And the people who work for them. Well, maybe not all the people. Just those people involved in the exploration and expansion of oil wells in the gulf of Mexico using un-anchored/floating oil rigs. So, those people who happen to be geologists, testers, rig workers, scientists, boat captains, and all the support personnel for those people. Those are the people that can suck it. It’s nice to know that in a terrible economy, where unemployment is at disturbingly high levels, that the administration is doing all it can to slow and stop the growth of businesses.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100712/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_moratorium
So the Secretary of the Interior released a new moratorium and the State Department is asking for the injunction against the old moratorium to be rendered moot because it was on the old moratorium and not on the new one. The new moratorium is different from the old one, by enough to lawyer it by. For all intents and purposes what the new moratorium actually does is the same thing as the old moratorium.
And again I understand the need and want for safety but I still think that the logic is very flawed here. Firstly, how the hell do you inspect the safety of an operation when the operation isn’t running? Secondly, The moratorium is expecting the oil companies to use the “we can’t do our job” time-out period right now to perform an overhaul of their safety systems. What the government doesn’t realize is that the people who can perform safety related activities are not the same people that actually do the oil gathering work. Hence, the moratorium forces the oil company to bench it’s workforce, and hire an additional workforce, while reducing it’s ability to secure equity for the future. The more I look at the moratorium the more it seems like a veiled attempt at destroying America’s oil gathering infrastructure.
However, this moratorium comes with a get out of jail clause. It’s not free though. The oil company has to basically show that it’s oil drilling operations are safe. Fine, that makes sense right? Until you look for a definition of safe. The definition is conveniently missing from the moratorium. So how does a company go about proving that it’s safe if there is no measuring stick? Who knows, the judgment of safe and not safe is left up to employees of the Department of the Interior. Which is a terrible, terrible position. It allows three things to happen. 1. Rulings will not be applied equally to all companies because each judge will have their own interpretation of safe. 2. Bribery becomes extraordinarily easy because all you have to do is convince someone to say “You meet my standards of safety.” 3. Anti-oil Zealots will be able to always deny a company the “safe-sticker”.
Like I said before this moratorium business amounts to little more than a tantrum being through by the President. This new one took a few steps in the right direction, but still fell waaaaaaaay short of the green. Hopefully it will get struck down too.
