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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)."
Having worked in nuclear power for 25+ years I know something about how accidents happen and how to prevent them. This event was a total institutional failure. BP failed, the MMS failed, the other oil companies and supporting companies failed. This is epic failure like we haven't seen since Chernobyl, worse in my view because the reactor (in this case, the well) is still critical, still on fire, and a mile under water. The blow out preventers have been shown to not work, the emergency plan has been shown to be a fraud (walruses anyone - dead people phone numbers anyone, buhler?) the technology to respond to blowouts and 10-100,000 barrel a day leaks simply does not exist, and the regulator might have well been saboteurs for all the good they did. A 6 month moratorium is not even close to enough time to fix these problems. But I would put the ball back in the industry's court, my solution would be to make 10CFR50 App B (nuclear power regulation for quality) apply to deep well drilling and tell the industry they can start drilling as soon as their CEO states under oath or affirmation (i.e. lie and its a crime) that their rigs comply. Safely handling high hazards ain't new, many industries do a fine job - BP has proven it can't and by the above revelations we have no assurance that Exxon, Shell, Halliburton or anyone else can either. Shutting down a few wells will hurt the economy of Louisiana and I say tough shit until you fix your problem. But on the other hand I never saw so many people working at a nuke like the ones that have been shut down for safety problems. Once the oil companies see what they have to do to get their practices fixed there will be many many many jobs for the people that will be doing the fixing.