Biden would outlaw new oil drilling in the vast Atlantic and Pacific waters of the United States

Bloomberg News said Friday that President Joe Biden intends to ban new offshore oil and gas exploitation over 625 million acres (250 million hectares) of US coastal waters.

The report, which cited anonymous people familiar with the decision, said the ban, which is anticipated to be announced on Monday, will prevent the sale of drilling rights in large areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

New leases for natural gas and oil in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, which together account for almost 14% of the country’s output of these fuels, are purportedly allowed under the proposal. Regarding the issue, the White House has not yet made any comments.

The action is seen as a pillar of Biden’s climate policy, advancing his goal of decarbonizing the US economy by 2050. 

Presidents have extensive power to regulate offshore drilling, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act would be the basis for the moratorium. 

Notably, the law makes it difficult for presidents in the future, like Donald Trump, who is currently the president-elect, to remove these limitations.

Biden, Trump, and Barack Obama are among the former presidents who have used this statute to restrict offshore drilling in certain regions, according to the New York Times. 

A federal judge in 2019 invalidated Trump’s 2017 attempt to overturn Obama-era prohibitions in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, reaffirming the legality of such measures.