President Joe Biden has banned future oil and gas drilling in more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean, including federal waters off Ventura County.
White House officials said the prohibition protects broad swaths of federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska. Included are nearly 250 million acres of water off the West Coast that are prime habitat for seals, sea lions, whales, fish and seabirds, the officials said.
Biden has determined the environmental and economic risks and harms that would result from drilling outweigh the potential for fossil fuel development, according to a White House statement issued Monday.
The ban has no expiration date. It applies to waters in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, which generally extends from 3 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles offshore. It does not affect current oil and gas drilling or waters under the state’s jurisdiction, which covers water within 3 nautical miles of shore.
The action comes two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is due to be inaugurated and is intended to head off widespread oil and gas exploration in the protected areas.
Twelve members of Congress wrote a letter to Biden in mid-November, asking him to permanently withdraw unleased and at-risk areas of the outer shelf from fossil fuel development.
They said a previous draft five-year plan published by then President Trump in 2018 called for opening more than 90% of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas leasing. Although it was stopped, the “risk to these vulnerable areas is now higher than ever — unless you enact permanent protections,” the letter says.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Goleta, one of the signers, said he had been pushing for the protections since he introduced the ban in 2017 in his first bill as a congressman.
“The Central Coast knows all too well the damage and devastation that can come from an oil spill,” Carbajal said, referring to the 1969 spill in the Santa Barbara Channel and the spill of more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil near Refugio State Beach in 2015.
Trump has already said he will reverse the ban. Opinion is divided over how easy that would be to do. Congress would have to change the law that Biden used to authorize the ban, said Ian Mariani, a spokesman for Carbajal.
The action could be reversed by Congress likely at the 11th-hour in a must-pass spending bill, according to Sean Anderson, professor of environmental science and resource management at CSU Channel Islands. He doubted the ban would have much impact for offshore California, where he said oil does not remain in any large amounts and much of the federal waters are already protected in a national marine sanctuary.
Representatives of the Western States Petroleum Association, which advocates for the oil industry, did not respond to a request for comment.
Kathleen Wilson covers courts, mental health and local government issues for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at kathleen.wilson@vcstar.com.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Biden bans new drilling in large area off county’s coast