CNN
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President Joe Biden announced an executive action Monday that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in a way that will be particularly difficult for the new Trump administration to reverse could.

Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of U.S. marine lands. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and parts of Alaska’s northern Bering Sea.

“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses and beachgoers have long known: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we care about and that it is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” said Biden in a statement. “It’s not worth the risk.”

The action, reported by CNN on Friday, invokes the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, a law that gives presidents broad authority to exclude federal waters from future oil and gas leases and development.

The law does not give presidents explicit authority to repeal the measure and return federal waters to development, meaning President-elect Donald Trump would have to get Congress to change it before he could reverse Biden’s move.

Still, Trump said in an interview on Monday that he would try to reverse the action.

“Look, it’s ridiculous. “I’m going to rescind it immediately,” Trump said in a radio interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

As Biden’s presidency draws to a close, environmental and climate groups have advocated for him to withdraw areas off the eastern Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, giving the areas permanent protection from future drilling. The move would protect against future oil spills and prevent fossil fuels from adding to the warming of the planet.

“President Biden’s new protections add to this bipartisan story, including President Trump’s previous withdrawals in the southeastern United States in 2020,” Joseph Gordon, campaign manager at Oceana, said in a statement. “Our valued coastal communities are now protected for future generations.”

Despite a friendly stance toward the oil and gas industry, Trump has also tried to ban offshore drilling as president. After proposing a significant expansion of offshore drilling early in his first term, Trump in 2020 extended the ban on future oil drilling in the Eastern Gulf, expanding it to include the Atlantic coasts of three states: Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Still, Trump’s new press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, criticized the decision, writing in a post on “Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail and we will drill, baby, drill.”

The oil industry also protested the executive actions.

“President Biden’s decision to ban new offshore oil and gas development across approximately 625 million acres of U.S. coastal and offshore waters is significant and catastrophic,” said Ron Neal, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of Offshore Committee America, in a statement. “It represents a serious attack on the oil and natural gas industry.”

Neal said the ban would significantly limit the industry’s potential for future oil and gas exploration in new areas and harm the industry’s long-term viability.

But Biden noted in his statement that protecting coastlines from offshore drilling has bipartisan support.

“From California to Florida, Republican and Democratic governors, members of Congress and coastal communities alike have worked and called for stronger protection of our oceans and coasts from the damage that offshore oil and natural gas drilling can bring,” Biden said.

He argued that the ban he imposed after the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 would help prevent similar environmental disasters from happening again.

“Every president of this century has recognized that some areas of the ocean are simply too risky or sensitive for drilling,” Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation for land, wildlife and oceans at Earthjustice, said in a statement Friday.

Biden’s move was first reported by Bloomberg.

Energy analysts told CNN the move won’t make much of a difference in U.S. oil production, which has set new records under Biden.

It is “not particularly consequential for future exploration and production in the U.S.,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said Friday. Kloza noted that there are already numerous offshore rigs pumping oil in the Gulf of Mexico, adding that it typically takes six to eight years for offshore projects to come online.

“I don’t see any real impact on U.S. supply, exports and imports,” Kloza said.

Biden agreed, arguing in his statement that protecting the environment and coastlines will help local economies thrive.

“We don’t have to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between maintaining healthy oceans, the resilience of our coasts and the security of the food they produce, and maintaining low energy prices,” Biden said. “These are wrong decisions.”

Nevertheless, the American Petroleum Institute criticized Biden’s decision.

“American voters have sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement that it has done everything possible to restrict it,” said API CEO Mike Sommers , in a statement. “We urge policymakers to use every tool at their disposal to reverse this politically motivated decision and restore a pro-American energy approach to federal leasing.”

In a separate announcement, the Biden administration is expected to declare two new national monuments in California next week, a source familiar with the planning told CNN.

Biden will build Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California near Joshua Tree National Park and Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California, the source said. Local tribes have actively pushed the government to protect the land from energy development.

As president, Biden has so far preserved or expanded ten national monuments.