In a policy about-face, President Trump extended a moratorium on oil and natural gas development in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and expanded the ban to the Atlantic coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

Gulf production

The president, speaking Tuesday in Jupiter, FL, near his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, threw a political bone to voters in a battleground state ahead of the Nov. 3 election, analysts said. In doing so, however, he also perplexed an energy industry that had embraced the administration’s prior support for offshore drilling.

Trump has signed an order that continues the GOM moratorium for 10 years beyond its previously scheduled expiration in 2022 and adds the additional territory from 2022 through 2032. Congress first initiated the eastern GOM moratorium in 2006,...