He's only got a few weeks left to damage America's energy independence. Obama needs to work fast, and he is. Ever the creative one, Obama has found a way to twist the original intent of a law passed in 1953 to enact bans on offshore drilling in massive sections of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The law was never intended to facilitate any such action, as The Hill explains, but since when does Obama consider himself constrained by the law?
Obama will use a section of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to implement the protections, Bloomberg and The New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the plans.
It’s unclear, however, how large Obama’s protected areas will be.
The action would answer calls from environmentalists to implement so-called 12(a) protections in the Atlantic and Arctic as a more lasting legacy against fossil fuels from Obama.
Obama last month made final a plan for offshore drilling lease sales from 2017 to 2022 that excludes the Atlantic and Arctic.
But that plan’s time period is limited, and President-elect Donald Trump can revise the plan to insert lease sales if he wishes.
Previous presidents have used the 1953 law rarely. In each case, they focused on small areas of water and set time limits in an effort to protect particular species.
It’s unclear how easily Trump can undo the protections, since no previous president has tried to roll back a predecessor’s actions under that law. Congress may also step in to undo Obama’s actions.
Classic act of recklessness on Obama's part - applying a law beyond all recognition of its original intent
This is a classic act of recklessness on Obama's part - applying a law beyond all recognition of its original intent, and telling American oil companies they can't explore gigantic portions of the world. Just because he's Barack Obama and he hates fossil fuels. He also leave a mess for Donald Trump to try to clean up, if he can.
Can he?
Maybe. The most effective way for Trump to reverse Obama's heading-out-the-door finger in the eye to America's oil industry, if not necessarily the simplest, would be to ask Congress to make an amendment to the law, essentially nullifying Obama's actions. He could also amend Obama's drilling lease plan for the period of 2017-2022 by adding more leases, conceivably in the areas of the Atlantic and Arctic where Obama is trying to ban them.
What Trump might try to do instead is simply declare that Obama's action under the law is null and void at the executive level, and substitute his own. It's not clear how much force of law Obama's action has, although it's not purely an executive order because he did take the action under an existing statute - albeit very far afield from the original intent of the statute.
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Obama shows us once again that his priority above all else is the service of a left-wing ideological agenda
I suspect that if Trump simply tries to reverse Obama's actions unilaterally, there will be political resistance but no real constituency with an avenue to effectively prevent Trump's action.
There is some luxury of time here, because at the moment most American oil companies who engage in offshore drilling do so almost exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico. Offshore drilling in the Pacific has also been made very difficult by political resistance, and that could also be a challenge for Trump's new EPA.
In the meantime, Obama shows us once again that his priority above all else is the service of a left-wing ideological agenda. If he wanted to enact this ban at any point during his presidency, he could have done so and dealt with the political blowback. Instead, he waited until the final weeks of his presidency so he could lay this trap for his successor, and for the nation, to deal with.
As relieved as we are that we will never have to talk about President Hillary, the end of President Obama can't come soon enough either.
