US President Donald Trump revoked offshore oil and gas leasing bans that effectively blocked drilling in most US coastal waters as he made sweeping moves his first hours in office to unleash American energy development.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday repealing former President Joe Biden's efforts to block oil drilling in the Arctic and along large areas off the U.S. coasts, according to the White House.

President Biden has permanently placed off limits significant portions of the country's outer continental shelf from future energy drilling activity.

The order is one of several energy-related executive actions Donald Trump will take as soon as he is sworn into office.

President Donald Trump's expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaska's economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate.

An executive order signed Monday by President Donald Trump reversed a swath of Biden administration moves in the state.

So we’re opening up ANWR,” Trump said at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. The order calls for new leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and much more. It covers nearly every major land-use controversy in Alaska this century.

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump in the first hours of his second term reversed Biden administration orders that restricted oil and gas development in Alaska.