Judith Enck, center, former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency addresses those gathered at a protest against President Trump's plan to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas in Albany, N.Y., on 15 February 2018. A U.S. judge in Alaska says President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed a ban on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean. Judge Sharon Gleason in a ruling late Friday, 29 March 2019 threw out Trump’s executive order that overturned the ban implemented by President Barack Obama. Photo: David Klepper / AP Photo
Judith Enck, center, former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency addresses those gathered at a protest against President Trump’s plan to expand offshore drilling for oil and gas in Albany, N.Y., on 15 February 2018. A U.S. judge in Alaska says President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed a ban on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean. Judge Sharon Gleason in a ruling late Friday, 29 March 2019 threw out Trump’s executive order that overturned the ban implemented by President Barack Obama. Photo: David Klepper / AP Photo

By Yereth Rosen; Editing by James Dalgleish
30 March 2019

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – 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 program, as Obama did, but only Congress has the power to add areas to the leasing program, 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 program to start this year. The five-year Trump leasing program would offer two lease sales a year in Arctic waters and at least two lease sales a year in the Atlantic. The Trump plan also calls for several lease sales in remote marine areas off Alaska, like the southern Bering Sea, that are considered to hold negligible potential for oil. [more]

U.S. judge scraps Trump order opening Arctic, Atlantic areas to oil leasing