WaPo: Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans

[Virginiá]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/20/president-obama-expected-to-ban-oil-drilling-in-large-areas-of-atlantic-and-arctic-oceans/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_drilling-220pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.edcc2e4ed339

You must be logged in to read this quote.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

My bet is Trump's administration will probably try to rescind it the same way, in which case I'm sure will be litigated extensively. Kudos to Barry!

[Hermit For Peace]

Yay Obama. We do need to respect our "home".

[FDRfan1985]

FF.

[JJC]

lol.

[Santander]

Sad to see him trying to find any way to make a legacy for himself at the end of his failed presidency.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I'd be okay with this if we actually had some great plan to expand renewable usage to make up for the loss in potential oil. But since we elected a fossil-fuel guy, we're clearly not moving on renewables anytime soon, so this was the wrong action to take. Obama wants a legacy, I get that, but he may have just put the country in a very tough spot down the line if the action cannot be reversed.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Trump wont care. He will get his oil from Iraq and Iran.

Trump is a populist and mining and oil and gas are not seen as very attractive in the USA.

They could barely get permission to get their pipelines in.

Oil is very cheap now.

[Wiz in Wis]

Sad to see him trying to find any way to make a legacy for himself at the end of his failed presidency.

In 200 years, if we still have a civilization, Barack Obama will be in every US history book, right along with Washington and Lincoln. That legacy is secure, historic, and unprecedented. Deal with it.

[Sir Mohamed]

Good decision, thank you Mr. President. I will really miss you.

[Torie]

I don't get the one way action. That should be tested in court. One way action, means the executive is literally making law. Even if that is what the law said, it arguably violates the separation of powers clause.

[Santander]

Sad to see him trying to find any way to make a legacy for himself at the end of his failed presidency.

In 200 years, if we still have a civilization, Barack Obama will be in every US history book, right along with Washington and Lincoln. That legacy is secure, historic, and unprecedented. Deal with it.

He will be in every US history book along with Washington and Lincoln by virtue of having held the same office as them.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Well, it's going to court, because The Donald will be voiding it in spite of suggestions that he can't. 

[Beet]

I don't get the one way action. That should be tested in court. One way action, means the executive is literally making law. Even if that is what the law said, it arguably violates the separation of powers clause.

This. I have mixed feelings about the actual order, but Obama's propensity to try and achieve legislative goals by executive action since his re-election signals a troubling loss of faith in the branches of government, as well as successive administrations, working together. If it was a Republican president with a Democratic Congress, liberals would be complaining.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

FF move in the Arctic, HP move in the Atlantic.

[Xing]

I don't get the one way action. That should be tested in court. One way action, means the executive is literally making law. Even if that is what the law said, it arguably violates the separation of powers clause.

This. I have mixed feelings about the actual order, but Obama's propensity to try and achieve legislative goals by executive action since his re-election signals a troubling loss of faith in the branches of government, as well as successive administrations, working together. If it was a Republican president with a Democratic Congress, liberals would be complaining.

I agree to an extent, but the hypocrisy goes both ways, since conservatives would likely applaud executive actions made by a Republican president, especially if they were in response to obstruction by Democrats in Congress.

[SteveRogers]

I don't get the one way action. That should be tested in court. One way action, means the executive is literally making law. Even if that is what the law said, it arguably violates the separation of powers clause.

This. I have mixed feelings about the actual order, but Obama's propensity to try and achieve legislative goals by executive action since his re-election signals a troubling loss of faith in the branches of government, as well as successive administrations, working together. If it was a Republican president with a Democratic Congress, liberals would be complaining.

But here Obama isn't acting by executive order. He's acting pursuant to an act of Congress that gives the President authority to make these determinations. He's not "making law" because congress already made a law that lets the president decide which of these federal lands are and are not open for drilling. That doesn't violate separation of powers under any precedent that I can think of offhand. Obviously congress could pass a new law reversing the decision, its just that Trump can't do so on his own.

[Shadows]

President Barack Obama on Tuesday moved to indefinitely block drilling in vast swaths of U.S. waters. The president had been expected to take the action by invoking a provision in a 1953 law that  governs offshore leases, as CNBC previously reported.

The law allows a president to withdraw any currently unleased lands in the Outer Continental Shelf from future lease sales. There is no provision in the law that allows the executive's successor to repeal the decision, so President-elect Donald Trump would not be able to easily brush aside the action.

The lands covered include the bulk of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic and 31 underwater canyons in the Atlantic. The United States and Canada also announced they will identify sustainable shipping lanes through their connected Arctic waters. Canada on Tuesday also imposed a five-year ban on all oil and gas drilling licensing in the Canadian Arctic. The moratorium will be reviewed every five years.

Source - CNBC