US President Joe Biden on January 6, 2025 announced a ban on new offshore oil and natural gas drilling along the entire United States East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California as well as additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
The White House press statement said the move aims to safeguard over 625 million acres of the US ocean territory from offshore drilling.
Nearly 40 per cent of Americans live in coastal counties that rely on a healthy ocean to thrive, the announcement highlighted. Thus, the action by Biden would ensure that these regions can remain healthy and safe from the risk of oil spills “resulting from development that would do little, if anything, to meet the nation’s energy needs”.
Using his authority under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Biden issued two Presidential Memoranda to protect all US Outer Continental Shelf areas from future oil and natural gas leasing.
The withdrawal is permanent and bans any future oil and natural gas leasing in the designated areas.
President Biden first used this authority in January 2021 when he restored protections for part of the Northern Bering Sea and again in March 2023 to withdraw 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea from future oil and gas leasing, which completed protections for the entire US Arctic Ocean.
The memorandum on the withdrawal stated that it would not affect rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas.
The move was welcomed by many environmental leaders and organisations. Ben Jealous, executive director, Sierra Club, said that the action is a major win for coastal communities, marine wildlife and our collective future. “We must continue to work to achieve a clean energy transition that ends our reliance on fossil fuels, grows the strong economy it has already built with family-sustaining jobs and preserves our clean water and clean air,“ Ben Jealous said.
These are some of the latest last-minute climate policy actions taken by the Biden-Harris administration ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House. The presidential term of Joe Biden is going to end in less than two weeks.