Biden Makes 'Epic' 11th-Hour Move on Offshore Drilling

With just two weeks before he hands the keys to the White House to Donald Trump, President Biden is taking some last-minute steps to push back on climate change, including a new ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in most federal waters, reports the BBC. The move made under 1953's Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act will cover more than 625 million acres of water off the entire Atlantic coast, as well as off the eastern Gulf of Mexico, a portion of the Bering Sea off of Alaska, and the Pacific coast off of California, Oregon, and Washington.

"My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs," Biden said in a statement. "It is not worth the risks." The AP notes that the directive wouldn't apply to big portions of the Gulf of Mexico, where most of the United States' offshore drilling happens, but it would shield other large sections of the nation's coastline from future drilling. NBC News notes that this ban would mean Biden has protected 670 million ocean acres in total—the most of any US president.

Conservation activists are pleased. "This is an epic ocean victory. Our treasured coastal communities are now safeguarded for future generations," a rep from the Oceana nonprofit tells the BBC. Unsurprisingly, the oil and gas industry isn't happy, and neither are members of Team Trump, as the incoming president is almost certain to try to overturn whatever Biden puts into place. Karoline Leavitt, Trump's press secretary pick, called Biden's move a "disgraceful decision" that was "designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices."

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CNN notes that it won't be terribly easy for Trump to do a 180 on Biden's mandate, however. The ban has no expiration date—and the law under the OCSLA doesn't allow presidents to overturn previous bans, per a 2019 court decision. That doesn't mean Trump won't try, however, even perhaps taking it all the way up to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Trump himself banned drilling in certain offshore waters during his first term in office, though his more recent pledges focus on making the US No. 1 in "energy dominance." (More offshore drilling stories.)