President Biden announced on Monday what he called a permanent moratorium on new oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of American coastal waters, saying he was taking this step because drilling threatens the environment, public health and coastal communities’ economies.
The ban is part of an effort to strengthen Mr. Biden is about the environment in ways that some experts believe will not be quickly reversed by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is heavily supported by the oil and gas industry and has pledged to expand drilling. .
Mr. Biden also intends on Tuesday to announce two new national monuments in California, which preserve more than 800,000 acres of ecologically fragile and culturally important tribal lands.
Mr. Biden has called it a climate imperative to ban offshore drilling on about 20 percent of the roughly 3.2 billion acres that the United States manages. He is relying on an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he says gives him the authority for the executive order. The measure prohibits new drilling throughout the Eastern Seaboard; on the Pacific coast near California, Oregon and Washington; east of the Gulf of Mexico; and in the North Bering Sea in Alaska.
In many ways, the ban is symbolic. There has been virtually no oil and gas exploration off the coast of California since the massive oil spill near Santa Barbara in 1969 that shocked the nation. Drilling in Arctic federal waters is currently limited to one location in the Beaufort Sea. Mr. Trump himself decided for 10 years to drill on the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida while courting voters in those states during his 2020 re-election campaign. And the eastern Gulf of Mexico has been under a sort of moratorium on drilling since 2006.
“The relatively small mineral resources in the areas I am withdrawing do not justify the environmental, public health and economic risks that would arise from new leases and mining,” said Mr. Biden in a statement.
The executive order would not have stopped new drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, some of which has been authorized by Congress. The Gulf produces about 15 percent of the nation’s oil and accounts for about 97 percent of US offshore gas production.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses and mariners have known for a long time: that dredging these coastal areas can cause irreparable damage to the places we love and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Mr Biden said.
“As climate continues to threaten communities across the country and we move to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coastal areas for our children and grandchildren,” he said.
In his reflection, he also invoked the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, where a drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing the largest oil spill in American history. Mr. Biden called it “a stark reminder of the costs and dangers of offshore drilling.”
Mr. Trump, who mocks global warming, has promised to overturn Mr. Biden’s climate policies, withdraw the United States from the global war to prevent the planet from overheating and give the oil industry almost unlimited access to American public lands and waters.
On Monday Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden’s action “ridiculous” and said he would reverse the decision.
“I’m going to close it immediately,” he said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
The United States currently produces more oil than any nation at any time in history. It is also the world’s largest natural gas producer, and the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Mr. Biden campaigned for president on a promise to end new drilling for land and water.
But the courts and Congress thwarted the plan. Mr. Biden approved an $8 billion oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska known as Willow, and as part of a deal to win votes for climate legislation, he approved the sale of leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, he has allowed the fewest offshore lease sales in history — allowing just three over the next five years — and banned drilling and mining in parts of Alaska, Wyoming, Nevada and elsewhere.
Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey, is one of many Democrats who have urged Mr. Biden to limit drilling. He said on Monday that the war “has borne fruit.”
“This is a common sense win for everyone who relies on clean, growing oceans,” Mr. Pallone said. “Protecting our coastal waters from oil drilling protects our fishing and tourism economies and the critically endangered North Atlantic whales.”
Banning new drilling could also reduce the burning of fossil fuels that produce pollutants that are dangerously warming the planet, environmental groups say.
The International Energy Agency has found that new oil and gas development must stop if the world is to stay within safe limits of global warming. Almost every nation in the world agreed in 2015 to limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. The planet has already warmed at least 1.1 degrees Celsius. The year that just ended was the hottest in recorded history.
Mark S. Davis, director of the Environmental Law Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, called the ban “a big deal.” Coastal communities live under the occasional threat that the moratorium on drilling may be lifted, and a permanent ban promises long-term confidence, especially in the tourism and fishing industries.
“President Biden is drawing a line and saying, if you will, that the period of uncertainty is over and I’m closing the door on exploration and production in these areas,” Mr. Davis said.
Oil and gas managers say that the ban of Mr. Biden would be a disaster for the future of this industry.
“As global demand continues to rise, there is always uncertainty as to where supply will continue to come from,” said Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore oil, gas and wind producers. “You don’t want to take it out of the table when it could strengthen our economic and national security. It’s about making sure we have a well-thought-out, long-term energy policy that provides the flexibility to adjust when the situation calls for it.”
The ban would not affect the offshore wind industry, which the Biden administration has strongly supported.
Mr. Milito called the ban “political.”
Ron Neal, chairman of the offshore committee of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, an oil and gas trade group, called the ban “significant and catastrophic.”
The dismissal of Mr. Trump’s pledge could be challenged by environmental groups, and several legal experts say it is likely that Mr. Trump’s ban will go through.
Although section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gives the president broad discretion to ban drilling, it does not include language that would allow any president to revoke the ban.
Mr. Trump has previously tried and failed to repeal such a ban. In 2015, President Barack Obama banned offshore drilling in nearly 98 percent of federally managed Arctic waters and 3.8 million acres of the Atlantic Ocean home to unique deep-sea corals and rare fish.
Mr. Trump rescinded the order and environmental groups, led by the nonprofit Earthjustice, sued. In 2019, a Federal District Court judge in Alaska ruled that the ban could not be reversed without an act of Congress.
“There’s no question that it’s within Biden’s power to do this and there’s a big legal question about whether Trump can reverse it,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Although the case may be a strong example for Mr. Biden, others have noted that it has never been fully resolved.
The Trump administration appealed. But Mr. Biden won the 2020 election. The Nineteenth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to dismiss the case and the authorities of Mr. In addition, some lawyers argue that the Alaska decision applies only to that situation.
“I would consider it an unresolved issue and one that will certainly be pursued by the new administration,” said Ann D. Navaro, a partner at Bracewell, a law firm that advises energy clients.
Republicans, who will control both chambers in the new Congress, may also try to amend the 1953 law to allow presidents to reverse their predecessors’ drilling bans.
That, however, would require at least 60 votes in the Senate to clear procedural hurdles, which would be a challenge given that Republicans hold a three-seat majority.
The group could also try to use the upcoming budget reconciliation process to require the Interior Department to grant leases to properties covered by the ban. That would require only a simple majority.
But Mr. Davis said Republicans from coastal states are unlikely to support the measure.
“The mandate would require congressional delegates in Florida, the Carolinas, to say yes. And they never did, as President Trump found out when he proposed opening those states,” Mr. Davis said, noting that Mr. his party and immediately turned back his effort.
He called the oil industry protests “theater.”
“It is their job to want to be able to go anywhere they want,” said Mr. Davis. But, he added, with the restricted areas by Mr. Biden: “They don’t really expect to go there. There is no ‘ball, baby, drill’ pressure in any of these places.”
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