US President Biden is scheduled to ban oil and gas exploration in a wide swath of the US Monday with less than three weeks to go, Bloomberg said Monday. According to people familiar with the matter, Biden plans to ban new oil and gas developments in a total area of 625m acres, these include parts of the Atlantic and Pacific off the east and west coasts of the US, the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico and the northern part of the Bering Sea. However, the ban excludes the central and western waters of the Gulf of Mexico, which currently account for about 14 per cent of us national oil and gas production.
The Biden administration is seizing a last-minute chance to push through a number of land and environmental protections before Donald Trump takes office, according to a Bloomberg analysis, the blanket ban on new US offshore oil and gas projects is part of that package. On the one hand, Biden’s move will strengthen his record as president in tackling climate change and strengthening environmental protection. On the other hand, although Biden’s move aims to permanently ban new oil and gas projects in large areas of the sea, but the door has not been closed to new development projects in parts of the Gulf of Mexico, a key area for offshore oil and gas production in the United States. So, in addition to Democrats and environmentalists, it also has the support of some of the more oil-and gas-friendly Republicans.
Environmentalists welcomed the news that Biden had largely blocked new oil and gas projects. But in an e-mailed statement to the media, the Donald Trump team lambasted the move as a “Political vendetta” against Donald Trump and the American people, and said it was doomed to fail, the United States will press ahead with oil and gas drilling.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he wanted to end delays in federal oil and gas drilling permits and “All the bureaucracy” that has brought oil and gas projects to a standstill, and“Unleash domestic energy production on an unprecedented scale”. Soon after his victory, the Trump campaign revealed to the media that Donald Trump’s first day in the White House would be a series of jobs, including issuing executive orders to encourage domestic oil and gas drilling, speeding up the issuance of drilling and Hydraulic fracturing permits across the country.
Kloza, head of global energy analysis at US oil price information services, believes Biden’s above-mentioned measures will not have much impact on future US oil and gas drilling and production, at present, there are a lot of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, so the oil and gas supply, import and export of the United States will not be substantially impacted. Still, the American Petroleum Institute, an industry body, issued a statement lambasting Biden’s“Methodological errors” and saying it“Looks forward to working with the incoming administration.”.
The oil and gas industry has set up a package of lobbying targets for the incoming Donald Trump administration, according to Bloomberg. The Biden administration, for example, capped the number of auctions of offshore oil and gas exploration rights in the next five years at three, an all-time low, and the industry wants to push for more auctions. The industry also wants to speed up the sale of oil and gas rights on federal land and ease restrictions on associated gas emissions and combustion from oil fields.