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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.
