US President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced what he called a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic Seaboard as he tried to nail down an environmental legacy that cannot quickly be reversed by US president-elect Donald Trump.
Obama invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he said gives him the authority to act unilaterally.
While some presidents have used that law to temporarily protect smaller portions of federal waters, Obama’s declaration of a permanent drilling ban on portions of the ocean floor from Virginia to Maine and along much of Alaska’s coast is breaking new ground.
The declaration’s fate will almost certainly be decided by US federal courts.
“It’s never been done before,” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School.
“There is no case law on this. It’s uncharted waters,” he said.
The move — considered creative by supporters and abusive by opponents — is one of many efforts by Obama to protect what environmental policies he can from a successor who has vowed to roll them back.
The president, in concert with UN leaders, rushed countries to ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change, putting the multinational accord into force in record time, before Trump’s inauguration.
The announcement made on Tuesday would ban drilling in about 98 percent of federally owned Arctic waters, or about 46.5 million hectares.
It would also block drilling off the Atlantic Coast near a series of coral canyons in 1.5 million hectares stretching from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Canadian border.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau simultaneously announced a ban on new drilling in Canadian Arctic waters.
“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on Earth,” Obama said in a statement.
Trump has said climate change is a hoax and has criticized Obama’s environmental regulations as job-killers.
He has promised to make fossil-fuel mining and drilling across the US a central feature of his economic program.
As such, he is not likely to let Obama’s drilling ban go unchallenged.
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