Federal Bench to Obama: Oil's Well That Ends Well!

Federal Judge Blocks Obama's Offshore Drilling Moratorium in Gulf of Mexico

In a victory for drilling proponents, a federal judge struck down President Obama's six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, saying the administration rashly concluded that because one rig failed, the others are in immediate danger, too.

The White House promised an immediate appeal. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president believes strongly that drilling at such depths does not make sense and puts the safety of workers "at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."

The Interior Department had halted approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

They argued it was arbitrarily imposed after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well 5,000 feet underwater. It has spewed anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.


Feldman sided with the companies, saying in his ruling the Interior Department assumed that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster," he wrote. "What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm."

His ruling prohibits federal officials from enforcing the moratorium until a trial is held. He did not set a trial date.

Ode to Cool Hand Barry

With apologies to Strother Martin and one of the best movies ever made:

"What we've got here is...failure to communicate."

Some men, like Bobbie Jindal and Tony Hayward, you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last month - a "blame Bush" disaster, which is the way CNN wants it... well, MSNBC gets it. I don't like it any more than you men. You'll excuse me now. My TelePrompter has failed to communicate. I must now comb the beaches of Louisiana and find an ass to kick.

Those Who Forget History are Doomed to Repeat It,...

From Reuters:

BP's Gulf battle echoes monster '79 Mexico oil spill

BP Plc's race to cap its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is eerily similar to a 1979 accident off the coast of Mexico that caused the world's worst oil spill.

In both cases natural gas flowed unnoticed into the well being drilled, causing an explosion. In both cases a critical piece of fail-safe equipment -- the blowout preventer -- failed. And in both cases the operators struggled to quickly staunch the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP's shares have been battered in the month since its Macondo well blew up, threatening tourism, fishing and wildlife along the Gulf Coast and landing the British oil giant with a multibillion dollar clean-up tab.

But while Mexico's Ixtoc well was only 150 feet below the sea surface, Macondo lies at the crushing depth of 5,000 feet, forcing the company to use robots to do all undersea work.

Wikipedia fills in the blanks:


Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible platform Sedco 135-F in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (160 ft) deep. On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in the third largest oil spill and the second largest accidental spill in history.



As I said Monday, before the Obamessiah's meandering monologue of pedantic posturing: Make BP and its subcontractors pay for any PROVEN malfeasance, let the professionals figure out how to clean up the mess and le the president take his foot out of BP's ass and put it back in his mouth, where it belongs!

Obama: Talk is Cheap, Oil Isn't,....

As we prepare for a rare, pedantic lecture from the TelePrompter-in-Chief (who's doing a heck of a job, Brownie), we all need to remind ourselves of a few things regarding the BP oil crisis:

• Yes, as some point, BP and/or its subcontractors, cut corners and put production ahead of safety. It cost the lives of 11 employees and is ruining the ecenomy of a vast swath of our nation's Gulf Coast.
• BP and its numerous subcontractors clearly had the techonology and engineering wherewithall to build a drilling rig out there and proceed to drill several miles into the Earth's crust ( a record depth, IIRC) to get at a large pocket of oil, so I would think they just MIGHT have the solution to this mess. This type of situation has never happened before and the learning curve (yes, that's EXACTLY what these failed attempts have been) has been terribly steep and everyone in the oil industry is watching and learning from it.
• Visiting the Gulf four times, walking the beaches and looking to "kick someone's ass" isn't going to clean up the mess. Face it, President Obama: you don't have a clue how to do it and your cabinet is equally clueless to available options. You waited for weeks to address the issue and now you want to address us with your failures? Please, Mister Obama, do us all a favor and simply SHUT THE F**K UP and let BP handle this, OK?

**THAT'S MY OPINION AND YOU'RE ENTITLED TO IT!!**