Biden blocks most new offshore drilling ahead of Trump term

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said he was blocking fuel companies from drilling for oil and natural gas in the waters off nearly all of the United States’ coastline. Offshore drilling in the locations in question would damage the environment more than it would benefit the economy, Biden said. The move comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s scheduled inauguration. Trump has favored giving oil and gas companies more freedom to drill for fossil fuels.

Where, exactly, is Biden preventing offshore drilling? The order sought to protect the entire east coast, west coast, eastern Gulf of Mexico, and Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from offshore drilling, according to the White House. More than 625 million acres of offshore sites will not be open to fuel companies for natural gas and oil drilling, the administration said. The executive order has no expiration date, the White House added.

Can Trump repeal this executive order? CNN reported that Trump would likely need Congressional assistance to reverse Biden’s executive order. The American Petroleum Institute—which denounced Biden’s drilling ban as a political action—argued that Congress was the entity that should reverse the order. In a social media statement Monday, Trump accused Biden of weaponizing institutions against him and promised that the sitting president’s executive orders would be done away with.

Dig deeper: Read Leo Briceno’s report in The Sift about how House Speaker Mike Johnson retained the gavel, with Trump’s support, last week.