Slashdot Mirror
Louisiana Federal Judge Blocks Drilling Moratorium
eldavojohn writes "In the ongoing BP debacle, the Obama administration imposed a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling and a halt to 33 exploratory wells going into the Gulf of Mexico. Now a federal judge (in New Orleans, no less) is unsatisfied with the reasons for this and stated, 'An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country.' The state's governor agrees on the grounds that blocking drilling will cost the state thousands of lucrative jobs." The government quickly vowed to appeal, pointing out that a moratorium on 33 wells is unlikely to have a devastating impact in a region hosting 3,600 active wells. And reader thomst adds this insight on the judge involved in the case: "Yahoo's Newsroom is reporting that the judge who overturned the drilling moratorium holds stock in drilling companies. You can view his financial disclosure forms listing his stock holdings online at Judicial Watch (PDF)."
The idea was to hit the "pause" button on 33 new wells while we figure out why the new-well drilling at Deepwater went so wrong.
There are still 3300+ wells operating in the Gulf which were unaffected by the moratorium.
Do you think that six months of wait on 1/100th of the Gulf wells will destroy the economy?
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I honestly don't think this will be much of an issue. You've seen what happened to BP. If you're a deep water drilling company and you don't have all your ducks in a row after that, you're an idiot. So Obama's reasoning for the moratorium, until the safety measures can be re-evaluated, is redundant because these companies had better be at the forefront of responsibility without further external incentives.
Kind of like how Ford, GM, and Honda were probably double and triple checking their acceleration systems after Toyota's little stint in the headlines recently.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I have no problem with this ruling, seeing as the agency concerned has no evidence to show that what happened with the problematic rig is likely to happen, with any sort of likelihood, on any other rig.
This is the opposite of insightful.
The event on the problematic rig was highly unlikely to happen, but when it did happen there was no way to recover. It's still leaking now - two months later. Claiming that lightning won't strike twice is not an intelligent response.
Were these the same regulators that were "inspecting" Deepwater Horizon?
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
Is this before or after the largest environmental disaster in that geographic region, caused by my industry? Because frankly, I'm not *that* much of an asshole to think my job is above tens of thousands of square miles of ecosystem.
Also true. The number of fishing/shrimping/tourism/etc. jobs that rely on the Gulf *far* outweigh the number of oil/gas jobs in the area.
Maybe because it hasn't been exploding every day for three months and promising to do so for at least another four, affecting the fishing and tourism industries of four states?
But really, I don't think you want to hitch your rhetorical wagon to Massey Mining. They have more safety violations than BP, and their CEO should be in goddam jail.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
To be clear, I believe that BP should pay for everything but I question I question the viability of forcing BP to liquidate assets and set aside $20B
They way you make it sound, BP was forced to go down to the local pawn shop and sell all the family heirlooms the next day. The Obama administration got a promise from BP that they would set aside a $20 billion account. The details have not been worked out but one detail that I did hear was that it was $5 billion a year for 4 years. Considering that BP made $16 billion in profits last year, I would think they could figure out a method to do so without disrupting the company financially.
- even big evil oil companies need operating revenue.
As a company, BP's revenue of $246 billion in 2009. Asking for less about 2% of revenue to be funded over the course of a year isn't a major strain on their revenue.
Don't forget that a log of British citizens stand to lose a large chunk of their retirement if BP goes belly up.
Did anyone say anything about bankrupting BP? No. BP made profits of $16, $22, $21, and $22 billion the last 4 years. At most, they will be losing out on profits for one of their last 4 years or 25% of the profits for the last 4 years.
One main reason that the administration was insistent about a fund is that though the Exxon Valdez incident happened over 20 years ago, some litigants in Alaska still haven't been paid yet. Could you wait 20 years for money that was owed to you?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
LOL, tool.
Exactly what are you laughing at? A year ago, the common wisdom -- particularly on towards the right side of the political spectrum -- was that environmental concerns are just handwringing by whacko liberal moonbats, that increased offshore drilling is a necessary part of a comprehensive energy plan, that it would help reduce our dependency on foreign oil (somehow, magically, despite the fact that in free market system it all goes on the global market anyway), and that The Industry can be trusted to self-regulate.
Hell, if you read this thread, you'll *still* see people saying the industry can be trusted to self-regulate... it'll all take care of itself, don't you worry now.
You know what's behind this? You know that meme that probably more than half of slashdot FIRMLY believes -- that the private sector is always more competent than the public? That the public sector can't do anything right, can't regulate correctly, can't do anything other than act as a net negative drag on the private sector?
Yeah. Obama the radical socialist that he is? He partially believed that too. He believe what he was told by the executive apparatus and the oil companies -- that the oil companies had top expertise, that they knew exactly what they were doing, that they had safety dialed in and had right incentives to behave without further regulation. And, of course, that there wasn't massive regulatory capture during a presidential administration headed up by two guys who've been Oil guys for a long time.
What would be funny if it weren't so utterly pathetic and gravely consequential for the future of our society is that even though Obama has apparently learned his lessons, there's millions who won't.
Funny how it's playing out that way in financial regulation, too. We're all going to be asked to believe that cosmetic choices that won't cause any real pain for Wall Street are the best way to go -- and after all, the bankers and finance guys are the industry experts, so who better to advise us? We certainly wouldn't want meddling outsider officeholders drafting legislation about an industry they know little about without heavily consulting the industry about the best path, right? We wouldn't want heavy government involvement, anyway. That's a drag on The Market at best... and Socialism at worst.
You're going to hear this stuff. Again. And Again. Lots of times between now and the election. Some of you with fiscal conservative tendencies are going to fall for it. Some of you with libertarian tendencies are going to fall for it hook, line, and sinker. If enough of you fall for it, we're going to be here again in 5-10 years, same people saying loudly that the real problem was government meddling, socialism, we should have just let the private sector work. And the same actors in the private system will be racing their yachts and walking away with billions while socialized environmental and financial cleanup costs mount, one way or another.
Well, that's what you'll hear from some commentators. From others, you'll hear "LOL, tool."
Tweet, tweet.
The proper solution is not to stop drilling, but to require a relief drill to be dug at every site. That way if this happens again, we don't have to wait 4 months. This way we can be safe, collect oil, AND double employment on drilling platforms.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If the moratorium continues, the drilling rigs will move where they can be utilized, and they'll stay there while there is work. Most won't just sit around and wait the moratorium out and hope it isn't extended. There are limited numbers of deep water drilling rigs, they take time to build, and nobody wants to build replacement rigs to meet a spot shortage because they've all moved to other areas due to this. So there could be a longer term impact even if the moratorium does end in 6 months.
So they are saying "if you don't let me play I'm going to take my toys and go home"?
Either there's oil (money) to be found in the gulf or there's not. If there is, then there will be companies ready to drill when the moratorium is lifted. Maybe it will take them 6 months to relocate equipment there, but they'll definitely be back.
Delaying a few dozen exploratory wells for a year while they investigate this accident and have a better idea of the cause *and* have time to enact new rules to prevent the same scenario from recurring doesn't seem like a bad course of action.