Anything to make Trump’s efforts to govern more difficult.

From Bloomberg:

President Joe Biden is preparing to issue a decree permanently banning new offshore oil and gas development in some US coastal waters, locking in difficult-to-revoke protections for sensitive marine areas during his final weeks in the White House.

Biden is set within days to issue the executive order barring the sale of new drilling rights in portions of the country’s outer continental shelf, according to people familiar with the effort who asked not to be named because the decision isn’t public. 

First Biden auctions of border wall materials (that, thankfully, was blocked),now the White House is trying to prevent the country from accessing oil off the coast in an obvious, last minute swipe at President Donald Trump.

Unlike other executive actions that can be easily undone, Biden’s planned declaration is rooted in a 72-year-old law that gives the White House wide discretion to permanently protect US waters from oil and gas leasing without explicitly empowering presidents to revoke the designations.

The move responds to pressure from congressional Democrats and environmental groups who have lobbied Biden to “maximize permanent protections” against offshore drilling, arguing the action is essential to safeguard vulnerable coastal communities, protect marine ecosystems from oil spills and fight climate change.

 Biden is trying to permanently ban on offshore drilling that would require new leases in sensitive marine areas as a kind of hat-tip to environmentalists. However, The New York Times downplays the decree’s significance saying that it will not be as far-reaching as some Congressional Democrats had hoped.

The Institute for Energy Research recently revealed that Biden and environmentalists have implemented 250 ways for oil and gas production to be much harder. According to the IER report, not only were drilling leases on federal lands revoked, Blue states enacted a number of other restrictions, Biden issued numerous executive orders not only reversing Trump’s while implementing his own restrictions while signing a number of bills to do so. This on top of federal agencies (like the EPA) have been busily trying to put the brakes on fossil fuel availability too.

Though Trump will have his work cut out for him, but (hopefully) much of the roadblocks put in place by Biden can be quickly and easily undone by the next administration so that fossil fuel production and, more importantly, our economy can get going again.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay