US District Court rules Biden offshore drilling ban illegal
Former President Joe Biden exceeded his authority by withdrawing large areas along US coastlines from future offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled last Thursday.
US District Court Judge James Cain sided with Republican states and oil and gas industry groups that sued to block Biden’s move to protect all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska. Biden had ordered the ban to remain in effect “for a period of time without specific expiration.”
Biden, on one of his final days in office, used his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw the areas. Weeks later, President Donald Trump signed an executive order repealing that effort.
The order was immediately challenged in court by the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia and Mississippi, as well as the American Petroleum Institute and the Gulf Energy Alliance.
President Donald Trump rescinded the withdrawal upon taking office on Jan. 20, a move that has been challenged by environmental groups.
Cain ruled that Biden’s withdrawal was illegal because it was intended to be permanent, and said withdrawals by former President Barack Obama were also illegal. Cain presides in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
In his ruling, Cain said that while other presidents in the past have sought to protect offshore waters, only Biden and Obama sought to make the protections permanent. He said the federal Outer Continental Lands Act used by the two to order the withdrawals “establishes that withdrawals must be subject to reversal or modification.”
Cain further added: “To the extent these were indeed supposed to overcome the power of subsequent executives to revoke or modify their withdrawals, they constituted a departure from the executive branch’s longstanding practice and exceed the authority granted under (section 12(a) of OCSLA).”
About the Author
Bruce Beaubouef
Managing Editor
Bruce Beaubouef is Managing Editor for Offshore magazine. In that capacity, he plans and oversees content for the magazine; writes features on technologies and trends for the magazine; writes news updates for the website; creates and moderates topical webinars; and creates videos that focus on offshore oil and gas and renewable energies. Beaubouef has been in the oil and gas trade media for 25 years, starting out as Editor of Hart’s Pipeline Digest in 1998. From there, he went on to serve as Associate Editor for Pipe Line and Gas Industry for Gulf Publishing for four years before rejoining Hart Publications as Editor of PipeLine and Gas Technology in 2003. He joined Offshore magazine as Managing Editor in 2010, at that time owned by PennWell Corp. Beaubouef earned his Ph.D. at the University of Houston in 1997, and his dissertation was published in book form by Texas A&M University Press in September 2007 as The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: U.S. Energy Security and Oil Politics, 1975-2005.