President-elect Donald Trump said he will quickly reverse a last-minute ban on offshore oil and gas drilling imposed Monday by the Biden administration.

Mr. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, rejected President Biden’s 11th-hour move to block drilling and natural gas leasing in more than 625 million acres of U.S. ocean waters, including the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska.

“It’s ridiculous. I’ll un-ban it immediately,” Mr. Trump said on the Hugh Hewitt radio program Monday.

In a statement from the White House, the prohibitions were justified as a move to protect coastal communities from “the environmental and economic risks and harms from drilling,” such as oil spills.

The risks of drilling and oil exploration, White House officials said, outweigh “their limited fossil fuel resource potential.”

Mr. Biden issued two presidential memoranda to impose the ban under Section 12 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. It adds to drilling bans he imposed earlier in his administration in parts of the North Bering Sea and Arctic’s Beaufort Sea.

The White House statement boasted of the administration’s sweeping actions to end offshore drilling, but it is all headed for a swift reversal under Mr. Trump, who pledged to jumpstart America’s energy production as soon as he steps into the Oval Office.

“It will be more by the time we finish because I’ll be able to expand,” Mr. Trump pledged. “We will have oil and gas at a level that nobody else has and we are going to take advantage of it.”

• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.