Crackdown on offshore drilling, Biden’s latest move

The ban on offshore drilling in an immense area of ​​coastal waters in the United States is the latest in a series of actions by climate policy undertaken at the last minute by the Biden administration, a few weeks before Donald Trump took office in the White House. And it is significant in that the former tycoon, during the election campaign, committed instead to “freeing” the national production of fossil fuels in an attempt to lower gas costs, despite the fact that the United States has already recorded record extraction rates.

Biden’s executive action essentially bans new oil and gas deposits in 625 million acres (253 million hectares) of U.S. ocean. The ban prevents oil companies from leasing new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Washington, Oregon and California coasts and portions of Alaska’s northern Bering Sea. The president himself explained that his decision “reflects what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers have long known: drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is not necessary to meet the energy needs of our nation. We cannot – he added – take risks”.

According to operators, the new ban has no expiry date and it may be difficult to undo: Biden in fact acted under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mining leasing and drilling. The law, according to a 2019 ruling, does not grant presidents the legal authority to overturn previous bans. On the other hand, Trump himself – despite being in favor of greater oil and gas exploration and having repeatedly used his phrase “Drill, baby, drill” during the election campaign – has resorted to this law to protect the waters off the coast of Florida in 2020. This ban was supposed to expire in 2032 and now with this decision, Biden will protect the same area without any expiration date.

Different reactions to Biden’s decision. Mike Sommers, president ofAmerican Petroleum Instituteis of the opinion that such a decision by Biden would damage American energy security and should be reversed by Congress. According to other experts, it will be up to the Supreme Court to make this decision. “We urge politicians to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.” Ron Neal, president of the Offshore Committee of theIndependent Petroleum Association of America: “President Biden’s decision is significant and catastrophic – he declared – and represents a serious attack on the oil and natural gas industry.”

In recent days, when rumors had filtered out that Biden would move in this direction, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt had called it “a shameful decision”, “”designed to take political revenge on the American people who gave the President Trump’s mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices”. However, environmental groups were in favour, as expected.

According to analysts interviewed by CNN, Biden’s move will not make much difference in US oil production. It’s not “particularly consequential for U.S. exploration and production going forward,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. Kloza also noted that there are many offshore facilities pumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico and added that offshore projects typically take 6-8 years to come online. “I see no real impact on U.S. supply, exports and imports,” Kloza concluded.