Former U.S. President Joe Biden overstepped his authority when he ordered a withdrawal of sizable portions of federal waters from future oil and gas development, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled. [emphasis, links added]
U.S. District Court Judge James Cain in Lake Charles ruled Friday in favor of oil and gas industry groups and attorneys general in five states.
They sued to block Biden’s action to prohibit the development of 625 million acres in federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of America, and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.
Biden, in his final month in office, issued a memorandum that withdrew the areas from oil and gas leasing, citing his authority under the 72-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
President Donald Trump, on the first day of his second term, issued an executive order that repealed Biden’s memoranda.
Cain ruled that Biden’s withdrawal was illegal because it was intended to be permanent. The judge said President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of lands from oil and gas leasing was also illegal.
In his ruling, Cain wrote that while other presidents in the past have sought to protect offshore waters, only Biden and Obama sought to make the protections permanent.
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the judge wrote, “establishes that withdrawals must be subject to reversal or modification.”
Cain wrote that orders from Biden and Obama constituted “a departure from the executive branch’s longstanding practice and exceeded the authority granted.”
The restrictions did not affect the central and western Gulf of America, which accounts for the vast majority of domestic offshore oil and gas output.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) reported that federal offshore areas produced an average of 1.83 million barrels of oil per day in 2024, which was about 14% of total U.S. output.
The Energy Information Administration estimates the Gulf of America’s natural gas production in 2024 was approximately 1.8 billion cubic feet per day, down from 2.0 billion in 2023.
Biden’s order was challenged by attorneys general in Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, and Mississippi, along with the American Petroleum Institute and the Gulf Energy Alliance. …
Biden’s order had prohibited oil and gas leases along the Atlantic Coast from Canada to the southern tip of Florida, in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington, the eastern Gulf of America, and in portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area.
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