[President Obama bans drilling in large parts of the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean]

Friday’s announcement by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, said the decision was based on several factors, including an earlier moratorium that closed the Atlantic to leases that allow companies to explore and drill for oil until 2022. There also were concerns that seismic testing could harm marine animals, particularly dolphins, porpoises and whales that use sonar to communicate and hunt for food, according to the agency.

“In the present circumstances and guided by an abundance of caution, we believe that the value of obtaining the geophysical and geological information from new air-gun seismic surveys in the Atlantic does not outweigh the potential risks of those surveys’ acoustic pulse impacts on marine life,” director Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement. “Since federal waters in the Mid- and South Atlantic have been removed from leasing consideration for the next five years, there is no immediate need for these surveys.”

The bureau asserted in the statement that any seismic tests conducted in the coming months “may become outdated if leasing is far in the future.” It added that the seismic technology might improve in the next few years to where it would have less impact on marine animals. The statement did not identify the oil and natural gas companies that were denied permits.

Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and gas industry, blasted the announcement, calling it “a politically driven decision that flies in the face of the best available science.” Wohlschlegel said bureau officials previously have called seismic surveys a safe and scientifically proven way to find energy sources.