US President Joe Biden has announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of America's coastline, weeks before Donald Trump takes office, APA reports citing BBC.
The ban covers the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.
It is the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions by the Biden administration ahead of Trump's return to the White House.
During his campaign, Trump pledged to "unleash" domestic fossil fuel production in a bid to lower gas costs, despite the US already seeing record high extraction rates.
Biden said in a statement: "My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs.
"It is not worth the risks."
Biden is taking the action under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which allows presidents to withdraw areas from mineral leasing and drilling.
Trump has pledged to reverse Biden's conservation and climate change policies when he takes office later this month. However, the law does not grant presidents the legal authority to overturn prior bans, according to a 2019 court ruling. It also does not allow presidents to revoke any areas already leased for offshore drilling.
Trump - despite being in favour of more oil and gas exploration and repeatedly deploying his tag line "Drill, baby, drill" during campaigning - has used the law himself to protect waters off the coast of Florida in 2020.
At the time, this was seen as an effort to garner votes from the state ahead of the 2020 US election, and the protection was due to expire in 2032. Biden's decision will protect the same area with no expiry date.
The new offshore drilling ban covers more than 625 million acres (253 million hectares) of waters.
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