The New Republic: So Much For The Drilling Ban
by Caitlin Dickson
October 13, 2010
So much for the deepwater-drilling ban. Earlier today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he was lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling early, well ahead of the original November 30 deadline. The reason? "There will always be risks associated with deepwater drilling," Salazar explained, "but we have now reached the point where we have, in my view, reduced those risks."
It's too early to tell whether he's right about that. What is clear, however, is that Salazar was under plenty of political pressure to lift the ban as early as possible. In the wake of the BP oil spill, the moratorium was intended to allow the oil industry and regulators time to revamp drilling regulations, safety equipment, and contingency plans for deepwater drilling. But the oil companies and Louisiana representatives complained that the costs of the ban outweighed the necessity, and it should be lifted as soon as possible. Mary Landrieu even went so far as to block the confirmation of Jack Lew to head the White House budget office in protest.
Did the moratorium really deserve the backlash? Oil industry advocates argue that it had a massive effect on jobs. According to Richard Metcalf, the director of environmental affairs at the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, five oil rigs have already left the Gulf and moved operations to other countries, which, he estimates, means about 1,200 lost jobs. And eight other rigs may be on their way out as well. The problem, Metcalf says, is that the ban didn't just affect deepwater drilling (as intended); the delay in permits put a cramp on shallow-water drilling as well.
So how big is this effect in total? Back in September, the Obama administration released a report on the moratorium's impact and found that it would cost no more than 8,000 to 12,000 jobs. The report noted that many rigs have chosen to hold onto their workers and wait out the ban. But critics like Metcalf argue that there have been plenty of jobs indirectly affected — such as cooks on a rig who can't be retained when the rig is not operating. Some outside estimates pegged the potential losses to the local economy as high as $3 billion.
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Two mare paragraphs at the link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130534156
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