As President Biden prepares to shuffle off the stage, he’s attempting to burnish his tarnished legacy with last-minute administrative actions. 

Rarely has there been a more concerted effort by a country’s leadership to eliminate a source of national strength than the Biden administration’s war on fossil fuels.

As President Biden prepares to shuffle off the stage, he’s attempting to burnish his tarnished legacy with last-minute administrative actions.

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.

US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office.

The ban covers the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.

It is the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions by the Biden administration ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House.

As we commented previously, the effort of advisers to disguise President Biden’s declining mental health throughout his time in office, along with the media’s complicity, has been a historic scandal. While it is tempting to view the scandal as something in the rearview mirror now that Donald Trump is about to assume office, the reality is that for the next several weeks, Biden still retains all the powers of the presidency.

The head of Moldova’s breakaway region Transnistria has urged residents to burn firewood for heating and warned that blackouts cannot be avoided, after Moscow stopped supplying gas via Ukraine.

Vadim Krasnoselskyi, the president of the Russian-backed separatist sliver on Moldova’s eastern flank, said in a message on Telegram on Friday that “1,500 multi-story apartment buildings have no heating and hot water. Almost 72,000 private households have no gas. One hundred and fifty gas boiler houses have been shut down.”

Gazprom said it would pump a reduced flow of gas to Europe via Ukraine the day before a transit agreement with Kyiv is set to expire, Reuters reported Tuesday.

The state-controlled energy giant said it would pump 37.2 million cubic meters of gas on Dec. 31, down from 42.4 million cubic meters the previous day, before flows drop to zero at midnight when the five-year transit agreement expires.

Two Russian oil tankers have been badly damaged in the Black Sea, causing an oil spill, authorities in Russia have said.

Footage released by Russia's Southern Transport Prosecutor's Office showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off, with streaks of oil visible in the water.

Both tankers are believed to have drifted before running aground offshore. At least one crew member was reportedly killed.

The incident took place in the Kerch Strait, which separates Russia from Crimea - the Ukrainian peninsula illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.