(Reuters) – President Joe Biden is set to ban new offshore oil and gas development on 625 million acres (250 million hectares) of U.S. coastal territory, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
The ban, to be announced Monday, excludes the sale of drilling rights in stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the report said, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Biden leaves open the possibility of obtaining new oil and leasing it in the central and western areas of the Gulf of Mexico, which represent about 14% of national production of these fuels, the report states.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.
The ban would solidify Biden’s legacy in fighting climate change and his goal of decarbonizing the US economy by 2050.
He New York Times (NYSE:) reported that a section of the law underlying Biden’s decision, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, gives the president broad leeway to ban drilling and does not include language that would allow the President-elect Donald Trump or other future presidents repeal the ban.
Biden, Trump and Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama used the law to ban the sale of offshore drilling rights in some coastal areas.
Trump attempted in 2017 to reverse withdrawals from the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean that 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 previous bans.