Jan 07, 2025 (MENAFN via COMTEX) --
(MENAFN - Yolo Wire) U.S. President Joe Biden has banned offshore %Oil and gas drilling along most of America’s coastline.
Biden’s executive order protects some 625 million acres of ocean along both the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea.
The president is employing an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) that gives the president the power to indefinitely withdraw unleased lands from the outer continental shelf.
The ban is seen as a significant victory for environmental groups that have long argued further drilling is contradictory to the U.S. government’s climate change goals.
It is also viewed an attempt to protect the president’s climate legacy from the energy policies set to be pursued by president-elect Donald Trump when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump campaigned for re-election in 2024 on a promise to let U.S. oil and gas companies “drill, baby, drill.”
Biden’s decision takes the total area of ocean he has protected to 670 million acres — higher than any other president in U.S. history.
The move could frustrate Trump’s plans to gain an economic boost from increased oil and gas production across America.
During his first term in office, Trump tried to overturn previous bans on ocean drilling for oil and gas, but those efforts were struck down in the courts.
This means that it may take an act of Congress to reverse Biden’s ban on oil and gas drilling in U.S. coastal waters.
In announcing the ban, Biden said in a news release that, “We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy… Those are false choices.”
MENAFN06012025007606016353ID1109060773
COMTEX_461622985/2604/2025-01-07T04:32:53
