President Trump enacted an earlier promise to reverse President Biden’s ban on offshore drilling and open up drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve.
The moves came immediately after Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, January 20.
The slew of executive orders (EOs) signed by Trump included the repeal of 78 Biden-era executive actions and the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Treaty — the latter also done under Trump’s first presidential term.
As reported by The Hill, Trump lifted some of Biden’s former efforts to restrict oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters, though it could face legal hurdles.
“His new executive order seeks to rescind Biden’s recent order to block 625 million acres offshore from oil and gas drilling — including the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It additionally revokes a March order that blocked 2.8 million acres in the Arctic Ocean from oil and gas drilling.”
Earlier this month Oilprice.com reported Trump saying he plans “on day one” to “reverse immediately” Biden’s drilling ban on the entire eastern U.S. Atlantic coast and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Coast along California, Oregon, and Washington, and the remaining portion of the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area in Alaska.
“Banning offshore drilling will not stand,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday at the Oval Office Trump laid out a sweeping plan to maximize oil and gas production, including by declaring a national energy emergency that would speed permitting, roll back environmental protections, and withdraw the United States from a 2016 international agreement to fight climate change.
“America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have: the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth,” Trump said during his inauguration speech. “And we are going to use it.”
A snippet from the EO ‘Unleashing American Energy’ reads, “It is the policy of the United States: to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future;”
The executive order declaring a national energy emergency states:
“(b) To protect the collective national and economic security of the United States, agencies shall identify and use all lawful emergency or other authorities available to them to facilitate the supply, refining, and transportation of energy in and through the West Coast of the United States, Northeast of the United States, and Alaska.”
As Reuters points out, “The moves signal a dramatic U-turn in Washington’s energy policy after former President Joe Biden sought for four years to encourage a transition away from fossil fuels in the world’s largest economy.”
However, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s policies will have any impact on U.S. oil and gas production, which is already at record levels following sanctions on Russia due to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is controversial. Opponents say the area is home to grizzly and polar bears, grey wolves and over 200 species of birds.
But Republicans have long coveted the refuge as a source of oil and a way to bolster the local economy. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates it contains between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
The executive order directs the Interior Department to reinstate drilling rights that were revoked under the Biden administration.
The Hill notes “The order also seeks to open up other areas of Alaska to drilling and other industries.
“It also directs the administration to reverse Biden policies that limited drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve — which was set aside in 1923 by President Harding as an emergency supply of oil for the Navy.”
After the invasion of Ukraine, Biden sold more than 180 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The record number of sales helped lower gasoline prices but sank the reserve to its lowest level in 40 years.
As for whether Trump’s energy-related executive orders will pass legal muster, it is unclear.
During his first term, Trump tried to undo a similar move to protect certain areas of drilling issued under Obama, but he was stopped by a judge who ruled that the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) gives presidents the right to block drilling but not to reinstate it.
Legal experts quoted by Reuters say the question of whether a president can revoke a predecessor’s decision to invoke OSLA and withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling remains legally unsettled.
The issue will almost certainly face a legal challenge. Reuters notes that environmental groups sued Trump in 2017 over Trump’s efforts to overturn Obama’s protection of the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea off-limits to oil leasing, along with a large swath of Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast.
Biden’s order, meanwhile, is being challenged in court in two separate lawsuits.
Also, Rigzone reported on January 20 that two Texas lawmakers have joined forces to push back against Biden’s move to block oil and gas drilling.
Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Jodey Arrington introduced legislation to repeal Biden’s Executive Order to ban drilling on over 625 million acres of offshore territory.
According to BNN Bloomberg, there are no active oil and gas leases in federal waters in the Bering Sea or along the U.S. East Coast from Canada to the southern tip of Florida. About four dozen wells were drilled there in the 1970s and ‘80s. The last sales of leases was in 1983 and no oil has ever been produced from the region.
Oil companies hold about a dozen leases in the Gulf of Mexico and roughly 30 in federal waters near southern California.
Source: By Andrew Topf from Oilprice.com