(Reuters) – President Joe Biden is poised to ban new offshore oil and gas development across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal land, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The ban, to be announced Monday, will exclude the sale of drilling rights in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the report said, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Biden leaves open the possibility of new oil and leasing in the central and western areas of the Gulf of Mexico, which account for about 14% of national production of these fuels, the report said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment after hours.
The ban would cement Biden’s legacy of tackling climate change and his goal of decarbonizing the U.S. economy by 2050.
The New York Times (NYSE:) reported that part of the law underpinning Biden’s decision, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, gives a president broad leeway to ban drilling and does not contain language that would allow President-elect Donald Trump or other future presidents propose to withdraw. the ban.
Biden, Trump and Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, all used the law to ban the sale of offshore drilling rights in some coastal areas.
Trump tried in 2017 to reverse Arctic and Atlantic withdrawals that Obama made at the end of his presidency, but a federal judge ruled in 2019 that the law does not give presidents the legal authority to reverse previous bans.
