Gulf oil spill: Offshore drilling firms threaten to go abroad

[unhappycamper]

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, flanked by Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Michael Bromwich (c.) and Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland, speaks to reporters at Gulf Island Fabrication in Houma, La., Monday, Nov. 22.


Gulf oil spill: Offshore drilling firms threaten to go abroad
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / November 22, 2010

Atlanta - Gulf Coast offshore drilling companies, hoping for a stronger partnership with the Obama administration to make drilling safer without hobbling major plans, came away disappointed from a meeting Monday with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

In fact, companies and rig servicers raised the stakes by saying they're now actively looking to step up bidding for projects outside US waters as losses pile up.

Secretary Salazar met with the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition on Monday in the oil mecca of Houma, La. The event highlighted the building tensions between the White House and largely Southern-based drillers, even after drilling moratoriums were lifted.

In May, following the Gulf oil spill, the Obama administration stopped all new drilling. It then ended a ban on shallow-water exploratory drilling after two months and lifted a deepwater drilling ban last month. Yet since then, only a nominal number of permits have been approved, causing critics to charge that a de facto moratorium remains in place.

"The Obama administration is sort of caught in the middle here: Do you go for short-term economic benefits concentrated in one area or the longer-term risk of some other environmental disaster?" says Daniel Fiorino, an environmental policy expert at American University in Washington.

[drm604]

1. We have to get away from oil somehow.

We can't continue to allow these un-American assclowns to essentially hold us hostage and force us to choose between the economy and the environment.

I know it's a pipe dream and we're stuck with using oil for now but damn this pisses me off.

[katnapped]

2. So they're gonna take all the oil and their ball

And go home?

[XemaSab]

3. $5 says that the Obama administration

is going to royally piss off the oil industry by being somewhat-non-pro-offshore-drilling-maybe, while refusing to give the kind of big FUCK YOU that would be red meat for the base. :(

[no_hypocrisy]

4. It's either a bluff or a delusion.

Other countries' governments may have more stringent laws that protect the environment and hold the companies more accountable than we do.

[leveymg]

5. Good luck moving all those rigs to Nigeria.

Big Oil assholes.

[blindpig]

6. That's what comes of Capitalism...

When an elite controls the means of production they hold us all hostage.

Kill Capitalism

[lonestarnot]

7. Ugh wouldn't that be fascism?

[blindpig]

9. Nope

For ya to have fascism ya need a right wing populist political movement coupled with an agreeable Capitalists establishment. Fascism is just one way of doing capitalism.

[AlabamaLibrul]

8. Well then good goddamn riddance. Go fuck up the rest of the word like you've done every 20years. n/t

[shraby]

10. The only reason they would go abroad is if the wells they

are pumping are almost dry.

[Lucky 13]

11. Good. Go. Now. ASAP.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

12. + infinity

:kick:

[jberryhill]

13. Can I help them pack?

[Subdivisions]

14. Don't let the door hit ya...

...where the good Lord split ya.

[TheKentuckian]

15. The jobs in just number and pay sucks but otherwise a huge non issue

If production moves elsewhere, the cost of fuel is pretty much unaffected.

Overall, it is probably wonderful as there is no way the jobs even come close to the cost of the downside.