Biden reportedly planning to enact a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas leasing

President Joe Biden may take one more shot at the oil and gas industry before he departs the White House.

According to Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, the president plans to issue a decree that would permanently ban new offshore oil and gas development within U.S. coastal waters. 

“Joe Biden is again attacking American energy like he’s done for the last four years, but today’s action will do nothing but further enshrine failure as the biggest part of his legacy. President Trump should overturn this order on the first day and quickly usher Biden’s green agenda into the dustbin of history,” Daniel Turner, executive director of Power the Future, an energy advocacy group, said in a statement. 

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to overturn many of Biden’s anti-fossil fuel actions, but he might not be able to reverse a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas development. The 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act gave presidents the authority to permanently protect U.S. waters from leasing, but it contains no specific provision to undo the protections. 

Trump attempted to overturn President Barack Obama’s order protecting 125 million acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. A federal judge in 2019 blocked Trump’s efforts. In an effort to win votes in the 2020 election, Bloomberg reported, Trump had used the same statue to block oil and gas leasing off the coast of Florida and North Carolina.