Posted on 07/01/2010 2:41:51 PM PDT by jazusamo
The Interior Department is on the cusp of issuing a revised moratorium on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling to replace an earlier ban that a federal judge blocked last week, according to the White House and the Interior Department.
Interior in late May issued the six-month ban on exploratory drilling in waters over 500 feet deep in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quickly pledged to impose a revised ban after the judge’s ruling.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that he expects the revised Interior Department drilling freeze to be issued “in the next few days.” An Interior spokeswoman confirmed the time frame.
The administration is also appealing the June 22 ruling by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The judge ruled that Interior failed to justify the sweeping ban, siding with several companies that provide services to offshore rigs that challenged the drilling freeze.
Administration officials have defended the drilling freeze, but Salazar also hinted last week that the revised ban could be more flexible.
OilBlamma and his lunatic colleagues think they can fix real-world problems by executive order.
While they’re at it, why not simply outlaw global warming and airplane crashes ?
...in the next few days, or after Odumbo puts in two rounds of golf
...until they unionize.
The caps should have been raised because they were ridiculously low, but uncapping them, is a horrific mistake that will just equate to more foreign oil, and higher gas prices (and fewer jobs).
Under OPA-90, I thought liability was “unlimited” if negligence could be proved.
I have net read the entire law, but I think the operative phrase is “willful misconduct”. Now, BP could and would certainly qualify, if what has been alleged is actually true. But, with the new “Big Oil Act” (or whatever the title is), it doesn’t matter if it was gross negligence with willful misconduct, or if it was just a plain old accident, the liability is the same, unlimited.
The President’s authority to issue executive orders is broad in times of national emergency but it is not unlimited, as the White House seems to think.
Meanwhile Brazil drills in 14,000 feet of water with a $2 billion loan Barry0 helped them get.
Yep, and we’ll have to keep buying it at exorbitant prices instead of drilling for our own.
I’ve read it, with the help of a couple of corporate lawyers. It scared them to death.
From 1986-1997, I ran a bunkering business on the Great Lakes and as OPA-90 added more and more teeth (it underwent revisions several times) the company I worked for decided the risk was just too much.
We operated with a 100 percent tea-totaling crew with a 149 foot, 8,000 lighter vessel in Duluth-Superior Harbor and had shore facilities up the shore where iron ore was loaded out. We never had so much as a scrape.
Even if we had earned $1/gallon, we couldn’t cover the release and cleanup if all the tanks opened in the event of a collision (OPA called for being prepared for the worst case.) The liability issue finally pushed us into selling the business.
The tanker was a single hulled vessel, built in 1978 by Blount Marine in Rhode Island. We could move 1,000 gallons per minute and complete a fueling in about one hour.
She now works in Mexico since single hulls were put out of business by OPA.
And that was with the caps. Don't you imagine it will be exponentially worse without the caps? The cost of insurance, if insurance can even be obtained, will be astronomical. It will drive all the drillers out of our territorial waters, and into the waters of Mexico, Cuba and other more friendly nations - its sad when Cuba is described as more business friendly than the US.
“Meanwhile Brazil drills in 14,000 feet of water with a $2 billion loan Barry0 helped them get.”
Slight correction....Obama helps Soros drill in Brazil with a loan from our hard earned tax dollars and a moratorium on our gulf coast oil industry!
Having operated in US water before and after OPA, I cannot understand why these rigs never held a disaster drill, never deployed spill equipment, never had response equipment nearby (as OPA requires) and never filed a realistic spill plan.
Every harbor in the US has a response team, with all the operators sharing the expense. It was one of the good ideas to come out of OPA, but for some reason, in the Gulf, they skipped it.
And zipping his lip when Chavez “nationalized” our rigs off Venezuela's coast. He's so accommodating!
I keep thinking back on Osama bin Laden’s promise to take vengence on the ‘red states’ after the 2004 election because we voted for President Bush and wondering if Obama is now making good on the promise for him.
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