More party infighting looms large as LA’s Dem Senator, Mary Landrieu, promises to block Obama’s OMB nominee, Jack Lew, until the deepwater drilling moratorium has been lifted, or “significantly modified.” On the heels of Landrieu’s foot coming down hard on the WH throat are other voices from the Shallow Water Energy Coalition, noting that the moratorium-associated decline in shallow water drilling permits theatens the ability to maintain even current Gulf of Mexico production levels.
While the lawsuit filed over the ban, struck down in federal courts, awaits it’s government appeal in the higher courts, Landrieu is still alarmed at the job loss impact that some still economists predict could be as high as 58,000 in both the oil industry, and it’s boomerang effect on support industries as well in the State. The moratorium’s current sunset date falls at the end of November.
Since it’s implementation in May, the moratorium has idled 33 rigs doing exploratory drilling, and five have pulled up anchor, so to speak, to head to currently active drilling projects elsewhere. Landrieu can expect a serious battle from the White House, as they hit the airwaves just last week with an internal WH report commissioned with the Bipartisan Policy Center, to study the effects of the moratorium in five Parishes. Their findings were that the job loss is confined to no more than 8000 to 12,000 jobs.
“The evidence suggests that job impacts among workers in larger companies, particularly the drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, may be relatively limited because these companies have chosen to retain their skilled labor,” according to Thursday’s inter-agency report. “Most of the potential employment impacts may be in businesses that provide supplies and support to the drilling industry in the Gulf Coast.”
Landrieu and fellow Republican Senator, David Vitter, have criticized the findings as rosy at best, citing that the report didn’t address what was tantamount to a de factor shallow water drilling moratorium as well. Prior to BP’s Deepwater Horizon tragedy, permit applications were averaging about 40 monthly for shallow water drilling. Since the moratorium, there has been only about a dozen over months, averaging about 1.8 each month.
The employment findings were also questionable, as temporary clean up jobs skewed job loss for the oil drilling and support industries. But that’s an old trick with this administration, blessed with the convenience of timing – hiring Census workers and enjoying broadcasting the false positives on employment figures to a seriously stressed out nation.
In direct conflict with Obama’s distorted reality is Jack Noe of the Shallow Water Energy Coalition, calling it “outrageous” to consider clean up jobs a net positive.
“Spinning this as a positive is like saying that a hurricane is good for the economy because of all of the rebuilding work it will provide afterward,” Noe said. “It’s the cleanup that’s ‘temporary,’ not the impact of the moratorium.”
Mr. Noe has a few stats of his own, and the picture isn’t pretty, as you can see by one of the slides of his power point presentation on the SWEC site.
Chiming right in is LSU economist, Joseph Mason, who was a bit more politically correct in terming the snow job of a report “overly optimistic”. Altho his own studies echo that of Obama’s Bipartisan Policy Center’s limited scope, the job losses will not immediately stop when the moratorium is lifted, and extension of the moratorium poses serious risks.
In addition to the sleight of hand employment trick with clean up jobs, Commerce Undersecretary, Rebecca Blank, avows many of the rig workers kept their jobs, using the time to repair rigs and to be around in the anticipation that deepwater drilling will resume post moratorium. The monkey in that wrench is, as SWEC’s stats above point out, even shallow water drilling is taking a hit, and the deepwater drilling permit process is far more complex. Combine that with deepwater drilling rigs aren’t as common as 7-11’s on every urban corner, and the resumption of any drilling is likely to be a painful ramp up period of time.
While we all knew that the moratorium was not going to nestle comfortably into the Obama/Dem talking points of jobs “created or saved”, what is pleasantly surprising is to see one of his own party, taking a very strong vocal lead in opposition to the WH.
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
We all know what the Kenyans game is now, destroy America’s economy … de-develop America.
It only works as long as they don’t know what is going on.
God I love the smell of desperation in the evening…..
Obama, the human wrecking ball…
I can picture Obama and his cronys sitting around the Oval Office trying to figure out new ways to destroy the US economy.
Yes Mata, now that the Lefties and environmentalists are overcome and swoon with their auto-eroticism over the ability of their messiah to shut down our rigs, there are a multitude of other countries that are more than willing to drill and pump oil from the gulf and sell it to us, thanks to the ignorant bastard in the White House. Oh yes, those other countries don’t mind if we cripple our economy, after all it is just another form of Wealth Redistribution. Hamstring the US economy and flood the world with US dollars, he will get us involved in world governance under the auspices of the UN, it just takes a little more time. We will learn to love Socialism, you think there are a lot of bicycles on the road now, those are just the recreational riders, wait until most people have no choice but to ride a bicycle. Obama has a vision, but my bicycle will have a side car or be a three wheeler. I carry a lot of equipment.
This guy is a toxin for this country, we must find a way to unload him before he finishes his term, two years more of Obama is way too much. Find a way to impeach Obama!
Hell, I sit around in the evening trying to figure out ways to destroy the Obama regime.
Hey Mata!
Is the federal ban in place or not?
or is the drop in production due to the price of oil due to the messed up economy that is causing this stuff?
Blast, the original moratorium was prevented, Obama took it to appellate court, and lost that. However Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote a new order which they say answers Feldman’s concerns. Technically, the judge’s injunctive relief relates to the original ban, not the new one.
A bit more on the two dualing moratoriums from a July 13th Yahoo news article:
A ban remains in place, and according to a Sep 9th AP article, feds say they’ve not discussed extending it past the Nov 30th sunset date. Any early lifting of the moratorium depends upon the industry complying with current and “soon-to-be-imposed” safety regulations.
Think about this for a minute, Blast… the government wanted a moratorium. The judge struck enforcement of that down, so the government issued a “new” moratorium – a de facto dance around. Since the government is the entity that has to approve drilling permits, is there any way for them *not* to enforce their moratorium in some way? Like delay and/or refuse the permits because (as in bold above) they are not “convinced” of compliance with safety regulations (even those that have not yet been put into place)? But of course. The courts cannot force the government to approve a permit.
It was a nice slap… twice, actually… publicly at the administration. However in the real world, the injunctive relief did nothing to change the moratorium’s effect.
Seems like the government’s big stick probably has the industry backing off, but what about the economic implications? Like I mentioned, was there a slow down just due to the crappy economy? Why drill like crazy if oil prices are depressed due to the lack of present demand. Seems to me probably both are at work here.