Obama administration has drilling moratorium myopia

This moratorium makes zero sense. Why put a moratorium on companies with almost perfect safety records that use the more expensive drilling method to make the drills in deepwater safer? All anyone has to do is read about how many years it has taken Shell Oil to get their deepwater well, Perdido, to the production stage. Why should Shell or any other oil producer companies who have followed safety guidelines be penalized with a moratorium?

Is Obama trying to totally tank the Gulf Coast economy especially Louisiana? It is beginning to look like it as days go by. Maybe the oil workers should take up golfing and then they could talk to Obama on the golf course about what he is doing to the economy of Louisiana. Obama makes a few trips to the Gulf, bends down on the beach for photo ops and then goes away. In the meantime the Coast Guard stops barges skimming oil because they didn't have the necessary inspections or life jackets, or fire plan -- which was it? Different articles gave different reasons for the stops. Does the Coast Guard want the oil swept up or not?

Governor Jindal of Louisiana seems to be the ONLY Executive Government official who knows what he is doing because it is obvious that Obama and his Administration do not. Governor Jindal's in a press release detailed how the barge sweeping oil barges were put together by the Louisiana National Guard which the Coast Guard shut down for over 24 hours:

GRAND ISLE (June 9, 2010) - Today, Governor Bobby Jindal highlighted the Louisiana National Guard’s “Vacuum Barge” operations and called on the Coast Guard and BP to scale-up these efforts across the coast as another tool to fight the oil spill. The Governor traveled to East Grand Terre – near Grand Isle – to view one of the National Guard’s operations, where they have placed oil suction equipment on barges that can transport vacuum pumps into marsh areas to remove the oil. Governor Jindal emphasized the effectiveness of the operations and said these operations should be scaled up immediately across Louisiana’s coast.

Governor Jindal said, “Many times during our response to this ongoing oil spill, we have been frustrated by the slow pace of BP and the Coast Guard’s response efforts. We have been out to Pass a Loutre and East Grand Terre many times and we have still seen oil that we previously reported sitting on the beach or in the marsh. In fact, just last Thursday, we were in East Grand Terre – where we were again today – and we saw brown pelicans coated with oil. Thankfully, our department of Wildlife and Fisheries moved quickly to pick up the birds stuck in the oil out there and we had the Coast Guard report the oil impact, but much of that oil remained sitting on the beach when we returned Monday.

“Just like we did when we made our own booming plans and moved forward to do the work ourselves on sand booming segments, we took matters into our own hands again and recently asked that the Coast Guard approve a prototype of what we have called a Vacuum Barge to begin to suck up this oil ourselves.

Why has Obama and his Administration tried to obstruct Governer Jindal every step of the way? Why did they not immediately accept help from other countries and oil companies? Why did they allow BP to be in charge of clean-up when it is their responsibility? All legitimate questions with zero answers.

Did this President think his shake-down of BP for the $20B fund for clean-up and recovery was going to make this all go away. Yes we do believe it was a shake-down and since we are not running for office we can feel to say it. Guess he figured since he got the $20B from BP his job was over and back to the golf course he went while the CEO of BP went to a yachting race. All it took for them to have a clear conscience they had done everything was $20B in a fund for the Gulf. But wait, Bart Stupak (D-MI) is now wanting to tap that $20B for healthcare, and we are sure other Democrats see that $20B as a slush fund to use at will.

From Obama's initial lack of response to the explosion and spill, to ignoring the requests for approval of plans from Governor Jindal, and now to the moratorium on deep water drilling, it has shown that Obama and this Administration are either out of touch with reality or doing this slowdown on purpose for their own hidden agenda.

The economic and ecological disaster this BP explosion has caused in Louisiana is huge on top of their finally getting back on their feet after Katrina. Obama and his Adminiswtration are now ignoring how much the Louisiana economy depends on off-shore oil drilling. Since the oil companies have gone to deepwater to drill, jeven more people. Not only workers on the platforms are affected but all those people who do the logistics to provide the platforms with what they need to operate.

Penalizing companies that follow the rules with this moratorium smacks of an Administration that wants the United States dependent on foreign oil while harming our domestic oil production. We are left with no other explanation.

Obama administration has drilling moratorium myopia: An editorial
Published: Sunday, June 20, 2010, 6:16 AM
Manuel Torres, The Times-Picayune

Louisianians understand that deepwater drilling is central to our economy; we know that the jobs provided by this industry go far beyond those on the rigs themselves -- more than twice as many people in oil-related jobs earn their livings on tugboats and supply boats and in shipyards, helipads, catering kitchens and other places on shore.

It doesn't take an economist to see what shutting down the rigs for half a year will do to all those jobs and the people who hold them.

But President Barack Obama doesn't seem to get it. His administration fails to grasp how Louisiana's economy works or what the six-month halt to exploratory drilling that the White House has ordered will do to people who earn their living from this critical activity. Either that, or his administration is determined to disregard the economic annihilation that its shutdown will cause.

The announcement this week of a $100 million compensation fund for rig workers affected by the moratorium is striking proof of this administration's myopia. In all, 18,000 to 24,000 jobs related to the 30 shuttered rigs across the Gulf are in jeopardy from the drilling moratorium. But this fund, which BP agreed to provide, targets only 6,000 to 8,000 Gulf Coast residents who work on the rigs themselves. Those workers make an average of $2,400 a week, counting benefits, which means the fund could dry up in as little as six weeks, with months left before the moratorium ends.

According to the LSU Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana residents account for 3,339 of rig workers who are likely to lose their jobs, but another 7,656 Louisianians who work in jobs related to drilling also face likely layoffs. That's 10,955 people who stand to lose their source of income, joining the fishers, shrimpers, oyster harvesters, charter boat operators, seafood processors, restaurateurs and many others whose livelihoods have already succumbed to the oil spill.

The Obama administration succeeded in persuading BP to set up a $20 billion compensation fund for economic losses caused by this unprecedented disaster, and that's a crucial step toward ensuring our recovery from this environmental nightmare. But it remains unclear whether workers left in the lurch by the moratorium will be able to get help from this fund.

Nor will the damage end when the moratorium is over. The harsh reality is that many deepwater rigs are likely to abandon the Gulf of Mexico for places like Brazil and western Africa. After spending millions to move a rig, it's unlikely that a company will rush back to the Gulf. That leaves support workers with little prospect of getting their jobs back. Over half of rig workers could keep their jobs if they are willing to endure greater separations of time and distance from their families. But the rest won't be given that choice.

President Obama said that he stressed the plight of Gulf Coast families in a private conversation with BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

"A lot of these folks don't have a cushion,'' the president said he told the chairman. "They were coming off Rita and Katrina, coming off the worst economy that this country has seen since the Great Depression, and this season was going to be the season where they were going to be bouncing back.''

Understanding the human face of those affected by the oil spill is vital, and President Obama was right to make that point in his meeting with BP officials. But Louisiana and other Gulf Coast residents whose jobs are now imperiled by their own government's action deserve no less from the president. They, too, lived through the storms of 2005. They, too, have struggled through a tough economy. Moreover, workers in jobs that support drilling make less money than those who work on the rigs. Now they face the prospect of joblessness, and so far, all that most of them can count on when the pink slips arrive is an unemployment check from the state.

President Obama has not heeded the voices urging him to reconsider the scope of the moratorium. Those include engineering and oil industry experts consulted by the administration, who are calling the broad moratorium a mistake that could cause more harm to the economy than the spill itself. They had endorsed different steps such as a moratorium on new drilling permits. They suggested a briefer halt at existing rigs, so that safety tests could be conducted.

That's still a viable strategy. A more nuanced approach would be far wiser and more compassionate than the punishing shutdown that the White House has ordered.

President Obama also needs to show that he's willing to learn about Louisiana's economic underpinnings. He missed an opportunity when he failed to appoint someone with that kind of knowledge to the commission that is investigating the BP spill.

Louisianians also need clarity on whether the $20 billion compensation fund will encompass losses caused by the moratorium. The White House has said that it expects BP to pay all claims for lost wages related to the moratorium.

At the very least, Gulf Coast oil industry workers who are worried about how they will pay their bills without jobs should have the assurance that their losses will be treated no differently than those of their neighbors.

Source: NOLA.com