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300 million Americans have a country in a depression, whose government does the opposite of what is needed to improve things (even Bill Clinton said so), sues them and scolds them. I appreciate reported facts but the story is more than a few chess moves, which is what media often tends to make it.3/10/11, "U.S. Appeals for Delay in 30-Day Order on Drill Permits," Bloomberg, Calkins and Johnson, Jr.
"U.S. offshore regulators asked a New Orleans appellate court to postpone a judge’s March 19 deadline for them to act on certain Gulf of Mexico drilling permits delayed by the Obama Administration’s drilling ban. The Interior Department had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, also of New Orleans, to delay his own order so that the U.S. Court of Appeals would have time to review it. When Feldman didn’t respond to that request,
- the U.S. turned to the appellate court.
“The 30-day deadline is a clear abuse of discretion,’’ lawyers for the agency said in their filing today at the New Orleans appeals court....
(Obama administration) U.S. offshore regulators said they may deny the seven Gulf of Mexico drilling permits Feldman singled out for quick action if they’re forced to act by the judge’s deadlines. Feldman ordered government action
- by March 19 on five permits and by
- March 31 on two additional permits.
Regulators claim the permitting process is a cooperative dialogue between the agency and operators, which can take days or months to complete. These seven permit applications are incomplete and “cannot be approved in their current state,’’ according to a March 4 filing by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
As of Feb. 25, the (US Interior) agency had 270 shallow-water permits and 52 deep-water permits awaiting regulatory approval, the government lawyers said. The office has just six drilling engineers to process all permit applications pending in the Gulf of Mexico, they said.
“The court’s orders have created a situation in which these applications must take a back seat’’ to the seven permits singled out for rapid decisions by Feldman, Michael Saucier, the agency’s Gulf of Mexico regional field operations supervisor, said in a statement attached to the March 4 filing.
This reprioritization of the agency’s resources isn’t fair to shallow-water drillers with less complicated applications or to operators with more urgent needs for permits, Saucier said. The end result could be
- a further delay in the resumption of widespread Gulf drilling activity,
not the acceleration the judge intends, he said."...
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- Bully Obama doubles down yet again against America and the south. ed.
4 comments:
Hey, bubba. I think you misunderstood the Court's order. The order was for regulators to make a decision on seven particular permit requests. The order doesn't instruct the government to decide one way or another. The government indicated that if it was forced to make decisions, it would be to deny the petitions since proper inspections and reviews haven’t been made. The government also conceded that such actions would result in an outcome that would be counter to the intentions of the Court's judgment. Understand, now?
Oh, and this isn't President Obama's doing... it's the Justice Department’s. The President MAY have been briefed on this, but I'm pretty sure he's not making ANY decisions on drilling permits.
To Rick, I don't disagree with your first paragraph. Your second paragraph unfortunately renders you a non-serious commenter. Obama is by no means a bystander on this. Even if he were, he put people in place beneath him who agree with his strongly held views, as he is entitled to do as president.
Susan, first, let me assure you that my comment(s) are serious. While your view of the President's involvement is true in the abstract (the buck always stops with the President), he doesn't concern himself with the particulars of neither granting drilling permits nor of fashioning a defense for the departments responsible for issuing them.
If you’ll permit me, I’d like to introduce [what I hope is] some logic to the underlying premise of the post:
The idea seems to be that the Obama administration wants to hinder America’s oil production and is willing to ignore directions from the courts toward that end. I addressed the Courts issue in my first post; when Obama addressed the point of oil production, he stated that more drilling permits had been issued during his time in office than in the previous seven years. I don’t know how accurate the statement was, but to be fair, I imagine that the bush administration could lay claim to a good many of the permits issued during Obama’s tenure (I think it generally takes years to get permits, so Obama probably wasn’t responsible for any of the permits in at least the first six months of office). That being said, the President seriously considered allowing companies to drill along the Atlantic Coast early-on which, to me, is an indication that he wasn’t/isn’t anti-drilling. He reconsidered his position at the same time he initiated the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico i.e. when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred.
Given the state of the current economy, no President, even one who wants to hamper oil production, would want to impact the jobs and related business(es) connected to producing oil and oil products.
So, why are oil companies suing the government in an effort to hasten the issuance of drilling permits? Why is the government being so much more cautious in issuing the permits now than it was a year ago? Same answer: Oil companies are in the business of making oil and money; the government is (in this case) in the business of protecting the public, doing what it can to diminish the chances of another embarrassing spill and to insist that there is an acceptable level of safety exercised in the process. It really is that simple. The drilling companies aren’t in league with the devil; they’re just wanting to do their job. The government isn’t trying to destroy the drilling companies; they’re just trying to make sure that the drilling companies do their jobs in ways that protect the public’s interests…. That’s their job!
Seriously.
A basic misconception of those on the left is that 'right of center' people (like myself) are/were fans of George Bush. That is not the case, in fact it's the opposite. I don't need to explain his faults to you as I'm sure you know them. But as time goes on, those on the left will find George Bush was more on their side than they realized, and in matters that haven't been publicized much. He stated for example that he was glad the congress went democrat in 2006 so he could pass more of the things he wanted. Regarding the overall oil issue you address, I tried to state in my short intro to the article that the big picture is being overlooked, ie America and Americans. It is not realistic or provable to state in all seriousness that Obama--or any president for that matter--would not possibly act against the interests of the country. I thank you for commenting but I don't see any possibility of communication between us.
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