(C) Common Dreams
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Biden Bans New Oil and Gas Drilling Along Most U.S. Coasts [1]
['Lisa Friedman']
Date: 2025-01-06
President Biden announced on Monday what he called a permanent stop to new oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal waters, saying he was making the move because drilling posed unnecessary risks to the environment, public health and the coastal communities’ economies.
The ban is part of an effort to fortify Mr. Biden’s environmental legacy in ways that some experts believe could not be quickly reversed by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has heavy support from the oil and gas industry and has promised to expand drilling.
Mr. Biden also intends on Tuesday to announce two new national monuments in California, preserving more than 800,000 acres of ecologically fragile and culturally significant tribal lands.
Mr. Biden called it a climate imperative to block offshore drilling on about 20 percent of the nearly 3.2 billion acres of seabed controlled by the United States. He is relying on an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he says gives him the authority for this executive order. The measure prevents new drilling along the entire Eastern Seaboard; the Pacific Coast along California, Oregon and Washington; in the eastern Gulf of Mexico; and in the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/climate/biden-oil-gas-drilling-ban.html
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