Biden Locks Up Oil With New Lame-Duck Restrictions

President Joe Biden is exploiting a 72-year-old law to block Republican expansion of oil and gas production in federal waters.

On Monday, the president issued a lame-duck executive order banning new oil and gas projects across 625 million acres of ocean across the East and West Coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bering Sea.

“Nothing in this withdrawal affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas,” the order read, though new leases are now indefinitely prohibited across virtually the entire eastern and western seaboards.

President-elect Donald Trump called the new restrictions on coastal oil and gas development “ridiculous” and said he would “unban it immediately.”

“I have the right to unban it immediately,” Trump said. An attempt at a swift annulment, however, might be more complicated than a mere new executive order. Biden’s use of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act means the last-minute executive order supposedly enjoys unique protections that cannot simply be undone by a reverse order. According to Bloomberg News, the 1953 law “included a provision giving presidents wide discretion to permanently protect waters from leasing, but it didn’t explicitly grant them the authority to undo those designations.”

“Though presidents have modified decisions from their predecessors to exempt areas from oil leasing, courts have never validated a complete reversal — and until Trump, no president had even attempted one,” Bloomberg reported. In 2019, a federal district court judge rejected Trump’s attempt to undo protections implemented under the law by President Barack Obama. Those protections covered more than 125 million acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. The case was appealed to the Ninth Circuit and was dismissed once Biden took office.

“I don’t think the issue has been totally resolved by the courts,” Jason Hill, a law partner at Holland & Knight, told The Federalist. Hill said efforts to remove a third of the outer continental shelf from opportunities for development was “certainly not what was contemplated by Congress” when the law was passed, though the areas withdrawn “weren’t prime areas for oil and gas activities” anyway. Biden’s executive order, he added, “signals a broader political policy debate over offshore development and oil and gas development in general.”

NBC reported on Monday that Biden’s use of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, however, means “it may take an act of Congress to reverse Monday’s announcement.”

The latest rules present a challenge for the new White House, which is eager to unleash U.S. energy production after Americans suffered record-high power prices under President Biden. Trump’s Interior Department already needs to roll back a cascade of new restrictions on oil and gas opportunities that Biden shut down as part of his administration’s aggressive land grab initiative known as “30 by 30.”

Biden promptly launched his “30 by 30” program upon taking office four years ago with the explicit goal “to conserve at least 30% each of our lands and waters by the year 2030.” The White House said in an official fact sheet issued on Monday that his latest rules to permanently ban oil and gas development bring the total area “conserved” to “more than 670 million acres of U.S. lands, waters, and ocean — more than any president in history.” The Biden administration’s record-breaking new restrictions passed unilaterally on public lands, however, have routinely frustrated states, tribes, and producers whose interests Democrats have sacrificed on the altar of climate change.

While Trump looks for ways to circumvent Biden’s use of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which might require a legislative fix, congressional Republicans are eager to reform a 1906 law that Democrats have exploited to lock down millions of acres of public land with strict protections.

First signed by Theodore Roosevelt more than 100 years ago to protect 1,300 acres surrounding Devil’s Tower, the Antiquities Act gives presidents authority to designate specific sites of cultural and historic significance as national monuments without congressional approval. Far-left administrations, however, have radically abused the century-old law in recent decades, creating quasi-national parks by sectioning off regions of the country with new protections. These protections go far beyond the legislation’s requirement to preserve “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

President Biden has become a serial violator of the mandate, establishing and expanding several national monuments that rival the size of some of the country’s largest national parks.

Biden’s misuse of the Antiquities Act is far from his only abuse of power in pursuing the administration’s “30 by 30” agenda. In 2023, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) created a new public lands regime for “conservation leases” that allows third parties to disrupt plans for oil and gas production by leasing ground for preservation. The conservation leasing program represents a departure from the government’s “multiple use” mandate, which encourages residents to capitalize on and more freely recreate on public property. Most national forests, for example, allow timber harvesting and hold fewer regulations for recreation.

Tristan Justice is a national correspondent for The Federalist and the co-author of “Fat and Unhappy: How ‘Body Positivity’ Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself).” He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here. Buy “Fat and Unhappy” here.