Source: NBC News
“The White House announced Monday that President Joe Biden would ban new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline. The order will protect some 625 million acres of ocean along America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea from ‘environmental and economic risks and harms,’ the White House said in a statement announcing the move. … Biden will use an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which gives the president the power to indefinitely withdraw unleased lands from the outer continental shelf. … During his first administration, Trump used an executive order in an attempt to overturn Obama’s decision to invoke OCSLA during the final month of his presidency, but that decision was struck down in the courts. That means it may take an act of Congress to reverse Monday’s announcement by the Biden administration.” (01/06/25)