Obama bans new oil and gas drilling in areas of the Atlantic and Arctic

President Obama in Alaska.
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

President Obama announced Tuesday he has indefinitely blocked offshore drilling along most of Alaska's coast and from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Canadian border.

Obama is rushing to protect his environmental policies before he leaves office in January, and he used an obscure provision of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to enact the ban, saying it gave him the authority to act unilaterally, The New York Times reports. Drilling is now banned in 115 million acres of federally owned Arctic waters, home to endangered species like polar bears, as well as 3.8 million acres along the Atlantic Coast, protecting coral canyons.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.