Biden Withdraws Vast Swaths of U.S. Waters From Oil and Gas Leasing
The ban on East and West Coast drilling is intended to be permanent, but could be reversed by Congress
With just days left to go in office, President Joe Biden has signed a sweeping ban on new offshore lease sales outside of the Gulf of Mexico, using the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) to block oil and gas activity in large swathes of federal waters.
The broad prohibition covers lease planning areas of the West and East Coasts of the lower 48 states, part of the Bering Sea, the Straits of Florida, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. In all, more than 625 million acres of federal seabed are covered. Regions with substantial existing operations or planned projects - the central Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Arctic coast - are not affected by the ban.
"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," said Biden in a statement.
By using the White House's "withdrawal" powers under OCSLA, the Biden administration believes that it is permanently blocking oil and gas activity in the named regions. OCSLA includes language allowing a president to take acreage off the table for lease activity indefinitely; it does not include any explicit language allowing a president to put previously withdrawn acreage back into use, and a 2019 court ruling (during the first Trump administration) found that the president cannot undo an OCSLA withdrawal. An act of Congress or a new court interpretation might be required to reverse Biden's action.
In an interview Monday, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to "unban" the withdrawn areas as soon as he gets into office. "I have the right to unban it immediately," he said.
Trump used OCSLA to permanently withdraw areas off the east coast of Florida from lease activity in 2020.
In a statement Monday, the American Petroleum Institute expressed disappointment at Biden's decision. "We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing," American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said in a statement.
America's offshore vessel industry also voiced strong opposition to the ban. "Such moratoriums threaten our economic and national security by creating political barriers to our own resources," said National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito in a statement. "NOIA will work with the incoming Trump administration and Congress to reverse this ill-conceived policy, advocating for a balanced, pragmatic approach to offshore energy that promotes both our energy independence and economic growth."