Trump reacts during a news conference after his summit with Kim, at the JW Marriott Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam on Feb 28, 2019. – Reuters
ANCHORAGE, Alaska: A federal judge in Alaska has overturned U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to open vast areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas leasing.
The decision issued late Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason leaves intact President Barack Obama’s policies putting the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea, part of the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea and a large swath of Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. East Coast off-limits to oil leasing.
Trump's attempt to undo Obama’s protections was “unlawful” and a violation of the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Gleason ruled.
Presidents have the power under that law to withdraw areas from the national oil and gas leasing programme, as Obama did, but only Congress has the power to add areas to the leasing programme, she said.
The Obama-imposed leasing prohibitions “will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress,” Gleason said in her ruling.
Trump’s move to put offshore Arctic and Atlantic areas back into play for oil development came in a 2017 executive order that was part of his “energy dominance” agenda. The order was among a series of actions that jettisoned Obama administration environmental and climate-change initiatives.
The Trump administration has proposed a vastly expanded offshore oil leasing programme to start this year. The five-year Trump leasing programme would offer two lease sales a year in Arctic waters and at least two lease sales a year in the Atlantic.
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