President Joe Biden has ordered some 625 million acres of ocean—along America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea—be protected from environmental and economic risks and harms by eliminating any new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline.

Biden will use an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), which gives the president the power to indefinitely withdraw unleased lands from the outer continental shelf. This move is in response to overwhelming support by the public*, environmentalists and scientists. Read Biden’s memorandum 1 HERE and memorandum 2 HERE.