Judge demands Obama meet timetable on oil permits following continued contempt of orders

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Despite media declaring the ban over, Obama "has yet to grant any permits to drill new oil or natural-gas wells at depths greater than 500 feet."... New report says BP blast was human error, not the fault of technology....

2/18/11, "Court Orders U.S. to Decide on Drilling," Wall St. Journal, Power and Gold

"A federal judge ordered the Obama administration to decide within 30 days whether to grant a set of five permits for deep-water drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico, saying the administration's inaction on the requests is

• "increasingly inexcusable."

The order, by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, ratcheted up the pressure on the administration, which last fall lifted a months-long moratorium on deepwater drilling

• but has yet to grant any permits to drill new oil or natural-gas wells at depths greater than 500 feet.
  

The ruling came on the same day a consortium fulfilled a key demand of the administration: that the industry set up a response system to quickly shut a gushing underwater well, minimizing the risk of another accident like the one last April at a BP PLC well in the Gulf of Mexico.

A new report by a commission investigating the BP spill, also issued Thursday, highlighted the need to prevent such accidents in the first place. The report, by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, said last year's accident—which killed 11 workers and was the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history—

• was caused mainly by management failures and poor judgment,
  

• not by inadequate technology.

Thursday's developments illustrate the clashing demands being made on the administration in the aftermath of the spill. As gasoline prices have risen, oil industry executives and their allies in Congress have called for speedier consideration of new offshore drilling. Environmentalists and their Capitol Hill allies say the spill commission's findings show the need to move cautiously until the industry and federal regulators demonstrate they have addressed the root causes of the BP disaster."....

• (To the authors: Based on your article, there should be no "clashing demands." The American people have the greatest interest in this matter, and you don't mention them. You state the BP spill was due to mismanagement, human error, not technology. We have court orders and we have facts, all of which say permits should have been granted. If 'clashing demands' of Beltway politics are delaying drilling for one day, please give us the names involved and we will seek to have them thrown out or arrested. Thanks. ed.)
  

(continuing, WSJ): "The ruling by Judge Feldman, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, came in response to a lawsuit filed against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar by London-based Ensco PLC. It centers on five permit applications in which the company holds a stake and which have been pending from four to nine months. Ruling for Ensco,

• Judge Feldman said Mr. Salazar's agency is required to act in an "expeditious" manner.

"The plaintiff's operations in the Gulf of Mexico are threatened with endless disability," Judge Feldman wrote. "As the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster draws near, any reason that would have justified delays has, under a rule of reason,

• expired."

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department had no immediate comment on the judge's ruling. Representatives of Ensco didn't respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R., Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, applauded the decision. "The president's de facto moratorium is destroying American jobs, hurting our economy and forcing businesses to move overseas," he said. "With gasoline prices rising, the administration needs to

• resume American offshore energy production now."

David Uhlmann, former chief of the U.S. Justice Department's environmental crimes section,

• predicted the administration would appeal the judge's ruling.

"Until drilling companies demonstrate that they can comply with the new regulations, it would be irresponsible for the Interior Department to issue new permits," Mr. Uhlmann said. "Judge Feldman may be right that the Interior Department cannot withhold permit decisions indefinitely, but his ruling today blithely disregards safety concerns about deepwater drilling, as if the Gulf oil spill never happened."

Officials at the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement have said they are unwilling to grant drilling permits

• until it is clear that a spill can be contained.
  

Hoping to assuage those concerns, the industry-led consortium, Marine Well Containment Co., said it was now ready to quickly deploy a device that can capture as many as 60,000 barrels a day of oil gushing from an underwater well. That is approximately the amount the government estimates was leaking from the BP well.

• A spokeswoman for Ocean Energy said in a statement that the consortium had made "significant progress" in addressing well-control issues raised by the oil spill.

The new spill commission report, a more detailed version of one issued by the panel last month, faulted BP for decisions that raised the risks of the well and for its

• failure to communicate on critical issues with subcontractors Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd.

In a statement, BP said it had "made every effort" to understand the cause of the blowout and prevent a similar incident in the future. It said it had made "significant management and organizational changes to further enhance the company's safety and risk management processes going forward.""

via MichelleMalkin