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Environmental groups applauded President Joe Biden’s decision on Monday to enact a sweeping ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline. But the ban had one glaring omission: It didn’t include the western Gulf of Mexico, where the country extracts most of its offshore oil.
Aimed at safeguarding the environment and easing the harm caused by climate change, the ban will prohibit future oil and gas leasing in federal waters off the East and West Coasts, in parts of the Bering Sea near Alaska and across the eastern portion of the Gulf. The exact boundaries haven’t been announced, but federal regulators generally define the eastern Gulf as the waters extending from the south tip of Florida to the Alabama line. That would leave the waters off Louisiana and Texas open to drilling.
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