http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Opinion/Big-Oil-faces-new-rules-after-disaster
Environmentalists were aghast when, just this spring, President Barack Obama announced an energy initiative encouraging offshore oil drilling. Only a few weeks later, the president and the rest of the nation got a lesson in the risks of running roughshod over Mother Nature: We’re still holding our breath over efforts to put a final cap on the disastrous Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf was to have been the scene of a new oil rush. Our chagrined president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quickly put the kibosh on their own plans with a half-year moratorium on deepwater drilling. Legal battles are still being waged over that moratorium, and over the comparative safety of other rigs out there – but the ban is in place for now.
Would the Deepwater Horizon have been dangerous if the federal Minerals Management Service hadn’t been lip-locked with the oil companies it was supposed to be regulating – and if corporate bosses hadn’t been sloppy about following the rig’s safety procedures? Hard to say – but our distraught nation has an idea …
It’s been clear for the past few months that Obama’s people need to rid the minerals-management agency of the bribed-up, oil-cozy officials who thrived under his predecessor before even thinking of allowing any more drilling in water deeper than 500 feet.
On Monday, the administration said there’ll be no more fast-tracking of deepwater projects. That means an end of previous exemptions from environmental review.
Yup – under a policy of leniency imposed by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, Big Oil has been excused from detailed environmental reviews when its work didn’t involve significant environmental impact. And who determined that? Guess. That exemption covered the central and western Gulf – including the killer rig Deepwater Horizon. Yessir – get government out of our hair; deregulate industry, and watch our smoke (or slick) …
“In light of the increasing levels of complexity and risk – and the consequent potential environmental impacts – associated with deepwater drilling, we are taking a fresh look,” Secretary Salazar mildly put it, at the environmental-protection process.
Ya era tiempo – it was about time government reined in the oil guys. This horse, obviously, was already out of the barn, and the drilling field lying a mile below the Gulf surface never underwent a site-specific review.
Future projects can expect such reviews, as well as demands for the utmost in caution.
The reaction from the American Petroleum Institute, the leading oil-and-gas lobby, was predictable: Environmental reviews, it claims, are already extensive. On paper, maybe; but when the people doing those reviews are partying it up on Big Oil’s tab, how serious could they be at the business table? Presumably, their successors will give a gimlet eye to new deepwater-drilling proposals.
Special thanks to Richard Charter