Biden to ban offshore drilling in massive areas of US Pacific and Atlantic

US President Joe Biden is planning to block all future oil and gas drilling in more than 2.5m sq km of federal waters on Monday.

This is one of Biden’s last big moves to cement himself as a conservationist and climate change advocate while also dealing a hard blow to president-elect Donald Trump and his “drill, baby, drill” policy. If the ban goes through, it is a sure bet that Republicans will work diligently to reverse the decision.

It is expected that Biden will issue two memorandums to prohibit future federal oil and gas leasing across large parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Northern Bering Sea. In total, the ban should close off an area equal to around a quarter of the total land mass of the United States.

The eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico is a key area for the oil and gas industry and has been a prime region when it comes to offshore production. It accounts for about 14% of the country’s crude oil production.

Biden will most likely invoke the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which gives the president powers to withdraw federal waters from future leasing. It has already been established by a federal judge in 2019 that such a ban cannot be undone without an act of Congress, so Trump will not be able to do it on his own.

The president of the National Ocean Industries Association, Erik Milito, issued a statement on Sunday calling Biden’s unilateral ban “a strategic error, driven not by science or voter mandate, but by political motives.”

“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,” Milito said.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) Offshore Committee chairman, Ron Neal, went even further by saying that the ban “represents a major attack on the oil and natural gas industry.”

“The policy is catastrophic for the development of new areas for oil and natural gas but, the environmentalists will eventually look to also shut down offshore wind farms for most of the same reasons,” Neal stated.