Politico reports:

President Joe Biden is planning to prohibit future offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the nation’s coastline, setting up a potential roadblock for Republicans’ plans to expand production in federal waters.

Biden is set to announce on Monday that he will withdraw 625 million acres of coastline from future oil and gas drilling. That would encompass all of the Atlantic Coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast from Washington to California and parts of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea, according to a person briefed on the matter but who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The move tees up a fight over offshore energy as President-elect Donald Trump plans to turbocharge domestic oil and gas production as part of his pledge to cut U.S. energy costs in half in the first 18 months of his presidency.

Biden’s prohibitions on leasing will rely on powers under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which withstood its only major legal challenge when a federal court in 2019 denied the Trump administration’s attempt to unwind an Obama administration withdrawal of areas for offshore oil and gas drilling near Alaska. That ruling will complicate Trump’s ability to rescind the upcoming action, leaving it to Congress to overturn.

The White House and the Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Although most of the areas covered under the presidential memorandums have drawn little interest from the oil and gas industry, the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico is believed to hold large untapped reservoirs of oil. Opening that area to exploration has long drawn opposition from Florida officials from both parties — as well as Trump, who prohibited leasing there through 2032 under his own 2020 memorandum.

Republicans are huddling to write broad spending legislation expected to include requirements that the Interior Department speed the pace of oil and gas lease sales — including in the Gulf of Mexico, which is responsible for 14 percent of U.S. oil output. They aim to move those measures using budget reconciliation, which allows the bill to pass with a simple majority in both chambers, avoiding the need to attract Democratic votes.

But some experts anticipate Florida Republicans will seek to exploit their party’s thin majority to strengthen the prohibition on leasing in the eastern Gulf of Mexico — potentially delivering a parting victory for Biden and his environmental legacy. [Continue reading…]