Three oil rigs are seen in federal waters off the coast of Southern California in 2021. President Biden has banned new oil and gas leasing on more than 625 million acres of federal ocean; existing leases are not affected.
Frédéric J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
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Frédéric J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
President Biden is using a decades-old law to block oil drilling in more than 625 million acres of U.S. ocean — the largest region a president has ever protected using that authority. It’s a measure designed to help cement his climate legacy, and one that the new Trump administration is expected to challenge.
Biden had previously protected much smaller regions from oil development, but Monday’s announcement covers much larger territory: the entire East and West Coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of the Bering Sea.
Oil and gas companies that want to find or produce oil offshore must pay the U.S. government to lease sections of the ocean. Biden’s action prohibits new leases in identified regions; this does not affect existing leases.
Most of the newly protected territory is not particularly attractive to the oil industry, at least for now. This has led some to view the move as merely symbolic. But the region includes the eastern Gulf of Mexico, where oil companies want to expand when the current moratorium expires. And overall, the huge swathes of ocean set aside in this move — hypothetically forever — include more than a third of U.S. offshore oil and gas that is likely economic to extract, according to government data and analysts at Clearview Energy Partners.
The oil industry opposed the moratorium. “American voters have sent a clear message in favor of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to shore up its record by doing everything possible to restrict it,” the president said. American Petroleum Institute, Mike Sommers, in a press release. The API suggested that reversing this “politically motivated” action should be a top priority for Congress.
“Even if there is no immediate interest in some areas, it is crucial that the federal government maintains the flexibility to adapt its energy policy, particularly in response to unexpected global changes like the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” said Erik Milito, president of a trade association. group representing offshore energy development, said in a statement. “Blanket bans only serve to shift energy production and economic opportunities overseas. »
Green groups, meanwhile, celebrated the announcement. “We view this as an epic victory for the oceans,” says Joseph Gordon, campaign director for Oceana, a nonprofit that advocates for ocean conservation around the world. “This is a commitment to move away from fossil fuels to clean energy. And we hope that the millions of Americans who live near the ocean or who visit or see protected places on the map today ‘today…can be reassured knowing that these places will never be subjugated.’ offshore drilling and they will never experience an oil spill like Deepwater Horizon’s devastating 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This is, of course, a familiar divide, between industry representatives on one side and environmental groups on the other. For his part, Biden rejected this formulation. “We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy,” he said in a statement, calling the choice wrong. “Protecting America’s coasts and oceans is the right thing to do.”
Bipartisan history, uncertain future
Previous presidents have used the same authority Biden has wielded today to protect ocean regions from drilling, but never so many acres at once. Trump himself I used it to protect the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina for 12 years.
But it’s important to note that Biden’s decision has no expiration date. And the courts have already ruled that this makes this decision essentially permanent.
After former President Barack Obama took similar action late in his term to protect the waters from drilling without a deadline, Trump tried to reverse the measure — without success. Courts have held that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act allows a president to protect the waters indefinitely and includes no provision for deletion this protection.
Kevin Book of Clearview Energy Partners says that doesn’t mean the Trump administration can’t roll back those protections. “The administration, having done it once before, will likely turn to the congressional route as a means of resolution,” he says.
A filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill could be a path to reopening these acres to oil development. This would be attractive not only as a way to follow through on Trump’s campaign promises to “drill, baby, drill,” but also for budgetary benefits: Auctions of offshore oil leases bring in money for the federal government.
Book says with Congressional Republicans promising a reconciliation bill this summer, those protections — or some of them — could be rolled back as early as this year.
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