Attorney General Liz Murrill is challenging President Joe Biden’s ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling—an action she calls “blatantly illegal”—even though it doesn’t apply to federal waters off Louisiana’s coast, Louisiana Illuminator reports.
Through executive orders put in place on his way out of office on Jan. 6, Biden extended a prohibition for new wells on 625 acres of ocean bottom, stretching over the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s northern Bering Sea. That action built upon a ban that President Donald Trump put in place off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina five years ago.
Murrill filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block Biden’s ban from taking effect immediately through an injunction while she seeks to have it permanently thrown out in federal court. Attorneys general from four other states have joined as plaintiffs so far.
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