President Joe Biden will move Monday to block all future oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of federal waters — equivalent to nearly a quarter of the total land area of the United States, according to two people briefed on the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the announcement is not yet public.
The action underscores how Biden is racing to cement his legacy on climate change and conservation in his last weeks in office. President-elect Donald Trump, who has described his energy policy as “drill, baby, drill,” is likely to work with congressional Republicans to challenge the decision.
Biden will issue two memorandums that prohibit future federal oil and gas leasing across large swaths of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the two people said. The oil and gas industry has long prized the eastern Gulf of Mexico in particular, viewing the area as a key part of its offshore production plans.
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Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team, said in an email: “This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
The move could have the biggest impact in the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for about 14 percent of the country’s crude oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Industry operations there focus on a small sliver of federal waters off Louisiana’s coast.
What can be done by presidential mandate can be undone by presidential mandate. If the Democrats weren’t buffoons they might try doing the mandating at the beginning of their term, when it can be in place for 4-8 years, instead of at the end of it when it will be in place for a month at best.
but doing it at the beginning of his term would require him to actually be pushing hard for this.
He doesn’t want it to ever actually take place, just like Obama and Net Neutrality
It will likely take longer to get this implemented than it will for Trump to rescind it.
He put his energy into green energy that was in the IRA.
If he had pushed this earlier and then the green energy stuff now, you’d say “why didn’t he do the green energy at the start of his term?” There no winning when that’s all you say.
Why couldn’t he do both at the start of the term?
Ah the classic “why didn’t they do everything, everywhere, all at once?!”
True, he was too busy approving a record number of fracking permits. We can’t expect him to do everything!
You need to solve the demand problem.
A lot fewer people would be demanding oil if they could get a cheap EV, but Biden slapped 100% tariffs on those.
This isn’t one and done, nor is it a small item. You reallllly want to build up your own industry. Then see if you can dominate the world in one way or another.
Given how important climate change is, we really don’t want to wait to build up our own industry, especially when the entrenched interests prefer to drag that out as long as possible to maximize profits on existing fossil fuel tech. After all, the US had just as much time (in fact more) to build up that industry as China yet look at where we are compared to them.
This is a presidential order, IRA was an act of congress. This drilling ban could have been done immediately, and either way, IRA would have taken years to get through congress
And we’re back to “why didn’t they do everything, everywhere, all at once?”
It’s as though you didn’t read my comment at all. I said the presidential order could have been done right away, and IRA would take awhile regardless given there were more steps involved (an act of congress)
So he’s too incompetent to have done both? Why did we tolerate him running for re-election?