U.S. President Joe Biden is set to order a ban on new offshore oil and gas development across some 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, ruling out the sale of drilling rights in Atlantic and Pacific waters as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The move represents a sweeping effort to permanently protect coastal waters — and communities that depend on them — from fossil fuel development and the risk of oil spills. At the same time, Biden is keeping the door open for new oil and natural gas leasing in the central and western portions of the Gulf of Mexico that have been drilled for decades and currently provide about 14% of the country’s production of those fuels, said people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the decision is not yet public.
Biden’s decision, set to be announced on Monday, will further burnish his climate credentials, deepening his record of fostering conservation and zero-emission energy. It builds on a series of last-minute White House moves to safeguard lands and enshrine environmental protections before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
