With two weeks left in office, President Joe Biden is ending his presidency the same way he started it: halting oil production. On Monday, he announced a ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of federal waters—roughly as large as the land area of Alaska, Texas, and Montana combined. The order will not impact federal offshore drilling in most of the Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for about 15 percent of total U.S. oil production.
Using his statutory authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Biden has permanently halted oil and gas development along the entire U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico along Florida's coast, and the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington. The order also closes off the remaining 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area in Northwest Alaska, which was created via executive order by Barack Obama in 2015 and reinstated by the Biden administration in 2021.
