President Joe Biden has invoked the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to forestall Donald Trump from allowing new oil and pure fuel leases. Offshore drilling in federal waters alongside the East and West coasts of the US, jap Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska are actually forbidden.
Biden boasted that this measure would shield 625 million acres of federal waters, however in actuality, this can be a last-ditch effort to forestall incoming President Donald Trump from reversing every part Biden did that made America depending on overseas vitality. “Joe Biden clearly wants high gas prices to be his legacy,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, posted on X.
This political stunt will price American jobs and trigger hassle for Trump, who has said that vitality independence is a prime precedence. “’Suspending leases in Alaska’s 1002 Area is in direct conflict with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, through which Congress mandates an oil and gas leasing program be established on the non-wilderness Coastal Plain, and ordered at least two lease sales by 2024.,” Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski said. “In addition, The Act specifically states that the purpose of the 1002 area of ANWR is oil and gas development. The oil and gas leasing program established by the Trump Administration meets the legal mandates required by Congress including imposing a framework with a range of environmental safeguards that are successfully guiding production elsewhere in northern Alaska.”
Utter pettiness as it’s clear why the president waited till the ultimate two weeks of his time period to invoke this order. The 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) prevents presidents from overturning such bans with out congressional motion. In 2019, throughout Trump’s first time period, a federal choose declared that presidents might not reverse such bans. Trump believes he has the best to “unban it immediately” on “day one” in workplace, however the legalities of OSCLA stay unclear.
Throughout his presidency, Biden almost depleted America’s petroleum reserves. He begged overseas nations to extend their provide as he pressured America to buy that oil at a markup. The struggle in Ukraine solely amplified the vitality disaster as international demand skyrocketed. But he refused to again away from the local weather change agenda even when that meant suffocating the American economic system.
Biden can pander to his Agenda 2030 local weather change supporters and vilify Trump additional by claiming he doesn’t care in regards to the atmosphere. Regardless of efforts regularly failing, Biden nonetheless believes that the US can attain a net-zero greenhouse fuel economic system by 2050. Demand has not waned, and America should import oil if it can’t derive its personal. Biden has spent his whole time period undermining the American economic system, starting with the vitality sector. He revoked the Keystone XL pipeline deal on day one, and on the eleventh hour, he’s marking his exit with one final blow to American vitality.
