Biden to ban new oil drilling over vast areas of US Atlantic, Pacific waters

President Joe Biden is set to ban new offshore oil and gas development across 625 million acres (250 million hectares) of US coastal territory, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

The ban, to be announced on Monday, rules out the sale of drilling rights in stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, said the report, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Biden is leaving the possibility open for new oil and natural gas leasing in the central and western areas of the Gulf of Mexico, which account for around 14 per cent of the nation's production of these fuels, the report said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside of business hours.

The ban would solidify Biden's legacy on addressing climate change and his goal to decarbonize the US economy by 2050.

The New York Times reported that a section of the law Biden's decision relies on, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, gives a president wide leeway to bar drilling and does not include language that would allow President-elect Donald Trump or other future presidents to revoke the ban.

Biden, Trump and Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, all used the law to ban sales of offshore drilling rights in some coastal areas.

Trump tried in 2017 to reverse Arctic and Atlantic Ocean withdrawals Obama had made at the end of his presidency, but a federal judge ruled in 2019 that the law does not give presidents the legal authority to overturn prior bans.