Posted on 02/26/2011 6:33:18 AM PST by thackney
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that U.S. regulators would not bow to political pressure to restart deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico before they are certain the oil-and-gas industry is capable of containing an oil spill like the one that followed last BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Salazar and Michael Bromwich--the head of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which oversees offshore drilling--were in Houston Friday to meet with oil industry executives to assess the spill-containment systems they have developed in the wake of nation's worst-ever marine oil spill.
Bromwich said he was "quite confident that we are getting very close to the point where we can begin issuing deepwater permits." But he and Salazar said the industry still has work to do before exploration of the Gulf's deepest waters can resume.
The U.S. government shut down deepwater drilling shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 and unleashing a catastrophic oil spill.
The government's official ban was lifted in October, but regulators have yet to allow drilling to resume in water deeper than 500 feet despite mounting political pressure from congressional Republicans and Gulf Coast Democrats to reopen one of the nation's primary energy fields.
"We don't respond to political pressure," Salazar said. "We are frankly doing what's right for America's energy program."
Both Helix Energy Solutions Group, whose system helped stem the flow of BP's runaway well last summer, and the nonprofit Marine Well Containment Co., formed by a consortium of major oil companies, say their systems are ready to respond to spills on par with Deepwater Horizon. But the nation's top energy regulators said that they felt differently.
"These containment systems are work in progress," Salazar told reporters after the meetings. "Both systems currently have limitations on water depth ...
(Excerpt) Read more at rigzone.com ...
I honestly believe that $5 gasoline won’t make a bit of difference. These idiots are ideologues and nothing will sway them from their ideals.
The media will tell them the economy is getting better.
Denying production of energy is "doing what's right for America's energy program?"
More liberal, envirowacko illogic?
“Too angry to write!”
Me too. I’ve written several paragraphs, only to erase them. Don’t want to get the site in trouble.
But if I ever ran into thet vermin Salazar in a dark alley ...
Extremely familiar. But then, I guess they never change very much. Different face, different era, same technique.
To a Democrat and it appears now that every individual in a position of authority, these are merly words they recite. They do not mean squat to them.
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