Posted on 01/03/2011 4:16:27 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In a move that could signal a long-awaited return to business-as-usual in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration announced Monday that it would allow 13 companies to resume deepwater oil and gas drilling suspended when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last spring.
The Administration had instituted a moratorium on deepwater drilling after BP's Macondo well blew out on April 20, killing 11 workers on the rig and spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the ocean, in the country's worst offshore oil disaster. The Interior Department lifted the moratorium in mid-October. Yet because drilling permits have been issued at a far slower pace than before the disaster, the Administration has faced criticism from the oil industry, Gulf Coast politicians and citizens that a de facto moratorium persists.
So far, two companies have received new permits after the lifting of the moratorium, but for activities they could have done under the suspension any way, an administration official explained. The oil and gas industry and its supporters have been waiting for permits to be issued for actual exploration and development, and Monday's decision makes way for such work.
"We are taking into account the special circumstances of those companies whose operations were interrupted by the moratorium and ensuring that they are able to resume previously-approved activities," said Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Michael R. Bromwich. "For those companies that were in the midst of operations at the time of the deepwater suspensions, today's notification is a significant step toward resuming their permitted activity."
The decision Monday allows the companies, including Chevron, Shell, Hess and Kerr-McGee. to return to 16 wells they were drilling in early 2010, nearly all of them exploratory wells.....
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
5 buck gasoline is a sure ticket out of town for Obama.
Faux. I read this morning in the WSJ that they will be “allowed” to resume drilling, not immeidiately, but only after fulfilling a host of new bureaucratic requirements that could take months. They are apparently quite angry at this.
Exactly correct - this move is strictly a CYA so that when gas prices shoot above $4 a gallon, they can stand around with an innocent look and say “Who, me?”.
But much of the damage is already done - the rigs that have moved, the holes that haven’t been started, the production that’s been lost, the regulatory hurdles that will discourage new permitting, and as much as anything, the debasement of the currency that affects all commodities, but especially those as essential (and as foreign-based) as oil.
Even if it were a substantive move, there's a lot more to open up.
Let's not forget onshore, tar sands, and shale.
After all this Big Oil is going to drop a dime on Obama. 5 bucks a gallon in 2012. Obama will try to squirm around and blame the Oil Companies for it. The Crats will be wailing and flailing.
He needs to be asked about the new regulations and if they have been written yet. If the regulations haven’t been written, no one can drill, no matter what he says.
..and the people not paying attention will read this headline and proclaim drilling didn't keep gas prices down. When all the while, they weren't really allowed to drill.
This reminds me of the part of Atlas Shrugged when the science institute denounced Reardend metal--but didn't really--kinda...sorta...(Anything to stop production, right?)
Our muslum in the WH is supporting the Saudi muslums in their fight for 150 oil.
Well, that’s mighty white of him.
DUH....LOSING the entire Gulf coast and all states on Mexican border was “writing on the election walls “ for the Harvard grad to read
PR Stunt. Earlier in a posting:
The Wall Street Journal reports today that, More than two months after the Obama administration lifted its ban on drilling in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are still waiting for approval to drill the first new oil well there. Experts now expect the wait to continue until the second half of 2011, and perhaps into 2012.
Not going to happen.
My guess is that it is a deflective surrender. the administration does not want this squeaky wheel to squeak anymore because congress might investigate and look deeply into what the hell was going on -the leftist lunacy that subjected Americans to an exponentially worse economic disaster than the oil spill itself alone would have caused...
Hopefully, congress will not be distracted away from prosecuting the economic war crimes that the leftists wish all to move on from with this "surrender" after defeat.
Zero is terrified that the 2% Soc Sec. Tax stunt (for 1 year) isn’t enought to cover the $5 gal gas.
When will people demand that food and energy be included in the CPI. THAT is the true realtime inflation #.
Zero is starting to back pedal...he has NO CHOICE.
Yeppers. Here's the link. There's a link there to the WSJ article. nobama is blowing smoke again. Buncha BS.
PR stunt.
My wife had a phone conversation with her sister this past weekend. Said sister is an exploration geophysicist with a MAJOR oil exploration firm in Houston. She said that the firm had gotten exactly ONE “in-US” drilling project approved since the BP fiasco. That ONE approval had had to be re-submitted TWENTY-SIX times.
So you can see from the above exactly what “allowed to drill” REALLY means.....”slow death by bureaucratic stalling”.
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