Trump fighting uphill battle to undo Biden drilling ban

Former president's use of 1953 law has mere weight than an executive order

By: Tom McLaughlin
Pensacola News Journal
USA Today Network - Florida

PENSACOLA, Florida - When former President Joe Biden acted on January 6 [2025] to ban offshore drilling across 625 million acres of American coastal waters, he drew immediate criticism for the man slated to succeed him.
..... President Donald Trump called Biden's move "ridiculous," and one of the many executive orders he used in the first days after being inaugurated to serve a second term I office sought to gut the decision.
..... Whether he succeeds remains to be seen.
..... Biden used his power under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to ban offshore drilling not only in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. but also along the entire Atlantic coast and the Pacific coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. the protections even extended to part of Alaska's Bering Sea.
..... Trump's executive order removed the permanent ban on offshore drilling that Biden had sought to provide to the easter, gulf off Florida, but a moratorium on exploration in that area through 2032, which Trump himself had put in place, remains.
..... The moratorium also covers waters of the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to North Carolina, according to Bretiny Hardy, senior attorney in the oceans division for Earthjustice.
..... What Trump's order has targeted for immediate renewed exposure to drilling interest are Atlantic waters from the Virgina border to Maine, the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Washington, Oregon and California and off Alaska every where but Bristol Bay.
..... Hardy, however, said Biden's decision to use the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law in place since 1953, to implement the sweeping ban on drilling gives the action more weight than issuing an executive order would have. It likewise carries more clout than a Trump executive order.
..... The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act is the statute that authorizes the Department of the Interior to open public waters offshore for lease to oil and gas companies for exploration and removal of natural resources, Hardy said. It requires the agency to manage public water s in a manner that considers "economic social and environmental values of the renewable and nonrenewable resources."
..... The same act gives the president the authority to withdrew areas from leasing, Hardy said, "to effectively take them off the table."
..... "Biden used the power to take areas off the table that are not being used and are not really impromptu for oil and gas leasing," she said. "He decided we do not really need to lease in these areas for national security or oil independence, and utilizing them carries a great risk for coastal communities along with the risk otherwise associated with drilling."
..... Wording not found in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act is that which provides future presidents the power to undo actions taken by a predecessor, Hardy said. During his first term of office, Trump fail din an attempt to overturn drilling bans two of his predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, had implemented under the act.
..... In 2017, Trump tired to reverse those orders, which banned drilling in parts of the arctic and Atlantic oceans. the action was challenged in court by Earthjustice and a number of other groups, Hardy said.
..... Federal Judge Sharon Gleason, of the District of Alaska, ruled in 2019 that trump had no authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Act to revers the former president's actions. Trump's term ended before an appeal of Gleason's decision was ruled upon, Hardly said, and when Biden took office, he moved to strengthen the Obama-imposed ban.
..... Hardy said hat while there is no way to product how an appeals court might have ruled in the case brought by Trump, the statue is quite clear.
..... "We're pretty confident legally the statue doesn't give the president the authority to overturn," she said.
..... Trump's recent executive order attempted to "eliminate several withdraws Biden made" using the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Hardy said, Earthjustice and other environmental organizations are at this time evaluating their options concerning the new president's actions regrading offshore drilling.
..... "We should know in a couple of weeks what we should do about the Trump reversals," she said.
.... Trump was joined in his criticism of the Biden administration's sweeping drilling ban by the American Petroleum Institute, whose CEO Mike Sommers, issued a statement January 5 [2025] saying Biden was acting against the interests of the voting public.
..... "American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development," Sommers said. "And yet the current administration is suing its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restructure it."
..... Senator rick Scott, R-Florida, helped persuade Trump in 2018 to place the existing moratorium on drilling in the eastern Gulf, which includes the entire Gulf coast of Florida, until 2032. In a statement provided to the Pensacola News Journal, part of the USA Today Network, after Biden issued the sweeping drilling ban, Scott said that while he remains steadfast in his position "to keep drilling off Florida's coasts," he oppose the ban issued by Biden.
..... "Senator Scott believes Biden's latest Green New Dael-style executive order is just a political stunt on his way out the door to codify his dangerous anti-American energy agenda that's waked havoc on American families and businesses," Scott spokeswomen Clare Lattanze said in the statement provided in early January. [2025]
..... In an interview with a conservative television news network, Sommers - the American Petroleum Institute CEO - called upon Congress "to life this new moratorium,: imposed by Biden. He offered up the Congressional Review Act and Reconciliation procedures as possible avenues under which federal lawmakers could thwart the president's efforts to implement the drilling ban.
..... A legal brief filed before Trump got aback into office, on behalf of the Congressional Legal Service states, "Congress would likely not be able to use the Congressional Review Act to fast track procedures to reverse (Biden's) January 6, 2025 executive memoranda."
..... The Legal brief said it might be possible for Congress to narrowly tailer legislation to successfully overturn specific offshore area withdrawals.
..... Sommers went on his comments to call for the government to establish "a robust (oil industry) leasing plan" within the Gulf. that is one concept that has never gotten strong support east of the Alabama state line, even prior to the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
..... Like many along the Florida coast, Navarre Beach, resident Linda Young could only watch and wait in the aftermath of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform. With each passing day, oil gushing form the ground beneath the destroyed rig stained the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana and crept ever closer to the coastline.
..... "It felt like the end of the world was coming. We all felt that way,' young said. "Everybody had such deep seated fear about what would come, and it was hard to know when it would end."
..... Young, an environmental activists, had been lobbying Florida leaders against opening the eastern Gulf to offshore drilling before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She said the constant "kerosene" smell she lived with in the days and weeks after it, along with the sheets of tar-like gunk that would eventually wash up in northwest Florida, only strengthened her resolve.
..... She said she was thrilled to hear Biden had acted to protect the eastern Gulf, and all of the areas he declared off limits, form offshore drilling.
..... Julie Hauserman, a spokesperson in Florida for Earthjustice, recalled that in 2009-2010, a group of writers joined forces "because oil lobbying were circling the Florida Capitol with a plan to open Gulf waters to drilling." The book was called "UnspOILed. writers speak for Florida's Coast."
..... "We wrote the book to highlight the oil drilling treat to the coast, and we made sure every member of the Florida Legislature got a copy," she said in a recent email.
..... "By the time we published the book and started touring on it, the very thing w were fighting against happened - the BP Deepwater Horizon spill. so now we were doing author appearances and talking about the disaster that was happening in real time" Hauserman wrote. "We were heartbroken for our beautiful coast. ... We saw it, we lived it. We all know it's not worth the risk."
..... Staunch environmentalists aren't the only ones arrayed against energy industry that has long covets opening the Eastern Gulf of Mexico to exploration and exploitation. Even steadfast Trump loyalists like Scott remained silent on the topic of removing Biden's drilling ban in the E Astern Gulf.
..... For Trump supporters like Scott and former Representative Matt Gaetz, a key argument against drilling in the eastern Gulf has always been one of national security.
..... They side with military leaders, particularly those at Egllin Air Force Base, in claiming oil rigs constructed within the 120,000-square-mile Eastern Gulf Test and Training Range, which runs south into the Gulf form close to the Okaloosa-Santa Rose county line, could wreak havoc on the ability to conduct missions in a location unique in all the world.
..... The Defense Support Initiative, run out of OneOkaloosa EDC, supports the military missions in Santa Rose, Okaloosa and Walton counties and has close ties to the Northwest Florida Defense Coalition that has a similar focus in Santa Rose and Escambia counties.
..... Nathan Sparks, executive director of OneOkaloosa EDC, said regional military support organizations are "very much on the same sheet of music" in advocating for a moratorium on offshore drilling in the vicinity of the military missi9on range.
..... "We've all been working together quite purposefully for many years, saying 'this is a critical asset we've got to protect,' " Sparks said. "We're very focused in advocating for the protecito9n of the military mission for the protecti0on of the military mission line. We don't want to see anything erected in the Gulf that impacts the mission."
..... Without saying as much, Sparks indicated that the presidential ban of offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf would provide more security for local military interest than would an executive order.
..... The Trump executive order basically protecting the range was welcome and applauded," he said. "but we knew an executive order can be undone by any incoming administration, so while we applauded we were leery."
..... Also joining the opposition to offshore drilling off the Emerald Coast are prominent businessman such as Ted Ent, CEO of Innisfree Hotels, a Gulf Breeze-based company that operates 24 waterfront rental proprieties. Ent said he grew up in Houston and spent his young life visiting beaches in Texas.
..... "I have a very vivid memory of the vestiges of offshore drilling, the tar balls and litter form the rigs," he said. "I can give firsthand testimony on the unintended consequences of offshore drilling."
..... The Eastern Gulf, Ent said, is world renowned for its white sand and the blue waters flowing over it to cerate the emerald green color from which northwest Florida derives its Emerald Coast moniker.
..... Ent said Innisfree Hotels management is not alone among tourist-dependent businesses serving as "a vocal opponent" of offshore drilling.
..... "Anything you do to later that is going to have a significant impact on the economies in northwest Florida," he said.
..... Hauserman called the essay she in company lobbyists 'Florida postcard."
..... Part of the essay reads: "The Panhandle sand is famous blindingly perfect, out of this world and in it. We are living the Florida postcard. Our kids toddle in the waves, make drip castles, chase gulls. Our grandparents sit under wide-brimming hats, listening to the surf. Our dogs dig ghost crabs under the full moon. Why on Earth would we gamble on wrecking a place where butterflies linger, where crabs skitter and dolphins prowl?"

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