On the same day Congress voted to certify Donald Trump’s presidential victory, President Joe Biden invoked his presidential powers to withdraw 625 million acres of offshore coastal lands from the possibility of new oil leasing. In so doing, Biden cited the possibility of future oil spills and the specter of sea level rise — and the damage that would inflict on communities along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, not to mention the Gulf of Mexico — triggered by climate change.
Trump wasted no time castigating Biden’s action, calling it “ridiculous” and vowing to undue it “immediately” and on “Day One.” Trump sought to undo an identical action undertaken by former President Barack Obama in 2017, but a federal court ruled that future presidents do not have the legal authority to reverse such actions based on fine print included in the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Only Congress has that authority, the federal judge ruled. Currently, Republicans enjoy a one-vote majority in Congress. Such bans typically enjoy broad bipartisan support from many of the affected local communities and in the past, many Republican representatives — as well as Democrats — have supported such leasing bans. In fact, Trump himself availed himself of this law to ban further oil leasing in federal waters off the coast of Florida.
Santa Barbara’s Congressmember Salud Carbajal was one of 12 members of Congress to sign a November 15 letter to President Biden urging that he take this action. That letter urged Biden to “cement your legacy as the nation’s greatest climate change president” by withdrawing these federal waters from possible oil leasing.
The last time any federal waters off the coast of Southern California were leased to an oil company happened in 1984. There is no active oil drilling or exploration now taking place in any of the 625 million acres declared off-limits by President Biden.
Although the action has absolutely no legal or direct bearing upon Sable Offshore’s proposal to reactivate ExxonMobil’s former plant along the Gaviota Coast — shut down for the past 10 years — environmental activists opposing Sable’s proposal have said Biden’s action still helps them. By removing all the Pacific Coast from the prospect of new leasing and all the political and legal battles that would trigger, Linda Krop of the Environmental Defense Center said Biden has helped crystallize the battle lines over Sable. Without any leasing battles, Krop said, there are no other sites off the Pacific Coast where new oil operations are likely to sprout. “It’s all right here,” she said.
Sable — and the industry at large — have argued that oil should be produced more cleanly and with less environmental risk off the heavily regulated coast of California than in third-world oil-producing nations and then transported by tanker to California. Sable Spokesperson Alice Walton commented succinctly, “President Biden’s proclamation does not affect Sable’s operations.”
