Criticism continues to amass on the heels of the blog posted by the Whitehouse Wednesday boasting ‘Expanding Safe and Responsible Energy Production.” Attempting to drive home the point that, long before this current spike, their main concern rested in “increasing responsible domestic energy production – including oil and gas,” the Obama Administration engaged in a bit of revisionist history. In reality, actions taken by President Obama and his staff indicate that despite the rising cost of oil, there is little sense of immediacy to get one of our most profitable industries back to work.
The main argument behind the stagnant permitting, the Obama Administration maintains, is BP’s disasterous blowout in the Gulf, “protecting” Americans from the horrors that would no doubt ensue should deepwater drilling restart at a pre-Gulf oil spill clip. Forbes reporter Christopher Helman makes a valid point in exposing the disingenuous nature of the Obama administration’s willingness to issue permits: while the industry was not adequately prepared to clean up the spill, reports have shown that the main problem was in BP’s implementation of the well, not the overall industry’s handling of the disaster – nor the industry’s chances of a second failure. In fact, the chances of another spill have gone down significantly with the most recent set of safety procedures established by the Department of the Interior. Companies now have the technology to drill safely in deep water, and new measures are in place to contain and control a BP-sized blowout, in the (very) off chance such an incident should happen again. It was BP’s haste in building the well, not the industry’s haste in correcting the problem.
William Reilly, co-chair of the presidential panel tasked with investigating causes of the oil spill, remains impressed with the industry’s ability to respond to the disaster, The Hill reports.
“William Reilly, co-chair of the presidential panel tasked with investigating causes of the BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) oil spill, on Tuesday called the oil and gas industry’s response to the disaster ‘remarkable and reassuring,'” Dow Jones reports.
“Speaking at the IHS CERA energy conference in Houston, Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who oversaw the cleanup of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, heaped praise on a pair of spill containment systems developed after the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April, unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Reilly added, “From where I sit, the major obstacles to drill have been removed.”
Despite the continuously improving working environment, the administration has seemingly halted permitting process. In a time where Americans need to get back to work and oil prices soar over $100 a barrel, it seems foolish to stunt such a profitable industry.
All of this information culminated into a coalition letter from several businesses on the ongoing de facto moratorium. Bromwich’s celebration in granting a permit last week only spurred action from some of the most prominent business coalitions. NBCC President and CEO Harry Alford explained:
“The single deepwater drilling permit granted in the Gulf is a political maneuver, and an insult to struggling businesses, meant only to alleviate pressure on Interior Department Secretary Salazar for budget discussions with Congress. The Administration ought to be focusing attention toward alleviating the pressure on business owners on the brink of collapse from the economically destructive and ongoing moratorium.”
In this economic environment Americans cannot afford politics as usual. The White House claiming ‘expanding energy production’ as one of their primary concerns is just another fabrication. It is time to get the oil industries back to work and restore jobs in the Gulf. Failure to act now will delay recovery moving forward.