January 22, 2025 — Donald Trump has been president for little more than a day, but his vision for the federal coastline is already clear: less wind, more oil.
One of Trump’s first actions after his inauguration Monday was to halt all new leases and permits for offshore wind projects and to direct the incoming Interior secretary to review existing permits to determine if they warrant “terminating or amending.”
He also issued an executive order that aims to revoke an eleventh-hour bid by the Biden administration to block offshore oil and gas drilling within 625 million acres of federal waters, including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic, the Pacific and most of the Bering Sea in Alaska.
But what Trump can and can’t do offshore could be limited by legal challenges — and political realities.
Questions remain about whether Trump can legally rescind Biden’s withdrawal of federal waters from oil and gas leasing, for example. At least one federal court has found that Congress would have to act to restore areas that a president has withdrawn under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.