A Disaster Congress Voted For

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/opinion/14abraham.html

A Disaster Congress Voted For
By DAVID S. ABRAHAM
Published: July 13, 2010

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In a 1995 attempt to encourage more exploration, Congress agreed to reduce the cut of the proceeds the government could collect on oil and gas drilling in deep waters. Ten years later, despite higher oil prices and declarations from President George W. Bush that more incentives were not needed, a Republican-led Congress reduced royalties yet again.

And in a sign of how money had influenced and distorted the debate, throughout the last decade the Louisiana Congressional delegation, for a time including the state’s current governor, Bobby Jindal, backed expanded offshore drilling so that Congress could use proceeds to pay for coastal damage caused by oil-and-gas operations. In 2006 the delegation supported legislation giving a share of federal royalties to states that allowed drilling in federal waters off their coasts, essentially using national revenue to encourage more exploration.

At the same time that Congress called for new drilling incentives, it also gutted oversight. From 2002 to 2008, legislators approved budgets reducing regulatory staffing levels by more than 15 percent — despite more complex deep-water operations and Interior Department concerns, voiced in 2000, that industry’s extensive use of contractors and inexperienced offshore workers posed new risks in deep water.

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1. ===

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2. API (American Petroleum Institute)

is the most powerful lobby in Washington