"With the moratorium/permitorium well into its second year, structural damage to the industry has begun....It is especially damaging to the small independents and service companies....the weight of regulation always falls disproportionately on smaller companies. "...
7/22/11, "BOEMRE Slowdown Costs 230,000 Jobs, $44 Billion in GDP," Steve Maley, RedState.com (BOEMRE is Bur. of Ocean Energy Mgmt Regulation & Enforcement)
"A new study from IHS-CERA, one of the leading energy think tanks, projects the cost of the Department of the Interior’s ongoing regulatory slowdown and its impact on the energy industry, employment in the coastal states, and the U.S. economy in general. The study, released on Thursday, was commissioned by the Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST).
We’re beginning to see the true cost of an energy-hostile Administration in Washington. Their policies are not just an inconvenience to a few companies. They are permanently damaging infrastructure which will be difficult to impossible to rebuild. That seems to be their intent.
From the study’s Executive Summary (.pdf link to full study):
Swift action to reduce the growing backlog of plans and increase the pace of plan and permit approvals to explore for oil and natural gas resources in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico would increase employment opportunities in almost every state, boost tax and royalty revenues for governments, and help stabilize US energy security. And these benefits could materialize rapidly. Early alignment between the capacity to properly regulate oil and natural gas activities and the pace and scale of investment opportunities would capture the largest possible share of the activity gap, which in 2012 results in
- 230,000 American jobs
- more than $44 billion of US gross domestic product (GDP)
- nearly $12 billion in tax and royalty revenues to state and federal treasuries
- US oil production of more than 400,000 barrels of oil per day (bd) (equivalent to approximately 150 million barrels in the full year)
- reducing the amount the United States sends to foreign governments for imported oil by around $15 billion
The employment effects would not be limited to the Gulf states. One-third of those jobs would be generated outside the Gulf region in such states as California, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
[Emphasis added.]
- unprecedented hostility toward industry.
Readers of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism should be familiar with this effect: the weight of regulation always falls disproportionately on smaller companies. Ironically, the smaller companies did not create the problem, and the inherent risks of their operations are miniscule compared to Macondo’s deepwater monster.
--------------------------------
You don't even need to be a leading energy think tank to figure out that this was going to happen. ed.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment