With two weeks left in office, President Joe Biden is ending his presidency the same way he started it: halting oil production. On Monday, he announced a ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of federal waters—roughly as large as the land area of Alaska, Texas, and Montana combined. The order will not impact federal offshore drilling in most of the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for about 15 percent of total U.S. oil production.
Using his statutory authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Biden has permanently halted oil and gas development along the entire U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico along Florida’s coast, and the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington. The order also closes off the remaining 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area in Northwest Alaska, which was created via executive order by Barack Obama in 2015 and reinstated by the Biden administration in 2021.
In a statement, Biden said, “In balancing the many uses and benefits of America’s ocean, it is clear to me that the relatively minimal fossil fuel potential in the areas I am withdrawing do not justify the environmental, public health, and economic risks that would come from new leasing and drilling.” It is true that in many of the affected areas, offshore drilling is already nonexistent. More than 10 states have banned or restricted drilling in their offshore waters. In states like North Carolina, public backlash and opposition from oceanfront communities have prevented projects from coming to fruition.
Biden also deemed the order as necessary to address climate change. Offshore drilling is often associated with catastrophes like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but it is not the environmental villain that some claim it to be. A 2023 report from the National Ocean Industries Association found offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to produce oil with a carbon intensity nearly half that of the global average. The study found methane emissions from Gulf-drilled oil were also well below that of global competitors.
President-elect Donald Trump, who halted new oil and gas leasing off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida through 2032 during his first term in office, has vowed to repeal the Biden ban on day one. Since the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gives presidents considerable leeway to ban drilling but not to reverse said bans, overturning the order will likely require federal legislation. With Republican control of the U.S. Congress, “The stars are aligned for them to use the Congressional Review Act to undo Biden’s harmful energy policies,” said Daren Bakst, an energy policy expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a press release.
The rule bookends a presidency that constantly used federal mandates to drive energy policy. In his first week in office, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and placed a ban on new federal oil and gas leasing, which remained in place until April 2022. While record gas prices in 2021 were a result of global supply not keeping up with global demand, Biden-era spending accelerated inflation and kept energy costs high. (Ironically, the Inflation Reduction Act championed by Biden gave oil and gas companies nearly $500 billion in new federal funding and tax credits.)
With offshore drilling already not operational in many of the ban’s areas, the order will probably not affect energy prices long-term but is—hopefully—a final instance of Biden using state power to dictate the direction of energy markets. With a new Congress and presidential administration incoming, consumers and the environment would benefit from a federal government that allows markets to pick energy winners.
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