Posted on 05/27/2010 3:04:48 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
President Obama will announce on Thursday a suspension of all applications for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic through the remainder of the year, an Alaska senator said late Wednesday.
The decision essentially extends an informal moratorium that Mr. Obama had set shortly after the BP accident on April 20 that led to the spewing of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The new restrictions would suspend new offshore drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico and off the North Slope Alaska until the cause of the accident is determined and stricter safety and environmental safeguards are imposed.
One major oil company, Shell Oil, had been hoping to begin a controversial exploratory drilling project this summer in the Arctic Ocean, which the new restrictions would put on hold.
Senator Mark Begich, Democrat of Alaska and a staunch supporter of drilling in the Arctic, said he was informed of the new restrictions by the Interior Department. Sen. Begich said he was frustrated because the decision “will cause more delays and higher costs for domestic oil and gas production to meet the nation’s energy needs.”
“The Gulf of Mexico tragedy has highlighted the need for much stronger oversight and accountability of oil companies working offshore, but Shell has updated its plans at the administration’s request and made significant investments to address the concerns raised by the Gulf spill,” Senator Begich said in a statement. “They make an effective case that we can safely explore for oil and gas this summer in the Arctic.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Great move on 0bama’s part - drive the prices up and then blame that Evil Big Oil.
Also he wants people to lose interest in the Sestak situation, a real impeachable offense.
All he needs is for the MSM to look the other way for awhile for it to disappear.
Our ‘leader’ and half this country is deaf, dumb and blind.
Oil has to be drilled for somewhere - is it somehow more acceptable that someone else’s ‘pristine’ wilderness is ‘marred’ by oil rigs? Is it somehow more preferrable that an oil spill occur on someone else’s land or ocean?
Oil is a matter of national security. To continue to rely upon sometimes hostile countries to supply this vital product to us is nothing more than a dereliction of duty in the defense of this nation.
Obama and the dims should be thrown out of office on that point alone.
perhaps drug out of office and around the block
Its funny. I don’t want drilling rigs on the great lakes. Frankly I would prefer slant drilling from shore.
Another irritating thing is the whining about those ugly drilling rigs. The reality is that the rigs are only there for a limited amount of time. On land you actually end up with a few pipes and maybe a pump visible.
Banning BP in the Arctic would score just as many political points without punishing the entire country.
Meanwhile, the Russians will go after it with a vengeance.
Another liberal leopard who hasn’t changed his spots, to the surprise of the Dems.
I consider it one of the absolute miracles of the modern world that we can get so much fuel from so many places transported, processed, transported again and available just about anywhere in our great country. The amount of fuel we have to have available every single day throughout a huge nation is mind-boggling, at least to me. And it's been that way my entire life, save for a short time during WWII, and again in the 70’s for a bit.
And the safety record of those who perform that daily miracle is unmatched in the world. Sure, there have been some horrific accidents, but they are the exception, not the rule. Just the single act of delivering 8,000 gallons of highly flammable plain old regular unleaded gas from a storage depot to a eight or ten little service stations spread over a hundred or more square miles of rural roads is a miracle. And it happens every day, in hundreds of places all across the country.
BTW, I have no connection whatsoever to the oil industry. I'm just a long-time admirer of some of the things we Americans manage to pull of day after day, year after year, decade after decade. And usually under attack from a lib or environutty group.
Consider the complexity of a modern jet engine. Thousands of pounds of pieces, some moving at 15,000 rpm, and yet there are hundreds and hundreds of them humming along all over the skies of America, and the world. And not just one per plane, but two or more. Thousands of hours every day, operating at peak efficiency, and yet you seldom hear of one malfunctioning, other than when they suck in a bird or are deprived of fuel. And catastrophic failure of one is even rarer.
This is the kind of American Exceptionalism that Team Zero is so dismissive of!
And look at our prehospital emergency care system. There's hardly a place in America where a sick or injured person is less than an hour or so from a Level One trauma center. Sure, it's expensive. But just getting it done is a miracle in itself.
Sorry to go on and on like this, but I find it really fascinating how much we take for granted in our daily lives!
The Silence of Crickets Over the Bakken Formation
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2505110/posts
What every oil company and coal company in the United States should do is to destroy their equipment, pay off their help,tell them they won’t be needing them any longer, and close their doors. Let the environmentalist over here go back to living in the stone age or pay a thoundsand dollars for a gallon of gas or a hundred dollars for a pound of coal. Let the parasites living ogg the working tax payer living in the big city housing projects go without air conditioning for the summer and heat for the winter.
Let them see how good they had it because of oil and coal.
Any excuse to destroy our country.
LOL! The Head Elitist Monkey throttles access to oil! What a surprise!
Perhaps lay a wreath at Mao's grave?
Given the utter debacle and disaster that the Gulf leak has become we need to make sure that our safety regs are up to the job. The economic disaster that the Gulf states and surrounding areas will experience is going to be HUGE!!!
Pretty good dialectic....create the crisis...provide the solution...
We the People need to make sure it bites him in the backside this fall....
Exactly. Are the U.S. oil companies going to allow obama to nationalize the industry? That's what I'm wondering.
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