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President Joe Biden on Monday announced an executive action that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo.
Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said in a statement. “It is not worth the risks.”