Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Frank Pallone plan to sponsor legislation that would ban offshore oil and natural gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean, the New Jersey lawmakers said on Monday, according to the Hill.

The two Democrats made their announcement on the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the industry.

Menendez urged lawmakers to consider what "devastation" a potential spill in the Atlantic could cause along the entire East Coast of the United States.

"I am looking forward to re-introducing this Senate bill to ban Atlantic offshore drilling in an effort to not only protect the Garden State's economy," he said, "but to guarantee a healthier and happier future for all East Coast (residents)."

Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, meanwhile, noted that even if the the Deepwater Horizon explosion had never happened, offshore drilling in the Atlantic should long have been considered "completely off the table."

"However, (the incident) does remind us of the detrimental and lasting environmental and economic damage that can be done by an oil spill," he added, "and that the technology does not exist to safely drill for oil offshore."

Their proposed legislation puts the Democratic lawmakers at odds with President Barack Obama, whose administration is weighing auctioning drilling rights in the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere between Virginia and Georgia, the Hill noted.

The Interior Department program for 2017-22 would sell leases to drill for oil and gas in 14 new sites, including one in the Atlantic, NJ.com detailed. The remaining locations would be in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska.

Menendez and fellow New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have been outspoken in their opposition to Obama's proposal, while Virginia's two Democratic senators support it along with their Republican colleagues from Georgia and the Carolinas, the website added.

"Offshore energy exploration can be an opportunity to diversify the economy and create jobs in the mid- and south-Atlantic region, as well as a means to lessen our national reliance on foreign sources of energy," the group of eight senators recently wrote to the Senate Energy Committee.