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Energy Policy: The administration lifts the Gulf drilling moratorium in time for the election, but it's not as good as it sounds. Meanwhile, China buys up Texas oil land to develop the energy reserves we won't. The lifting of the Gulf drilling ban imposed after the explosion of British Petroleum's Macondo well came as welcome news. But like anything this administration does, one must read the fine print. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the ban was being lifted before its Nov. 30 target because of the "the higher standards we have set" for drillers applying for new permits.

In joyful images beamed worldwide, rescue operations to save 33 trapped Chilean miners appear to have been hugely successful. No one in history has survived underground as long as the 33 Chilean miners have in the 69-day ordeal, and over at the Wall Street Journal, a few columnists are quickly declaring it a victory for free-market fundamentals. "Well at the risk of being too confrontational for people, I would be willing to call this an enormous victory for free-market capitalism," Daniel Henninger told James Freeman and the Opinion Journal.

The chief executive of Shell, Peter Voser, criticised the investigation that rival BP conducted into the causes of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the design BP chose for its’ blown out well. Peter Voser said that to correctly investigate the accident one had to examine the thinking behind the particular well design BP used. The Macondo well design included a number of cheaper options, including the use of a single tube from the surface to the reservoir, rather than two overlapping tubes, and US lawmakers said these choices reflected a tendency on BP's part to put profits before...

Recovery: While states like Nevada wallow in recession, tiny North Dakota becomes the first state rated as expanding by a leading service. Could it be the state's burgeoning energy industry? The recession — induced by Democrats and activists meddling in the housing market through the Community Reinvestment Act and then whistling past the bad-loan graveyard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — officially ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. For much of the country, mired in a jobless recovery with job losses so great and prospects so bleak that it will take decades just...

Only fitting on the day that we get employment data for September (that shows the US still has a long way to go to mend the economic fissures of the most recent recession) that we revisit the impacts that both the actual moratorium on deepwater and the de facto one on shallow-water drilling are having on Gulf-states jobs. The table below summarizes three different studies that provide their assessments of the slowed permitting process for shallow-water operations and the suspension of new drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Department of Interior's...

SITUATION: One indirect consequence of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the impact it may have on the financing of the many tourism projects that have sprouted along the Caspian Sea. Bordered clockwise from the North by Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia, the Caspian Sea is one of the largest bodies of water and an object of strategic ambitions. Though the global financial crisis put may grandiose Caspian Sea tourism projects on hold, some of them are coming back to life, but investors should be alert to tourism trends, corruption, and unanswered questions about demand and potential profit....

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration was slow to ramp up its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, then overreacted as public criticism turned the disaster into a political liability, the staff of a special commission investigating the disaster say in papers released Wednesday. In four papers issued by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, commission investigators fault the administration for giving too much credence to initial estimates that just 1,000 barrels of oil a day were flowing from the ruptured BP PLC well, and for later allowing political concerns to drive decisions such...

CNBC: The White House in the spring blocked release of government estimates on the worst-case scenario of the amount of oil that was spewing from BP's well in the Gulf of Mexico, the presidential commission looking into the accident said on Wednesday. (Video Report)

Very few offshore oil and natural gas drilling rigs will actually resume activity within the first month the deepwater drilling moratorium is lifted in the Gulf of Mexico, a top Interior Department official said Monday. "Even when the moratorium is lifted, you won't see drilling going on the next day or even the next week," Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's new Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation, and Enforcement said during testimony in front of the Oil Spill Commission on Monday. He said it would be difficult for the oil and gas industry to comply with new safety requirements,...

A key Democrat in Congress is trying to drum up support for his party by warning voters that if the GOP moves into the majority in November, Republicans will issue subpoenaes over every possible issue they can assemble, including Barack Obama's eligibility for office. The claim comes from House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., who told the Grio website in an interview that there would be gridlock in Congress should Democrats fail to maintain their majority. "You've got people like [GOP Rep. Darrell] Issa from California who is a ranking member on the government oversight committee," Clyburn said in the...

IN ARCHIE, OBAMA vs. PALIN Archie Comics is set to announce two new covers featuring Barack Obama and Sarah Palin duking it out. By PATRICK GAVIN | 9/27/10 4:32 PM EDT Updated: 9/27/10 4:51 PM EDT It was revealed earlier this month that Archie Comics had put President Barack Obama and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on the cover of 'Archie' issues #616 and #617. On the first cover we peeked, the two pols are featured looking downright friendly: Obama and Palin share a milkshake, prompting Archie to declare, "Wow, I guess *anything's* possible!" Inside, Obama and Palin get involved...

Since folks still want to discuss the oil spill related issues, this is another open thread. Note that there are a few oil spill related articles in Drumbeat.

In a move sure to anger the White House and her Democratic colleagues, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu announced Thursday that she will block President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget until the administration eliminates or significantly modifies the moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling.

(AP:OSLO, Norway) Officials say oil-producing countries at a meeting in Norway have dismissed a German proposal for a possible moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Northeast Atlantic. Germany suggested that offshore nations consider a temporary halt to the "drilling of new complex deep-water oil exploration wells" in the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last week, when the Obama administration put out its happy estimate that they’ve “only” killed 8,000-12,000 jobs with the offshore drilling moratorium, Louisiana’s political leaders and ordinary citizens alike boiled with resentment. The fact that the administration would look at 8,000 jobs lost in one relatively small region of the country as a result of its policies and find that to be something to boast about was deeply offensive to people who desperately want to believe the federal government isn’t out to get them, you see. Well, as it turns out, even the 8,000 to 12,000 jobs figure looks like...

NEW YORK - Now that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well has been sealed, the long, hard work of assessing the damage begins even as the oil is dispersing throughout the Gulf. A research team from Columbia University in New York returned this past weekend (Sept. 17 to 19) from a tour of duty in the Gulf of Mexico with new data to attempt to measure the location and magnitude of subsurface oil plumes, and their effects on the marine ecosystem, which have recently been the focus of much debate.

"Man who does not include luck in his plan, often finds it." That is the Chinese proverb followed by John Wright, the man who has just successfully killed the leaking Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. John Wright, the driller responsible for drilling the relief well to seal the Macondo well, the source of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill.It is a saying that Wright kept his faith in over the past few days, as his relief well got ever close to intersecting with BP's leaking well. Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the American admits that drilling...

If you thought President Obama’s address to the nation this week would have focused on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that is destroying the Gulf Coast economy, you would have been only partially correct. The president did mention what he called the “menacing cloud of black crude,” but the heart of his remarks was a political speech that attacked the president’s political enemies while pushing for a stock “green” agenda, including cap-and-trade legislation, that had no obvious connection to the menace in the Gulf Coast. What was supposed to be a leveling with the American people about the oil crisis...

The deepwater Macondo well, source of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has been killed, operator BP PLC said Sept. 19 in a long-awaited announcement after scientists and engineers confirmed both the casing and annulus of the well were sealed by cement. An Apr. 20 blowout of the Macondo well resulted in an explosion and fire to Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible, killing 11 people. The semi sank Apr. 22. Macondo was drilled in 5,000 ft of water on Mississippi Canyon Block 252. An estimated 4.9 million bbl leaked from the well, of which BP estimates it...

The operations to seal the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf have now succeeded in putting cement plugs into the well that have effectively ensured that it will remain dead. The well itself was effectively killed when the cement was injected some weeks ago, and the work since has been to ensure that some of the potential problems from subsequent failure of that cement could not occur. And so the relief well had shown that there were no effective quantities of hydrocarbon products in the annulus, meaning that the well failure had purely been through the shoe and up the...