By Jacob Fischler, States Newsroom
With just two weeks left in his presidency, Joe Biden will prohibit future oil and gas drilling off the entire East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the remaining portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
Biden will sign two memoranda Monday to permanently ban offshore drilling over more than 625 million acres of ocean to advance his commitment to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, a White House statement said.
The orders come at the request of bipartisan state and local leaders in coastal areas, Biden said, and reflect that the paltry fossil fuel resources in those areas would not be worth the risks of environmental, health and economic harms that could result from oil and gas exploration.
“In balancing the many uses and benefits of America’s ocean, it is clear to me that the relatively minimal fossil fuel potential in the areas I am withdrawing do not justify the environmental, public health, and economic risks that would come from new leasing and drilling,” Biden said in the statement.
President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office Jan. 20, criticized Biden throughout last year’s campaign for moves Trump said lowered the country’s energy production. A temporary freeze on oil and gas leases, rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline and other environmental measures taken by the Biden administration were part of what led to increased costs for consumers, Trump argued.
Economists have said that connection is dubious, but Trump is expected to pursue policies to expand oil and gas production.
‘I’ll Unban It’
In a statement Monday morning, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt strongly criticized Biden’s move. “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,” she said.
In a Monday morning radio interview, Trump pledged to roll back the move.
“It’s ridiculous,” he told host Hugh Hewitt. “I’ll unban it immediately. I will unban it. I have the right to unban it immediately.”
It’s unclear, however, if Trump would have the authority to undo Biden’s action on his own.
A similar issue played out in courts during Trump’s first term, but was eventually dismissed after he lost his 2020 reelection bid.
In April 2017, Trump issued an executive order to revoke offshore drilling restrictions his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had placed.
Environmental groups sued and a federal court in Alaska sided against the Trump administration, reasoning that the law governing offshore drilling, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, allows a president to withdraw areas from drilling but does not allow a president to revoke those withdrawals.
The Trump administration appealed in 2019, but the issue was resolved before an appeals decision when Biden took office and reinstituted the Obama withdrawals in 2021. The court dismissed the case as moot without ruling on the merits of presidential authority.
That means the precedent set at the district court level should remain for Trump’s second presidency, Seth Nelson, a spokesperson for the environmental group Evergreen Action, said Monday.
“This precedent suggests that President-elect Trump would face significant legal obstacles in attempting to reverse President Biden’s ban through executive order, requiring an act of Congress instead,” Nelson wrote in an email.
