US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Sept. 8 banning offshore oil and gas drilling in federal waters off Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, a move seen as shoring up support in the states ahead of the November election.
The moratorium runs from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2032, according to text of the order released by the White House.
The states have long shunned oil and gas development off their coasts to protect their beach-focused tourism industries.
Florida and South Carolina are considered key swing states needed to win the presidential race.
"With fracking, the shale revolution and the tremendous surge in energy production, we're showing that we can create jobs, safeguard the environment and keep energy prices low for Americans," Trump said during a speech on his environmental policies in Jupiter, Florida.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic challenger, has promised to halt issuing new drilling permits on federal lands and waters.
The policy could cut US oil production by up to 2 million b/d by 2025, with the offshore Gulf of Mexico and New Mexico's Delaware Basin taking the biggest hits, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics.
Trump's latest executive order represents an about-face on the issue of developing oil and gas resources off parts of the Atlantic Coast.
In January 2018, the Interior Department issued a draft 2019-24 leasing plan that would have opened nearly all federal waters to oil and gas drilling: 19 sales in federal waters offshore Alaska, 12 in the Gulf of Mexico, nine in the Atlantic and seven in Pacific waters offshore the West Coast.
A federal judge's ruling and opposition from coastal lawmakers later stopped the plan.
Shortly after the draft proposal was unveiled, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that Florida waters would be left out of the plan, although he never offered any specifics on this, and Interior officials repeatedly claimed that Florida waters technically remained in the proposal.
The proposal would have replaced the Obama administration's final program lease sale, which included only 10 sales in the Gulf of Mexico and one in Alaska's Cook Inlet.
In March 2019, a US district judge in Alaska ruled that a permanent ban on drilling in about 115 million acres of the US Arctic Ocean and 3.8 million acres in the north and mid-Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast "will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress."
The National Ocean Industries Association, a trade group for offshore producers, said the sector produces oil and gas with a smaller footprint than other regions. It said banning development defers future production to countries like Russia and Iran.
