Biden to ban new oil drilling in major US Atlantic, Pacific waters, Bloomberg News Reports By Reuters
(Reuters) – President Joe Biden will freeze offshore oil and gas development on 625 million acres (250 million hectares) of the U.S. coast, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The ban, to be announced on Monday, prohibits the sale of drilling rights in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the report said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Biden is leaving the opportunity to find new oil and leases in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, which includes about 14% of the country’s oil production, the report said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.
The ban would cement Biden’s legacy on tackling climate change and his goal of defunding the US economy by 2050.
I New York Times (NYSE:) reported that part of the law Biden’s decision hinges on, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, gives the president broad discretion to block drilling and does not include language that would allow President-elect Donald Trump or other future presidents to withdraw. prohibition.
Biden, Trump and Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, all used legislation to block the sale of offshore drilling rights to some coastal areas.
Trump tried in 2017 to reverse Obama’s Arctic and Atlantic Ocean withdrawals that he had made at the end of his administration, but a federal judge in 2019 ruled that the law does not give presidents the legal authority to overturn previous bans.
