Trump rants about Biden’s offshore 625 million acre drilling ban, ‘That’s like the whole ocean!’ (It’s just 2 percent)
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The President-elect’s math was off by large margin during latest wild press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump ranted about Joe Biden’s 625 million acre offshore drilling ban in the Atlantic and wrongly claimed it covered almost “the whole ocean.”.
![[625 million acres is only around two percent of 26.3 billion acres, not quite the ‘whole ocean’ as the President-elect claimed.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/07/17/AP25007612972990.jpg)
“Take an acre, you have a house on a half-acre or a quarter-acre, or an acre, you have a big deal,” the President-elect exclaimed during a wild press conference on Tuesday. “Now you multiply that by 625 million acres. That’s like... it feels like the whole ocean!”.
However, Trump’s math was off by some margin. According to National Geographic, the Atlantic Ocean covers just over 41 million square miles – which is the equivalent of around 26.3 billion acres. Those 625 million acres represent only around two percent of 26.3 billion acres – not quite the “whole ocean” as Trump claimed.
It comes after Biden, whose term expires in two weeks, used his authority under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect offshore areas along the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from future oil and natural gas leasing.
Around 625 million acres of federal waters were withdrawn from energy exploration by the president in a move that may require an act of Congress to undo. Trump has previously vowed to swiftly undo Biden’s ban, as well as numerous other policies. “I’m going to put it back on day one," Trump previously told reporters at his private club in Florida, pledging to take it to the courts “if we need to.".
