maritime areas are hard to revoke during his final weeks in the White House.
Biden is set to issue an executive order within days banning the sale of new drilling rights in parts of the nation’s outer continental shelf, according to people familiar with the effort who asked not to be identified because the decision isn’t public.
The move is sure to complicate President-elect Donald Trump’s ambitions to boost domestic energy production. Unlike other executive actions that can be easily reversed, Biden’s planned proclamation is rooted in a 72-year-old law that gives the White House broad discretion to permanently protect U.S. waters from oil and gas leasing without explicitly empowering presidents to revoke the designations.
The move comes in response to pressure from congressional Democrats and environmental groups that have pressed Biden to “maximize permanent protections” against offshore drilling, arguing that the measure is needed to protect vulnerable coastal communities, shield marine ecosystems from oil spills and combat climate change.
White House and Interior Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Read Also | India’s oil exports fall amid weak global demand, Red Sea turmoil
Biden administration officials have been considering the approach for more than two years, though their efforts have intensified since Trump’s victory, as the outgoing president has sought to enshrine new environmental measures before the end of his term. The new marine protections are in line with Biden’s recent similar moves to protect areas from industrial mining and energy development, including a formal proposal released Monday to thwart the sale of new oil, gas and geothermal leases in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains.
Biden has prioritized conservation while in office, and is already on track to protect more U.S. lands and waters than any other president, even as he faces growing calls to expand that record with new national monuments protecting culturally significant lands in California.
The full scope of Biden’s upcoming marine protections was not clear early Thursday, people familiar with the decision said, but the protected areas include waters considered critical to coastal resilience, and the designation is designed to be targeted. Although congressional Democrats and dozens of environmental groups have urged Biden to make a more comprehensive designation, recent deliberations have focused on parts of the Pacific Ocean near California and the eastern Gulf of Mexico waters off Florida.
Trump’s Challenge
Trump is expected to order the protections repealed, but it’s not clear he will succeed. During his first term, Trump sought to overturn former President Barack Obama’s order to protect more than 125 million acres (50.6 million hectares) of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, which a federal district court rejected in 2019.
Trump himself has already used the same law to block oil and gas leasing in waters near Florida and North Carolina in an effort to woo voters in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Proponents of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which governs offshore oil and gas development, point out that Congress has given presidents broad discretion to permanently protect waters from leasing, but has not explicitly given them the power to reverse those designations.
For decades, presidents have used the provision to preserve walrus feeding grounds, U.S. Arctic waters and other sensitive marine resources, starting with former President Dwight Eisenhower, who in 1960 created the Key Largo Reef Sanctuary, which remains protected today. Although presidents have amended decisions made by their predecessors to exempt areas from oil leasing, courts have never ratified a full rollback — and until Trump, no president has tried to do so.
Biden has already curtailed new offshore oil and gas development opportunities in the short term with less permanent measures. His administration created a program to sell offshore leases that allows for only three auctions over the next five years, a record low. Trump, however, is expected to rewrite that leasing plan using an administrative process that could take at least a year, and Republican lawmakers are exploring ways to expand offshore oil lease sales as a way to raise revenue to offset the cost of extending the tax cuts.
Oil industry advocates have warned against the restrictions, saying the world will need fossil fuels for decades to come — and the U.S. produces them more cleanly than other countries. Nearly a century after it was first drilled, the Gulf of Mexico remains a major source of U.S. oil and gas, providing about 14% of today’s gross domestic product — enough to rank among the world’s 12 largest oil producers if it were a country.
