(Reuters) – President Joe Biden is set to ban the development of new offshore oil and gas projects on 625 million acres (250 million hectares) of U.S. coastal land, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The report, citing unidentified sources familiar with the matter, stated that the ban, which will be announced on Monday, excludes the sale of drilling rights in areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The report stated that Biden is leaving the possibility open for new oil and leasing in the central and western regions of the Gulf of Mexico, which represents about 14% of the country’s production of this fuel.
The White House did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment outside business hours.
A ban would cement Biden's legacy of tackling climate change and his goal of decarbonizing the US economy by 2050.
the New York Times (NYSE:) reported that a section of the law underlying Biden's decision, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, gives the president broad latitude to block drilling and does not include language that would allow President-elect Donald Trump or other future presidents to overturn the order. Ban.
Biden, Trump, and Trump's predecessor Barack Obama used the law to ban the sale of offshore drilling rights in some coastal areas.
Trump in 2017 tried to reverse Obama's Arctic and Atlantic withdrawals at the end of his presidency, but a federal judge ruled in 2019 that the law did not give presidents the legal authority to overturn the previous ban.
