It appears as though Joe Biden, or perhaps his handlers, have adopted a scorched earth policy in the dying days of his presidency. In a riposte to Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra, the outgoing president has banned offshore drilling across several coastal areas of the US. The ban covers nearly 0.98mn square miles, and includes the entire Atlantic coast and the eastern expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.
Whether or not the incoming Trump administration will be able to overturn the decision is anyone’s guess, but it may not have an immediate impact on the oil & gas industry because there are no outstanding prospects in the zones covered by the ban. It does, however, bookend Biden's tenure in The White House given that one of his first executive orders was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
And in another disputed end-of-term move, the Biden administration has blocked the proposed $14.9bn (£11.9bn) takeover of US Steel (US:X) by Japanese rival Nippon Steel (JP:5401). The move had been widely foreshadowed, thereby providing both offeror and offeree plenty of time to review their legal options based on the charge that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US failed to conduct a “good faith, national security-focused regulatory review process”.