Looking to cement his environmental record, President Barack Obama plans to take new action as early as Tuesday barring offshore drilling in areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, a person familiar with his decision said.
Obama is relying on a 64-year-old law to make his moves, which would prevent future leasing of certain offshore areas for oil rights. His successor Donald Trump, who has promised a policy allowing more US energy production, would face legal challenges if he attempted to reverse Obama’s order, which has little precedent.
The White House declined to comment on the story late Monday. Bloomberg first reported Obama’s planned moves.
In his time in office, Obama has used executive actions to put restrictions on new leases in the waters surrounding the United States, including in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic oceans. His administration decided last month against allowing new leases for certain areas in the Arctic for the next five years.
But the moves that were previewed for Tuesday would move substantially beyond those restrictions, preventing any future president from taking swift action to reopen oil exploration in restricted areas.
The law, the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, allows presidents to withdraw lands from future leasing. It’s been used by past administrations to restrict oil exploration on the West and East coasts, though each time the ban on leases was given an expiration date.
Obama’s previous moves barring new leases in the Arctic and Atlantic could be reversed when Trump takes office and his new administration issues new plans for drilling. The planned moves Tuesday, however, would be more difficult to reverse since they would be implemented using a law and not executive action.
Environmental groups have lobbied Obama to take decisive action that would prevent further oil drilling in the Arctic, arguing the risks of spills and leaks are too high. Oil companies, meanwhile, insist the estimated 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas underneath the surface there could provide a boon to US energy production.
Obama’s environmental legacy faces an uncertain future under Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax and vowed to remove the US from the international Paris climate accord.
Trump has nominated strong conservatives to head key environmental agencies, including Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt — a climate change denier — as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But he’s also been open to greener perspectives, meeting with former Vice President Al Gore and tapping daughter Ivanka Trump to lead his climate agenda.