*Updated 1/8/2025 with reaction from Gov. Henry McMaster
It’s the ban many environmentalists and small business owners in South Carolina have been begging for, a ban on new offshore and gas drilling in most of the country’s coastal waters.
President Joe Biden took executive action Monday to enact such a ban on 625 million acres of ocean.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage,” President Biden said in a statement.
“It is not worth the risks,” he added.
The ban includes the entire eastern seaboard, parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, as well as the coasts of California, Washington and Oregon.
Environmentalists are elated.
“There has been almost unified opposition to offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast since it was first proposed,” says Megan Huynh with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
“The decision will mean preservation of our coast’s communities, economies, and the coastal places we hold dear.”
South Carolina Small Business Chambers CEO and President Frank Knapp says many business owners have long been opposed to drilling along the coast.
“Oil exploration and drilling were a severe threat to the small business tourism and commercial fishing economy, not only of our state but the entire East Coast,” says Knapp.
Meantime, President-elect Donald Trump whose campaign refrain was “drill baby drill” is vowing to reverse the ban as soon as he takes office on Jan. 20th.
“It’s ridiculous. I will unban it immediately,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Monday.
“We have oil and gas at a level nobody else has and we’re going to take advantage of it,” Trump said.
But dismantling the new ban could prove difficult as it would take an act of Congress to repeal.
Trump's stance is reversal from 2020 when just before the presidential election, he expanded a ban on new offshore drilling along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina from July 2022 until July 2032.
“This protects your beautiful gulf and your beautiful ocean, and it will for a long time to come,” Trump said then.
Meantime, Gov. Henry McMaster says he still supports keeping drilling off the coast of South Carolina and if necessary, he would once again ask Trump to exempt this state.
But McMaster added, regardless of what the federal government does, South Carolina's coast is protected.
"We took action last year and the year before, where we will not issue, as is now state law, any permits for any operations connected with offshore drilling in South Carolina."
Along the Atlantic, more than 200 coastal communities have passed resolutions opposing offshore drilling. The issue even helped tilt South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in 2018 when a Democrat, Joe Cunningham, flipped the seat with his opposition. Now Republican Nancy Mace represents the coastal district and has said, she too is against offshore drilling.
