Biden Withdraws Over 625 Million Acres of Ocean From Future Offshore Drilling Across Both Coasts and the Eastern Gulf
On January 6, 2025, President Joe Biden announced in Washington that, using his authority under section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, he had signed two presidential memoranda withdrawing more than 625 million acres of federal waters from future oil and gas leasing — covering the entire U.S. East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific waters off Washington, Oregon and California, and the remainder of Alaska's Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area. The Department of the Interior called it the largest withdrawal in U.S. history.
In his statement, Biden said the decision reflected what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers had long known: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places Americans hold dear and was unnecessary to meet the nation's energy needs. He also invoked the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 people and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the action answered a strong and overwhelming call from states, Tribes and local communities to protect the nation's oceans and coasts.
The White House said the withdrawals have no expiration date and do not affect rights under existing leases. Interior Department figures show that oil production on federal lands and waters was at an all-time high in 2024; in fiscal year 2023 the Outer Continental Shelf produced about 675 million barrels of oil and about 796 billion cubic feet of natural gas, roughly 14 percent of all U.S. oil production — nearly all of it in the western and central Gulf of Mexico, outside the withdrawn areas. The three potential Gulf of Mexico lease sales in the 2024–2029 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program are not affected.
Industry activity in the newly withdrawn areas has historically been very low: there is no active oil and gas exploration or development along the eastern U.S. Atlantic coast or in the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area, about 30 decades-old leases offshore Southern California, and about a dozen in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The White House said the areas' relatively limited fossil fuel potential did not justify the environmental, public health and economic risks of new leasing and drilling.
The action came two weeks before Biden left office. As the Associated Press reported, because the withdrawals rest on authority Congress granted the president by statute, undoing them would likely require an act of Congress.
(Source: The White House)
Source: The White House
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：加利福尼亚州圣巴巴拉海峡的近海石油平台A（资料图）。（Doc Searls 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons） / Photo: Offshore oil Platform A in the Santa Barbara Channel, California (file photo). (Doc Searls, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
